737 - Studio-Adjacent

18:39John August:You can imagine a project which a studio might read the script and it's like, yeah, we'll do that. And so you get into development and you're doing a draft, after doing another draft, and you're always like, they're never gonna make this movie. And you spent a lot of money and time sort of wasted to getting it there and they now own the thing. Well, that's the thing that's really, I think you hit upon the thing too, is like giving up your control and ownership over it at the last possible minute. Because if you do sell it to a studio, you get money and that's great. And if they make it, great.

19:09But if they don't make it and they cannot make it for a million reasons, it's almost impossible. We had one recently where we miraculously got it out of turnaround from one studio into another studio. And then that entire leadership changed and we got it out of turnaround a second time. But by then it was too expensive. So we couldn't make the movie. We had someone, an independent financer ready to make the, or mini major ready to make the movie and you just can't. So that's kind of tragic when you're sort of -

19:40John August:It became expensive because of the money spent on development. Yeah, because you're adding up the money spent on development, the interest on that money, the producer's deal at that studio with their amortizing against it, all those fees can, they just lump that in there. And if you can't negotiate them off of it, then the movie's dead. And so that's something you have to think about, especially if it's an original. Do you want to risk putting all your eggs in that basket unless you get the green light? You know, like you can obviously sell it to them if they're saying we're going to press go if you sell it to us.

20:11With an independent film, there's endless chances right you go down the line financer after financer there's a million ways to do it all of them are hard yeah but if you control it like this movie I'm talking about now the new movie we've just written it's me and Matt it's Karin and it's Fred Berger who's our producer on Destroyer and he's our producer and that's it yeah and so and it's an original so there's no rights to worry about it's just us and I think that's the safest place in a way because you have to be really careful about who you ask in and who you invite in because then they're with you.

20:49Yeah.

20:50John August:So with the invitation, it's a million dollars. You're able to raise a million dollars. No one had rights to this territory, that territory. Everyone was investing in the movie, hoping to make their money out of the movie when it sold to a distributor, correct? Yeah, that was the pure equity model. Yeah, that's clean. So we did foreign sales later or maybe kind of concurrently. Our producer XYZ was really great at foreign sales. And they, so they, I can't remember exactly what the order was, but I think we had the equity money first and then it was kind of backstopped by some foreign sales. And that was, again, just finding financiers who really wanted to make the movie and the price tag was low enough that they could literally write the check.

21:35John August:Let's talk about the entities involved here. So you say XYZ, there's also Game Changer and Lege Art. Yeah, so Game Changer was the primary financer, a fund that was specifically created to finance female-driven, female-directed films. Right. So they had a mission that was, they were very serious and pure about it. And so they really liked what they saw with our movie. And then they could put up like three quarters of the money. And so we had to go get another quarter of the money. and that was from a group of investors out of Canada called Les Artistes. And so that came together. And of course, you know, there were lots of ups and downs and money flying from here to there.

22:17John August:So who connects you with those people? So is it your agents, Karin's agents? Who is the people who's like, oh, you have this script and so here are some people we can go to or are you just meeting people at festivals? How are you finding these folks? Yeah, the way that we did it and the way that a lot of people do it is. So every agency has an indie sales department now. But in our case, we're at UTA, Karin's at WME at that time was at ICM. And you just have to decide which is going to be the sales agent. Often they team, but another secret about making independent movies is you have to leave one slot open for an actor.

22:57Because if you get a big star in your movie and they're CAA, CAA is rightfully going to want to help control and package the movie. So we've had to have kind of, you know, a noble back and forth with our various agents on who was going to handle the movie. And we worked with a woman named Jessica Lacey, who was at ICM at the time and put both Destroyer and The Invitation together. And that's just her job. She just, she goes out and finds money for independent films. And she was invested because she worked for Karin's agency. And it was all part of a push to try to get this movie to happen. So the sales agent at a agency is, you know, one very prime way.

23:37They'll get involved at some point, no matter what. There's also a version where you don't have them driving and you've got someone like XYZ, or you've got someone like Rocket Science, who is the foreign sales for Destroyer or Film Nation, very like powerful, great entities who can say, we're going to build this on foreign sales. So we'll run it. We'll go to Cannes Market or we'll go to any of the markets and try to start putting together based on your movie and your cast. We'll put together the money that way. They're almost always working with a sales agent too. So it's foreign sales and a sales agent.

