744 - The Invite with Rashida Jones and Will McCormack

21:46In the movie, we're just in full spoilers, this couple that Joe is resentful of because they have this incredibly loud sex all the time at night, they turn out to be involved in polyamory and in group sex, pegging, so much pegging. And they invite these two to say, hey, would you like to basically swing with us or have group sex? and Seth Rogen's character does something that I related to so deeply and I love that you guys were smart about having him do it a lot it wasn't just once you have to do it a bunch of times which is you're saying that you want to have sex with us including me I would love for you guys to talk about because so much of this is it's uncomfortable but also beautiful how you write towards this really raw insecurity and honesty that people, especially people, you know, in their forties and fifties have about their own bodies and sex.

22:53And so much of this is about pulling the skin away and getting to this incredibly uncomfortable topic. How? Well, with permission. Definitely with permission. Yeah. We had this, we had a very unusual process on this movie in which it was very quick. This version, we had, once the other versions fell apart, Will and I had suggested Olivia because we'd really loved Booksmart and kind of knew her a little bit. And it just immediately, the momentum started and it was fast, fast, fast. We were in pre-production as soon as we knew it. And of course, like, you know, there was this fantasy of like a very long rehearsal period that got shrunk down to like five days.

23:37But those five days were the Monday before filming. So in those five days, we sat with the director and the actors. And, you know, it was everything from them sort of downloading their concerns, their wants, their desires, their ideas. and then intermittently some great, really like explosive collaborative moments where like things were emerging in the room that were not in the draft that we'd written for the other directors. This was essentially our rewrite. Like the rewrite was happening in real time. We're like, we're getting ideas. And then as you have to do as screenwriters, synthesizing all of these, you know, stars and galaxies in the sky and then going and drawing a map and seeing what works and doesn't work and how to actually execute those things if we were so inclined to execute those things.

24:32One of the great ideas that came out of that process was pushing the invite to the extreme. And that idea of like, you know, it was making us laugh really hard, him, you know, being like, wait, me, me too. And so, and with Seth's permission and Seth's like very much Seth's involvement, like we started to like pitch this idea where he just like asks it over and over and over again. I would. I definitely would have done that. Yeah, which is like, which is real, which is real because I mean, it's so improbable as it is that anybody would come over to your house and ask you and your wife to have sex.

25:08Yes. Especially when you guys barely talk to each other nicely and you don't have sex with each other. So we were really invested in making this as realistic as could be in the context of this movie, you know? Yeah, it's funny that moment, but it's also just so vulnerable, right? Like there's an adage at Pixar that they espouse, which is, you know, you admire people for their strengths, but you fall in love with them for their vulnerabilities. And, you know, you love, you admire Joe and Angelus because they're so funny, but it's you really fall in love with them when they get vulnerable and raw and real with each other.

25:47And, you know, in a movie that's, I guess, a sex comedy, it's not about the sex at all. It's not about the act. It's not about penetration, right? It's not about pegging. It's not about, it's about. Well, it's about double penetration. This is like a conversation with a movie. Literally, we were just, all we wanted to do is talk about pegging in a movie. Yeah, DP. We're glad that we brought double penetration to the big screen. But who's afraid of Virginia Woolf with pegging was always the goal, but. Nailed it. Thank you. It's so incredible to see these people and they just, sex is about wanting to be seen and wanting to be heard.

26:22And like, you know, when people have affairs, it's not about the sex. It's about the person seeing a part of you that your partner no longer values or is too tired to see in real life. So, you know, we got a chance to talk to Esther Perel at length, who is one of our heroes. And we looked at her podcast and it was just so illuminating to sit and talk with someone who's able to unpack that in a way that feels so cinematic and so right. But in a movie that feels like it's so much about sex, it's really not. It's about wanting to be understood and heard and seen. Right. She also has this way of taking what feels like dysfunction and then funneling it back through the relationship instead of like making it this outward spreading away, you know, disbursement, spreading away from each other and fighting distance, like taking that same energy and putting it back into the relationship, which made her a perfect, wonderful collaborator for this movie.

27:19John August:Well, let's talk about Esther Perel and the relationship between that and Pina, because it feels like an important change was that Pina actually enters into the movie with insight into couples dynamics that are as remarkable and has the danger of like solving the problem of the movie and therefore you have no movie. So talk to us about, you know, bringing in somebody with such expertise and how that creates a complication rather than solving problems. Yes, Pina's definitely an avatar for Esther. But again, Penelope very astutely did not want Pina to be able to solve her problems as well as other people's problems.