24:12And then your producer, like for, you know, Fred, our producer is a real like producer. Like he's out there pulling stuff together. And so he's on his own mission, monitoring and managing everything and his own relationships with financers and his own relationships with every agency in terms of that. So that's the answer is really the sales agent is the sales agent producer, foreign sales is the triumvirate.

24:37John August:Absolutely. So it ends up being a lot of emails, a lot of calls, a lot of just figuring out who is doing what and what the next step in the process is. And you're all sort of chasing this dream of imagining making this movie. And to what degree is this person attached? To what degree is it realistic? Is this timeline realistic? Yeah. Is the money actually going to show up in the account when you need it to show up in time? Yeah, that is the question because so frequently the money doesn't show up in the account and you're back scrambling again. Or you put together an entire cast and take it to sales and get the money.

25:09But by the time you can get the movie going, half the cast has to fall out because they're doing something else. And so this is constant gears turning and trying to grab whatever the go thing is and get it far enough that when the inevitable stumble happens, they're okay with the fact that it's not that actor anymore. Now it's this actor. So that's basically how that works. And the one thing I'd say that I took away, I've been doing some mentoring and so I'm talking to some younger filmmakers about this is through all these meetings, the difference between someone who has the money and someone who can quote, get you the money is the difference between night and day, right?

25:47There's so many people who will only out themselves in the meeting that they don't have the money, but I can call this guy and this, you don't need that person to call that person. So you can call that person. The gold is the person who actually has the money. And then the part two of this was to say, and this might be useful for listeners out there who are trying to put their own movies together, is always trust your first instinct about the people you're sitting down with because that first meeting is the very best they are ever gonna be with you. Like they want something. They might stay that good and you might learn wonderful dimensions about them later.

26:21But on a basic sense, if you're sitting in that meeting and you're like, I don't think I'm aligned with this person or I don't think they get it, but they say they'll write a check. You have to acknowledge that because when the pressures of making the movie get together, that's gonna be your favorite meeting with them. So it better start out pretty good.

26:39John August:There's a feature I'm executive producing and I'm not heavily involved in the day-to-day of it at all, which is great and by design. And so over the course of its development, there have been different actors in different roles. And I was talking with another filmmaker and said like, oh, one of your actors is in this movie I'm producing. It's like, oh, that's so exciting. It's like, what's the thing? I don't know that he's doing that, but maybe he's just doing something secret. And everyone's like, oh no, he's not in the movie at all. I was like three or four months behind. It's like, I was a completely different person as I see the actual cut.

27:10John August:The complete alternate universe you were talking about. That person's not in the movie whatsoever. Not at all. You forget sort of how many times along the way, like this is the dream of things being put together and like it wasn't this way. And so my movie, The Nines, we had a completely different cast. And as we were sort of putting stuff together, but then schedules change. And so I can imagine that movie, but I had a lovely meeting with Aaron Eckhart, but he's not in the movie. Right. So yeah. In the alternate universe version, he is, I guess. With The Invitation, you're making a million dollar movie and there's a template to that.

27:41John August:We know what that looks like. 24 days is a reasonable amount of time. You got one set, one location. Destroyer is much more ambitious. Yeah. And so for that, it feels like it could have been made as a theatrical feature. It's unusual to have a woman starring in that role, Nicole Kidman. It's her out of her normal lane. Yeah. What was the process on that? Were you ever considering going into the studio or you knew from the start that this would be some kind of indie? I think when Matt and I first thought of the script, and again, like everything we do, it took like eight years from inception to the movie coming out and Invitation was the same thing.

28:18When we first thought of the script, I think we thought of it as something that we could do at a studio that we wanted to maybe either write to try to sell to a studio or pitch to a studio. In a way, it's like maybe a movie that Warner Brothers would have made in the 1970s or something, you know, but maybe creeping up toward the present. Jane Fonda would have started it, yeah. Right. But we quickly kind of realized once Karin knew she wanted to do it and we started imagining what we were really chasing with it, we felt like it was much more at home in, again, we wanted to try to make it ourselves and we wanted to try to, and you know, the invitation allowed us to have credibility to say like, we want to do this again and we want to do this movie.