27:55Right. So it was like finding this balance of like making sure she had enough of her own sort of anger and reactionary behavior and also wisdom around other people's relationships. and for us it was really important that she when they do have that blow up and she's like shut the fuck up shut the fuck up that she resolved quickly like she yes apologizes very quickly and like so much of relationship is like how quickly can you recover and so like she does basically all of it yeah it's all of it so like and they're back you know they're back and then they're gone so in a way it was like she they get to like you know we we got to this point we're like they shouldn't be perfect.

28:34They should have their own problems. They've only been together a year and he's also constantly correcting her. So let's let her explode at that. But then also let's show her doing something in real time that's like actually really helpful to other people, which is like, you apologize and you move on. Can I give you another compliment, if I may? Please, please. What is so smart in the writing is you have a character who is seemingly very settled and actualized. So Pina is, seems to be smarter than everybody, wiser than everybody, and more in control of the situation than anybody. It's like she's already seen the movie.

29:15She's one of those characters, which I love. And you do very smartly realize that at some point, she can't just be this sort of wise woman on the mountain. She has to also be a human being with her own vulnerability and her own failures. But what's so smart about what you guys did was that you didn't just have that happen. Before that happens, Seth Rogen's character, Joe, says something in response to a story that he hears from Hawk that is mean. And she gets angry at him. It's so smart to say before a wise, perfected character shows that she's not wise imperfect, you need to light this fire. It's like, ah, somebody finally hit a nerve there.

30:03And then all of her very well-constructed, actualized self sort of crumbles down because she got vulnerable. She got emotional. She got angry. That gun went flying everywhere. Everyone died. And then she apologized. It's just such brilliant writing and such a smart way of approaching a character, you just knew instinctively you had to trigger her before she could reveal. Thanks. Well, thanks. I mean, again, so much credit to Penelope because she's so present. And, you know, we, we always, you know, we envisioned coming out of that monologue, of course, like Joe is going to say something about pegging.

30:46Like that's going to be his, his summary is going to be about pegging. It's not going to be about his dead wife. And it is mean, right? Because he's uncomfortable. He's uncomfortable. And that's why he's mean. But also, they had this moment of connecting, not the second time, but the first time, you know, when they're alone and they're smoking the joint. Like, she's sharing with him personal details of how she met Hawk, how she was a therapist, how she was this therapist, and confiding in him. And they're sort of connecting. And he says, how did you know your marriage was over? I mean, he is sort of treating her like a therapist and she's invested in him.

31:22So she's now disappointed him because he can't be serious in this very important vulnerable moment that her husband just had or her boyfriend just had. But like, you know, again, Penelope is so present that she brought all that like pain and anger to it. You know, it's like now she's just she was just mad at everybody because of course. It's like it's literally like everyone died. Like she just suddenly just shot everyone and then just sat down and went, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Everyone's like, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. But for those of you at home who are writing screenplays that are about relationships, that are focused on people who are fighting, falling in love, fucking, fleeing, all the good Fs.

32:06First of all, watch this movie. And second of all, just listen to what Will and Rashida are saying. The way these characters are essentially bullets at each other. they comfort each other, they connect with each other, and then they violate those connections. And everything that happens is because of the way they are either protecting or reaching out. It's just beautifully done and great lessons for writers who are working on this kind of thing, which is hard to pull off. We were lucky in a sense that there were different versions of this because we got to live with these characters for a long time.

32:43And then when you're lucky enough to have a cast like this. It just takes it to the next level in terms of what's possible with character.

32:52John August:A rare gift you had is that you got to watch the movie as an audience before having to live with it as a writer. And watching it as an audience, I found my allegiances shifting between the characters as we went through the story. At certain points, you're fully on her side or his side or Hawk's side after his monologue. How or where were you in that process as you're writing and thinking about like, okay, where is the audience at at every moment? Because it's one thing to have these four characters set up bouncing off each other, but the fifth character, of course, is always the audience and what we are feeling and thinking about these characters.

33:24John August:What was that discussion like for you guys? You know, for the bread and butter of the story, you know, and this is this incredible jazz quartet and the way these actors are riffing off each other is incredible. But, you know, it was always, the primary focus was always Seth and Olivia, Joe and Angela. and we felt like this was our sort of A story. And then as we got in the room with Edward and Penelope, with, you know, Hawk and Pina, those storylines evolved and got better and deeper and richer. And so those started to orbit them and then they all sort of intertwined. But that's great to hear that, that you did find that you had changing allegiances.

34:03I think that that means that the film is working. But it all started really with Joe and Angela. And then as you get into that and think that that's working and think, oh no, now Hawk and Pina need to catch up here. Like, you know, you don't want Pina just to be this wise person, you know, dictating the relationship. And you don't want Edward's character to just feel like horny. You wanted it all to come from like a rooted place of heartbreak. So those characters really evolved, but it started with Joe and Angela.

34:29John August:Well, you've established the stakes of the movie are like, are they going to, is this marriage going to last? Right, that is the A story. And that's a fundamental, central romantic question. And the answer to the question, and we won't spoil everything, is ambiguous at the end, but also you've made progress. You see like the funnel of options leading forward is clear. I mean, it is literally stated by Pina. This relationship is over. It's over, yeah. Either you go your separate ways or you start a new one with each other. And that is so smart and it's so lovely because at the end, we understand that we're not going to get the answer.

35:08but we know it's going to be this. That's the choice. Or that. That's a stare. That's all a stare. And it's so important that you guys had, per se, or a new relationship, because we do, of course, naturally, the romantics in us. And also for those of us who've been married a long time, I mean, John and I have been married a long time. I don't know how long you guys are in. I just hit 30. No way. 30 years of marriage. 30 years of marriage. Wow. Too long. Amazing. Amazing. I know. What a feat. Wow, that's incredible. Well, it did occur to me that there's probably a metric that we'll never know. On the one hand, like how many relationships, like married relationships, improve after watching this movie?

35:52And how many divorces occur after watching this movie? Because it goes to something pretty rough. Well, we take polls with the audiences to see what they think happens to them after. And it's pretty split. And I wonder if that's any indicator of whether or not the couple's going to make it. It's possible, but it is, you know, in a movie that was so honest about the things that are hard about relationships. It was also honest about the idea that it can continue, which I think was just a lovely hope. That's beautiful. And thank you. And I think that is truly romantic that Joe and Angela, in Joe's last sort of moment, you know, We wanted that overture to feel like a tender mercy, right?

36:38Like, you know, when you're in a marriage for a long time, it is hard and you don't have to be perfect. You don't even have to be good, but you do have to try. You have to try. You have to try. And there's a choice that you guys made in the beginning that I thought was really interesting tonally because so much of this is about tone. In a normal movie, you have a scene like you had where Joe and Angela are arguing and the people are going to be here any minute. and where's the wine and why are you doing this? And then normal movie, you'd hear ding dong and they'd open the door and hi, and pretend that everything's fine.

37:12Those people would come in unaware and you guys were like, no. They heard them arguing and they're gonna say it. From the jump, you feel like this married couple is exposed in front of these people, which I thought was fascinating. It was, again, a really smart writing choice that sets up, I think, the expectation for every scene that follows, which is no one's getting away with any bullshit. No lies tonight. You can try. You can lie about whether or not you knocked on our door to make us stop fucking. You can lie about how happy you are with each other. You can lie about anything you want. None of it will work.

37:50And what ensues is such a fascinating exploration of forced honesty. Really? I can't say enough. Thank you. That's also, I'm going to give a little credit to Seske because Salvo, Salvo, Salva, that was the original character who's the firefighter. Firefighter. He comes in a little hot too. You know, like I think when you have Edward Norton, it changes things and he brings like an honesty to it. And like, you know, he really just cuts through. He's like a laser. It's really fun to put words in his mouth where he gets to just say exactly what's happening. You don't like me. You did come to our door.

38:30You guys are fighting. be honest, be honest. It's so, it's great. It's such a great gift to have because it's like, any of those sort of like dumb social veneers that we put on, it's like it just cuts right through. You took them all away. Yeah. Which is actually a difficult writing exercise because a lot of what we do in movies like this is engage in a whole bunch of charade. Yes. Until the third act arrives and people break down. Yeah, right. You guys were like, no, let's just get right to that. Well, also there's a lot of truths to be revealed and like a lot of turns to take. So like, you know, you want to, we wanted to parse them out.