29:02And you know, the budget wasn't massive. It was around 9 million. So it was not, but it was a lot bigger than the invitation. It's a bigger risk and a bigger swing. But it's a bigger risk. And that's the thing. Once you get to that point, people can start seeing how they might lose money. And fortunately, we made money for everybody with that movie. But the way that was built was, again, through Jessica Lacey, through all the people that were through Rocket Science, through Fred who came on to produce it. It was finding the perfect equity financer, again, to write the check on the trust that the type of movie it is with the director and with the script was going to pull people in.

29:41So they got on board before Nicole Kidman, which is very, very rare when that happens now, especially. It's almost always cast first.

29:49John August:A movie that's almost entirely on her shoulders. I mean, she's in nearly every frame. And who knows, had it taken longer to find her, who knows what other things might have happened. And to her eternal credit, like Nicole is one of my favorite actors and people and is so wonderful. And she just read it and wanted to do it. And she was in. And it was not a lot of, you know, crap. It wasn't a lot of waiting seven months to read it or whatever. And so that really made it go. So, but what were the differences in terms of, it's one thing to reach out to people like, oh, for$50 ,000 or whatever, but if you're trying to get to$9 million, you have to have bigger swings and bigger people writing bigger checks.

30:27Yeah.

30:28John August:Was there a foreign pre-sale? How are you getting up to$9 million? Was it just individual people writing bigger checks or was it pre-commitments to? I think we did well in pre-sales. and we did, and then. So let's talk through pre-sales. So in pre-sales, this is the script. This is the theoretical poster. You're going to a market like Cannes and say like, we're making this Nicole Kidman thriller with this director out of different markets. They'll say, I'll buy that for X dollars. Yeah, well, yeah. So you're going market by market. So like in Japan, you get a certain amount of money for that. And each mark, each star is worth more in every market.

31:08And of course, as we know, that's mostly just like total voodoo. Like nobody has any idea. It means nothing, but they believe it, you know? And so you're going down the line and you have, they present you with something said like the ask and the take, right? So the ask is what they're, in best scenario they would get from say Australia, which it did really well because Nicole is an Australian and a massive star there. And the take is like, this will be okay. These are our bottom line. if we get the take from everybody, we'll still be able to make the movie.

31:40John August:And so what's crucial to understand about this is that you could come to them with, like, I have this genre of movie and this star, and they could do it, but they could also kind of do it kind of even without the project itself. They kind of know how much different people are worth in different packages. They could get a sense of what a package is worth. In a feel of a type of movie. And, you know, sometimes they read the script. I mean, sometimes it's very intensive. and sometimes, you know, we've all seen endless, you know, deadline announcements of some package at Cannes that sold for all this money and they just grabbed this star and they grabbed that star and they have a title and then they go and then the movie never gets made or maybe it gets turned into something else or whatever.

32:19But in this case, we also had a kind of a unique thing where, so we were able to make the movie. We talked about, should we try to go get a distributor now? Because it was all, you know, we felt really strongly about the movie. We felt like it was turning out just the way we wanted it to. So an option you could have done

32:36John August:is essentially a negative pickup like we did with Go where it's like, okay, this movie is happening, Paramount, do you want to come in now? Would you like to come in now and you'll be the distributor and you'll, so now we have that backstop and also if you have a domestic distributor, your foreign sales go way up. That really helps them to know that because that's advertising for them too. So we went back and forth about the pros and cons of that, like making the movie for a place or making the movie ourselves and then trying to sell it. So the plan always was make the movie and then get into one of the festivals and sell it there and then at can at the market when we had just we're in the middle of cutting the movie the idea came up and i don't know whose it was to cut a reel so we cut a 15 minute reel which is kind of a mega trailer but it's handled with it was beautifully done like i was so proud of how they put it together that really tells you the story of the movie if you are a distributor yeah And they were like, look, why don't we, we could either, we'd have a distributor screening and screen the film later or, you know, or do the thing, we'll premiere at Toronto and we'll try to sell it there or let's have this screening.

33:46And so we screened it for, you know, many, many distributors. I think a couple of studios were there too. And out of that, Annapurna just bought it lock, stock and barrel. And so that was the ideal outcome for us because they were able to say, we're going to write a check that will make your investors fine. We believe in the movie and we don't want to wait until you screen at whatever festival. We ended up premiering at Telluride, which was incredible. And then screened at Toronto and London. And then it was better because we had a movie that we were just putting out as opposed to trying to sell.