39:06You know, you don't want to do it all at once. And again, the structure of the original movie was really great in that way. But like you walk, the window was always such an essential piece of information to come out, you know. And even just the fact that they are upstairs having sex. We really wanted to make sure that that moment, even though it's like page 10 or whatever, you want it to feel like a bit of a shock. Even if you know that's what the movie's about, like you should be like, oh my God, He's talking about people having sex upstairs. That's crazy. Why is he doing that? You know?

39:34John August:Mm-hmm. Underlining what Craig just said, in most movies, you know, there's a third act reveal of information that the characters know, that the audience knows, but the other characters don't know. And in this movie, the third act reveals are, it's information the characters themselves don't really know, or at least they're not willing to admit. Yeah. And so that's where you're getting to. So you have to get all the surface stuff out there pretty quickly so you can actually explore the deeper things. Yeah. We talked about the pre-production and the five days of rehearsal, but the movie was also shot, as I'm reading, in sequence.

40:05John August:And so... Oh, what a joy that is. I'm so jealous. Reading through, was it three weeks that you were on soundstages? And what was that process like? And talk us through shooting the movie in order. You know, we were a bit in like a newsroom state because we were like, we were churning out pages. So we would really like deliver pages to set. But, you know, the actors were sort of in their bubble. And once in a while, we'd come on and discuss something if it didn't feel like it was working in real time. But for the most part, you know, we were still, we were like hammering towards the end. Because as we said, the week-long workshop process, that was our rewriting week.

40:46Yeah, right. Like on Friday, we had a table read. On Monday, or on Tuesday, we started shooting. It's a hell of a weekend you guys had, I'm sure. It was a crazy week. It was a lot. It's probably the most writing we've ever done, right? Yeah. In a week. Yeah. Getting texts from Edward. How's it going? Yeah. Very encouraging when that happens. It's going so great. No pressure. No pressure. We were writing a lot during production and rewriting, and we rewrote the ending 20 times. Wow. The ending meaning like the piano ending? The piano ending. Like the last 10 pages. The last 10 pages. Yeah. And the movie is, there's a real hairpin turn there and it's really parsimonious and it's really lean and it's really spare and it's really great.

41:38I think Olivia and Seth really stuck the landing. There was a bit more dialogue that sort of memorializes their relationship. And there was some couple of speeches about how and why they fell in love and what they will miss. and there's a little bit more tender moments that aren't in the movie. And I think the movie really works. It really lands in a really sparse, lean way where you're like, oh my God, that's it? You can hear the audience sort of go, and it's a great moment. And I love what she did in the edit. For us, I think what was important was pianos at the end. There's some sort of acknowledgement that there are two humans who used to love each other, not just the piano, but her asking about his back.

42:21or his back feels better. Great. She's happy to know that because she's somebody that she's loved and she's had to suffer through his back for so long. She says, I'm glad. I'm glad. For that. Yeah, exactly. I'm glad. And then, you know, them doing like trying to do a tiny bit of admin or about getting separated with their daughter. Like those were things that we were like really happy stayed where they were. And then everything, you know, everything else was sort of stripped down, which like really made sense with these characters and this tone and propulsion of the movie. It kind of like, you know, falls off this cliff and you're left sort of like with your own emotion at the end.

42:56This leads me to a question. Now that you've done this, do you feel like there are things that you have learned that you will carry forward to your next script, to your next project? Always, always. Don't you feel that? Like anytime you get something produced. Yes. There's so many lessons in there. Yeah. I've never been somebody who feel, neither of us, we're not somebody who feels so, we're not word perfect about stuff. Everything has to adapt and breathe and be flexible to the production and the people involved in the production. That's just the way we work because we sort of write in this like naturalistic way.

43:32There's also some stuff you don't know until the edit. And because both of us have directed, produced, written, and acted, we understand the kind of mystery around this process. You can write a perfect script that's perfect for you as you're writing it and reading it out loud. And then you get on the stage and maybe there was like a weird chair in the background or the actor was just off that day, or it's not what the director wanted or the lighting is weird or like the, I don't know, it's like the lines crossed or something. And then you get to the edit, you're like, it doesn't work, you know?

44:03So when you get to production, you get to the edit, things change so much and it's no longer like our thing to expedite in a way, you know? Yeah. I'll also say like, look, to be a part of this film and to have a theatrical comedy land in the world the way that it's landing is a great feeling. And it's very rare. I mean, we've had so, like so many working writers, we've had so many movies fall apart that have just been gut-wrenching. And the thing that I'll say is like, all the work that you do and all the work that you've done and all the work that you're doing, it matters. It does. Just because the movie didn't get made and just because you didn't get financing or just because it fell apart or that actor's schedule didn't work, the fact that you're writing and that you're working on your craft it does matter.