34:20And so that worked out great for us that they were willing to step up.

34:24John August:Well, the festival has a launch pad, but it doesn't have to do a sales job. Totally. It's a very different experience. So you mentioned Annapurna, which no longer exists, if I recall. They're around. They're kind of making a comeback. Well, fantastic. But I want to talk about these sort of mini majors because that's an example of a place that can make and release its own movies, but it's not one of the big studios. And so they could have developed the script themselves and gone into it, but they also will buy a project along the way and do it. So how do mini majors complicate the question here?

34:54John August:Because you have the searchlights, the focuses, the sub-labels of bigger companies, and you have these independent companies. you have the Neons and Annapurna. How does that change the equation? Well, I think it seems like, and again, you know, to use the movie that we're working on now, it's called Sorceress, that we're, in a hopeful way, it expands the possibilities for those things because A24 and Neon are acting more like traditional studios now, but in a really good way. Clear brands. Clear brands and clearly what they like and what they want to do and what they want to give their audience.

35:34And I think it's working out really well. But the question that I have, I think they develop some within. I think that it's possible to go to them with something and say, hey, you know, let's develop this movie together. If you're a filmmaker that they want to work with and you have the right idea. But I think mostly it's still buying a package, either buying script director stars, plan, budget, and they're like, okay, go, we'll do it. Especially Neon is like a lot of acquisitions at festivals. It's like the best movie at every festival is Neon grabs it usually. And so that's now, and you've seen the budgets that they're comfortable with go up like up to 20 or whatever million dollars, which is now something that Neon could not.

36:16I mean, Neon was one of the people interested in Destroyer and we loved them. They're wonderful. But at that time, there was nowhere near the budget that they were able to spend on stuff. And now you have A24 doing Marty Supreme. Yeah, exactly. So that's going to be really interesting to see how that works because as they push out into like the desire to make commercial movies, like in my heart, I've always felt commercial movies are just good movies. Like we've kind of been taught that like commercial means bad or, well, there's one or the other. I'm like, how about making a great movie? And then people show up and they see it and they talk about it, you know, like.

36:48John August:I do feel like the success of the box office this year will get people hopefully remembering like, oh, that's right. We can make movies and make money. Yeah, totally. Great. and create something that people want to go see in a movie theater, which I think is important. Let's also talk about streamers because made for streaming, you know, I think three years ago, we were like, ah, we were concerned about sort of how much is made for streaming in terms of features. And now you don't hear about it as much, but both of these movies could have been made for a streamer directly. And there's a good case to be made for those.

37:21Yeah, no, and I think a lot of movies that are on one end, a lot of like super commercial movies, but then a lot of kind of oddball, fascinating, director-driven, script-driven movies are made for streaming. And for me, it's always like, the first thing is making the best movie, but there is something very real that we talk a lot about, about what happens to it in the culture. Like if you make it, if the tree falls and no one's there, you know, and I think the danger is, how do you get people to pay attention and remember? And we're very lucky with movies like The Invitation of Destroyer that did not make a ton of money at the box office or anything, but they've been kept alive and thriving online and through getting reviews and through getting the traditional ways that people talk about movies and on Letterboxd and on all this stuff.

38:09And a lot of movies that are, I think, excellent movies kind of come and go and it's without a trace. Like it's not even when a movie comes out in a theater and it leaves in two weeks. It's like I'm in the business and I have never heard of a movie starring someone I think is incredible, directed by someone I think is incredible. that's crazy.

38:29John August:We so often think about like, oh, you want to make sure your movie gets into a theater because it's exposure and people can see it on a big screen and it's absolutely good and true. But I'll say my experience with The Nines is like we never got the right streaming deal. And so the fact that it's never been, it's always been on iTunes, you can always buy it through Amazon. It's always been a rental versus a like, it just shows up on streaming and I've never gotten like the right streaming place for it to be featured on. And that's interesting. It sucks. Frustrating. Let me go to work for you, John.

38:59John August:Yes, absolutely. We'll get somebody on board. To wrap up a few things in terms of the people involved, we talk about the agents who are representing the film for sales. We talk about the packaging and the fee. So let's make sure we're differentiating that kind of packaging from traditional TV packaging, which was the whole agency campaign. Yeah, totally different thing. It's a different thing. So they are not taking an upfront fee, but they're giving a percentage of whatever the sale is they're able to make. Yeah, they have a number a percentage built into what's called, which you know is called the waterfall, which maybe your listeners some know and some don't, which is this document that the money trickles through until a little desiccated little bit might fall into your little bird mouth at the end.

39:44It's how everyone gets paid and it's administered and dropped through. So they take their fee off of percentage of the sales that they make. So it's not a similar thing to what we were talking about there. And I'll tell you, as an anecdote, the invitation, which only cost a million dollars to make, and succeeded beyond our dreams in terms of what it accomplished and how many people know about it and everything. And just two months ago, we entered our profit stage. Actual profitability. Which is shocking and incredible. Nice to done. It's happened.

40:20John August:That's awesome. Great. Let's ask and answer some listener questions. What do we have for us, Drew? Helen in Toronto. writes, I'm in post-production as a writer-producer of my first indie feature. This is my first project as a producer and sole writer. The script is political in nature and originally included talking heads and experimental moments that hinted at a larger systemic failure surrounding our two protagonists. But at this stage, some of the B-roll and interview style material is being cut because it, quote, isn't working in the edit, making the film feel smaller and more interior to me.

40:52We lose characters, locations, and a sense of scale. I already had to rewrite the ending 13 days into shooting and have also been asked to change the title. My question is, how much should I fight with my director and co-producers over cuts? What should I defend? And how do I know when I'm blinded by my writer lens and should defer to the editor or director producer perspective?

41:12John August:Yeah. So what Helen's describing, it's specific to her movie in terms of like what's getting cut, but really familiar to everything we've been through on our movies where you have an intention as a writer and then in production and then going into post, it's not the movie you had in your head. I feel for you because it's something that a lot of us go through, that sense of it mutating before your eyes into something. And it can be a very happy thing. Yeah. And it really does hinge on your relationship with the director and how you think they are accomplishing the goal. And so, you know, for us, it's been very transformative to work with Karin and watch her take, you know, we were kind of side by side step of the way and we kind of like mutated and evolve it together.

41:59But in this case, it sounds like you're kind of a little bit at aesthetic odds. And so I guess what I would say is the director really for better or for worse does have to be the last word. It just, that's the way it was meant to be. And I guess the advice that I would give you is like to fight for what you think is important, but for that relationship, because you're gonna have many of these along the way, you're gonna wanna be able to work together. You're gonna wanna maintain your credibility as a, not just a writer, but a producer on this movie. Kind of our rule of thumb is always, if we suggest something to the director and they say no, most of the time, we just move on.

42:41If it's really, really important, we take the time to stop, and explain one more time why we think it's so important. But if it's a no again, it never is spoken again. It just never comes up because it will never change. So if you can give yourself leeway to say, hey, this is, can I explain to you why this is really important to me? In the most comprehensive manner you can do that. If it works, great. If it doesn't, I think you have to move on from it at this point.

43:10John August:I would ask Helen, does it feel like the director actually has a vision and a plan or is a director flailing and floundering? Because if it's clear that they know what they want to do and they have a vision for how to do it, what Phil says is exactly right. You've got to sort of speak your mind, but eventually you're gonna have to back up and let them pull off this vision. If they're flailing and don't kind of know what to do, that may be a situation where you're gonna have to sort of insert yourself a little bit more directly into the editing room as the producer and say like, let's try this thing, let's go in this way.

43:42John August:There've been some of the studio features I've worked on where I've had to just like kind of get in the other room and just like, let me show you what this could actually look like and try it this way because there may be a way to do it. In theory, Helen, you were there for a lot of these productions. You saw the stuff that was shot and you have a sense of what footage actually exists. There may be a way to get something more like what you want happening, but it's going to depend on the social skills of being able to read where this director is at and sort of how much. That's a great point, John, that I would say is useful no matter where Helen is with her director is if you can offer an alternative and a solution and an idea and say like articulate some ideas that are different versus articulating that you don't think that works and it should be the way it was.

44:35It's funny. It's often the right argument. In human beings, it's not a compelling argument to go back. So you have to take that

44:42John August:and go forward with that, you know? 100%. And so there's also a bit of validation that needs to happen. It's like, you have to make sure that you make it clear that you hear and understand what it is that's not working about the old version. And also that the version you're describing isn't trying to recreate that. It's trying to recreate the best of what was actually shot. And sometimes speaking in values is really helpful. Like the values of what you see, what you're feeling is not there anymore. if it's the value of, I want something bracing, I want something that's like really, I feel like that really shakes the viewer or I feel like we're missing something that creates a sense this is happening in a wider world or any of that, then that starts to become a conversation that is more likely for you to win because we want you to win because you're the one who wrote in.

45:34John August:Grant has written in asking about task lists. In episode 728, you mentioned you have a daily task list John, that's broken up into four quadrants, and you pointed to it as a key to achieving your daily goals. I'm always struggling with getting things done and breaking down tasks into achievable amounts. I'd love to hear more about your lists. Do you make them the day before? If you miss a task, does it carry over? Do you have repetitive elements accounted for on your list, like vitamin consumption? Basically, I'd just love to know more if you care to share. Great. So I have mine right here. This is a blank one.

46:08But Phil, you can describe this.

46:10John August:Tell me what you're saying. I see a very simple, what level, do you want me to go philosophical with it? Do you want me to analyze why you might have done this? Or do you want to just - Maybe describe it physically and then we can describe. It's just a piece of paper folded in quarters. Yeah. Today is blank. It has the place for the day. It's got a lot of boxes and nice faint dotted lines that like a lined paper that you could write a task on. And then we got some perma stuff at the bottom. Brush Lambert's teeth, journal, Duolingo, afternoon fiber, Anki. Yeah. And that's what you got. That's what you got.

46:43John August:So it's a sheet of eight and a half by 11 paper, folded in quarters. It's pre-printed. So I print like 10 at a time and just fold up in quarters, keep a little stack of them by our phone charger. First page says today is, I write the day of what it is. There's an overflow inside. The back has 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. sort of schedule. I rarely use that. Mostly though, if I'm on a phone call and I need to take like little notes myself to remind me like, you know, things to ask or just what happened in the call. I'll jot those on the back. But every day at breakfast, I fill this out. And so I say like, these are the things I want to get done today.

47:21John August:I will carry over tasks from the day before if they are still important. But it's just been great. So I've last, there's a blog post, I'll put a link where I have a template there people can look through. But I've done it since 2019, 2020. And it's really good. It's just, it's my way of doing things. Only I put things on the list No one else can touch the list. No one can go to it. I wouldn't dare. No. I wouldn't dream of it. No. It's just sort of my personal accountability. The other thing I've talked on the podcast, I have index cards everywhere in the house. And so if I need to write something down, a note to myself or like a lot of dialogue or a note for a scene, I write on an index card and those index cards get tucked into the little pocket here.

48:01John August:So they all stay together until they're handled or processed. I'm experiencing this, John, like a beautiful alien being. descended and taught me of a life I could never live. But I would aspire to. Wouldn't you rather just take a Sharpie and grab something and write, that line, and then stick it somewhere that you never found it again? Absolutely. Absolutely a valid choice. I've sat next to Phil playing D &D, and Phil will, in a notebook, hand-draw the cheat sheet guide for his character, and he'll do it every session. Every single time. It doesn't like bring it back in every time. It'll do it each time.

48:40No, I'll do it each time because I actually enjoy it. I enjoy feeling the Sharpie. I do draw a little diagram, little stars and arrows and things. But yeah, no, I redo it every time and I don't know why.

48:50John August:So obviously people could do that. You could have a list on your phone that you do it. I find having it on paper and the process of doing it every morning at breakfast to be really good in terms of just, you know, prioritizing and figuring out what the things are that need to get done. Another thing I think is crucial is don't just write down things you have to do, write down things you want to do. So things like watch the next episode of Widow's Bay. It's on the list. So I remember to actually do it because I want to do it. And otherwise I'll forget to do it. That sounds great, John. Yeah. So if it works for you, there's a template you can download.

49:23We'll put a link in the show notes for that.

49:25John August:Drew, we have a question about themes. Joey in North Carolina says, I'm in the middle of writing my first feature. It's all outlined, and I have a pretty good idea of where it's going. However, I keep coming up with interesting new themes to explore. At this point, I probably have six to eight themes woven into the script. Though these ideas all fit the story conceptually, I worry I may be trying to explore too many themes. I come up with a new idea, then stop myself saying, I can't explore that because I already have enough themes. Is there a line I should avoid crossing when it comes to the number of themes in my screenplay?

49:58John August:Or am I just overthinking this? In the first sentence, I actually had my explanation. He's in the middle of writing his first feature. In your first feature, you're going to try to shove everything in there because you're like, will I ever write another feature? I don't know. I'll put everything I know about everything into this one feature. But at least he's aware that he's doing it. That's a good sign. First of all, I'm glad he's thinking about theme because I think weirdly thinking about theme, there's some people who act like they're too cool to do that. And I know you do. I do all the time.

50:26I'm always thinking about it because theme to me is just what does it mean? What's it about? Why would someone want to watch this? But I've never thought about it in terms of number of themes. So I guess what I would say is, hopefully what you have are shades of one theme, are many shades of one theme.

50:43John August:And if there's one, if the theme is the central question, it's like parts of that question are aspects of it. Totally. And I think it's always helpful. Part of the reason I was excited to answer this question is like talking about theme, it's always worth reiterating that like so many times people mistake theme for what I'm telling the audience or what my lesson is or what my political stance is or anything when, you know, I think the most potent way to talk about theme is it's a question that has more than one legitimate answer. And your movie is about digging into where you lie on that spectrum of those questions.

51:19Yeah, so to me, if you're thinking about in terms of themes, it's, you know, having themes that are coherent and that are intriguing. Another way to look at it is it gives your characters, there's always something for them to talk about. Whether they're talking about it directly or more likely indirectly, it just touches whatever that theme is, touches something that is either a strength or weakness of that person and they want to express it in action or words.

51:44John August:It occurs to me, Phil, like you and I and 300 years I know, we're never sitting around talking about theme. It's not that thing that just comes up. And so it's an inherent intrinsic part of the specific story that we're telling, but we're never like around lunch tables like, yeah, I'm really struggling with the themes in this thing. It's such a fundamental part. It's right. It's almost like it's just the breathing of the script is the theme is almost why it exists. Absolutely. And it's the question that you're itching to explore and kind of why you're even doing it in the first place. Yeah. And so I will say that if you're doing a television series, yes, you might be exploring multiple themes and each episode might be like hitting one aspect harder than another thing.

52:24John August:But it makes sense that over the course of a series, you're gonna explore different themes. But even over the course of a season might have a thematic sort of central premise that you're sort of digging into and diving into. For one feature, it's a one-time journey of these characters going through this thing. There's probably a central theme that you're exploring and aspects of it. Yeah, and it's probably, maybe it's helpful to say your theme should be big enough that it can incorporate a lot of these other, Because maybe I can't tell because I don't have it in front of me, but maybe what you're talking about is six or eight big ideas.

53:03Or maybe you're talking about really six or eight themes, but that would be a lot for a movie to handle. But so it's really what you're defining the theme as. And again, to not think about it in the removed sense of like, I'm stating a theme, but think about it, how it makes your script breathe. like how those questions motivate everything. And again, it's like, if it's a question that is provocative, a lot of people say a theme is something that everyone agrees. You know what I mean? It's like, it doesn't do anything for you. It's like, you have to add to that. If I go back to our own stuff, like The Invitation, you know, one of the themes of that movie that was provocative to us was, can one recover from grief?

53:48Yeah. And part of the movie is saying, no, you can't. And part of the movie is saying, yes, you can. and that's the tension. And how you do it is the text of the movie, how one can make that possible or not. You may have, ideally, a theme and then a bunch of interesting angles on that theme.

54:05John August:Yeah, and so, Joey, if you're trying to figure out, like, well, what is my main theme? Look at what is closest to your protagonist. Like, what are they wrestling with the most? Like, what is the thing that's closest to them? That's probably your theme. And it doesn't mean that your other characters can't have interesting things they do that are, they don't have to be, Everything doesn't have to be directly on theme. Yeah, that's a great point. And so there are diversions and stuff and no one has to show up dressed exactly to match. Every single cop in the station thinks the end justifies the means.

54:35John August:Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. But every sequence probably needs to be on theme, not every scene. Yeah. All right, and now it is time for our One Cool Things. My One Cool Thing is a documentary that Pamela Ribbon, a frequent co-host of the show, is directing about one-act film, which is this annual Texas competition in high schools where each different high school has to put on a one-act play, but it all has to fit within an hour, including like building the set and striking the set and then going back to a black stage. It is an ingenious competition that they've been doing for, I think, 100 years.

55:14John August:It's very longstanding. Pamela has put together a crew and they filmed behind the scenes of this competition and followed the teams. Reminds me of Boy's State. Have you seen Boy's State? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So in that same sense of just like, rather than like, you know, future politicians, these are theater kids competing at the highest levels, but with all the fun and drama of theater kids. That's awesome. It is great. So the movie is largely done, but she's raising money for finishing funds. If you go to oneactfilm.com, you can see the trailer for it and chip in some dollars for finishing this because it's going to be great, but it is one of the funniest, most emotional.

55:53John August:You see the trailer and it's like, oh, I get why that's a movie. That sounds great. Yeah. I'm in. You're in. All right. Phil, what do you have to share for us? What's one cool thing? I have the good fortune of having a college age son who is a DJ on his college radio station. Michio. Michio at K-Oxy Occidental College. And so he is always introducing me to incredible new music that I might not have found otherwise. And I had an experience recently where I heard an album. He played one of the songs. We talked about it. I bought the vinyl at Barnes & Noble, which was fascinating because this is a very niche artist that I'm about to talk to you about that somehow we were about to go to a movie, popped into Barnes & Noble.

56:38This record was there like a miracle. Incredible. That some, whoever's doing the buying at the Americana, kudos to you because it was among all the basic, you know, amazing records you'd imagine. And this, and it's a record by an artist called PD USA. Album is called The Yips, which is a term from baseball about losing your ability to throw. PT USA? P-E-T-E-Y USA. This record, so I went home and put on the record and I had the experience that you every once in a while have where you say, this is one of my favorite records. Oh, that's amazing. And I put it right on and played it again. And I was like, it's still one of my favorite records.

57:14And so - That's incredible. I highly recommend it. It's not a baseball themed record by any of me. There is, he loves baseball. So that also touches my heart that he's into it. But PDOSA and his record is, I'm going to call it an instant classic.

57:30John August:The Yips. The Yips. The Yips, a baseball term. Yeah. Even I know that. Exactly. John, there we go. So when we went to college, if we were DJing at the college station, our families would never hear this because it was only being broadcast. Yeah, it was broadcast. At the college. At like two watts or whatever. You had to have like a radio right next to the antenna to hear it. But now it streams. And so everyone can listen to it around the world. So you get to listen to your son DJ all the time. It's pretty amazing because, yeah, it's online and you go and lots of our friends listen and his friends listen.

58:01What hour block does he have? He's Fridays from four to five, but it's over for the year now because school's done. But next fall, he'll have a different slot and I'll come back on script notes to promote it. And hype him up.

58:12John August:My similar experience is with my daughter, who is studying film TV at BU. And one of her paid jobs is to film the athletic events that's there. That's a good job. And so back in our day, like, yes, maybe the football game would be taped or something. But now it's all broadcast on ESPN Plus. And she could text us like, five minutes men's basketball and we can see her directing games or like a lot of times she's on the court holding camera like, there's our daughter. Yeah, that's amazing. One nice thing about the internet is like the stuff that was incredibly local and temporal. Yeah. People can see everywhere.

58:46Yeah. It's really cool.

58:48John August:That is our show for this week. Scriptions is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Cilelli. Our show this week is by Craig Good. If you have an outro, send us a link to ask at johnoggins.com. That is also a place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find transcripts at johnoggins.com along with a sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. Scriptions book is available wherever you buy books. You can find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube, just search for Script Notes and give us a follow.

59:15John August:You'll find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast. We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You'll find those at Cotton Bureau. You'll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to all our premium subscribers. You make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one at scriptnotes.net where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on the famous documentary, The Dungeon Masters. Right on. Right on. Phil Hayes, thank you so much for coming back on the show.

59:45Thank you, John. Literally anytime. All right.

59:53John August:All right.