44:48Like it adds up. We're going to save this for the, this is our bonus segment. People have to pay to hear this insight as far as I'm concerned. The work is cumulative, you know? And so this was also just one of those moments on the invite where you felt like, oh God, we've been, Rashid and I have been talking about relationships and how people and why people fall in love for 25 years, you know? And then a project met us at a moment where, you know, by the way, this movie fell apart. I felt like, oh God, well, there goes another one. you know? And also, while we were making it, it's like, you know, we're rewriting.

45:20You have to stay flexible with the version of the movie that's emerging. And so even that's difficult, you know? And yet, like, we're now, we're experienced enough to know how to do that. Like, had I had to do that in a week, you know, in my 30s, I would have fallen apart. Would have fallen apart, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you didn't.

45:42John August:Congratulations on the movie. It's just phenomenal. So everyone should go out Check out and see it. It's great. It's available everywhere in the U.S. And after you see the movie, then you can watch the other movies because there's obviously the Spanish movie and remade in a ton of other languages. Korea, I think, yeah. There's hundreds of these. But I feel like we got, I think we got a really good one. We got a great one. Yeah. And hopefully the other ones are specific to their cultures as well, which I think is a great thing. It's time for One Cool Things. Craig, you said you had a non-game One Cool Thing.

46:13Well.

46:14John August:Well... Did he lie? When you say non-game, I didn't lie, but it is about the gaming industry. Sure, that's fair. So Samantha Baird, who plays Carlack in Baldur's Gate 3, a wonderful person, tipped me off to a report that was, it came from a group in the UK called Outmaking Games. And they're basically a group of LGBTQ plus people in the UK and Europe. Unfortunately, we have to now separate those two. who work in the video gaming industry. And the report is, it's a bit shocking and it's sad, but it's also really important. And so I want to get some note for it. And we'll put a link in the show notes, of course.

46:56But basically what the report is about is censorship. And it is about specifically this kind of soft censorship that's going on. There's a hard censorship that occurs. I think a lot of people are unaware. I was certainly unaware that a number of countries will censor content that is uncensored here in the United States and in other places. For instance, I did not know until after the fact that my show gets censored in the Middle East. So Nick Offerman kisses Murray Bartlett. Not in the Middle East, he doesn't. They just cut it. Wow. And it's upsetting. They're friends, they're roommates. Yeah, by the way, episode makes zero sense.

47:34So this happens a lot now with video games because in the wake of The Last of Us, really, I think was really the first game that sort of pushed a queer relationship forward in a big way. There's been censorship of games across the world, but specifically, not surprisingly, Middle East and China, which are huge markets. And what's happening now, according to this report, is not only does that occur in a kind of hard censorship way, but now companies, developers, are starting to sort of internally censor. Like rather than make a game with these relationships that then gets chopped up for or banned outright, they just stop doing it.

48:18And so this report is called Trapped in the Network. And I think it's an important read. So the directors about making games, James Dodd, Ellie Shapiro, and Jasmine Fox have brought this about along with George Osborne, who's the editor of the memo. And I would love to get this some note. I think this is a cause worth fighting for. And certainly as somebody that loves games and has made a show that adapted a game and is hopefully going to make another one that is the queerest game of all time.

48:52John August:Yes, yes. There's a lot of sex happening in Baller's Gate, yeah. So with everybody, even, you know, guys, your movie too, like I'd be interested to see what happens, you know, whether this happens to your movie. So anyway, a bit of a downer there, apologies, but trapped in the network, it's an important thing to read. So that's my one cool, annoying, but hopefully we can make a better thing. All right. One is very small, invite-related one cool thing is a friend of mine works as a translator for American movies going, released in France. And so he actually saw your movie and emailed with specific questions about like, what does this line mean in context?

49:27Which I just love when a translator is looking for,

49:29John August:like, what does this mean? And specifically, there's a moment in the movie where there's a condom and Seth Rogen says, what this is, this is like a 9-11, like since 9-11. And the translator was wondering like, is that relationship to like a disaster, to a time? Like, no, no, it means like millennial. It means like a period of time. And it's just such a great example of specific dialogue being, specific to a language, into a culture that understands what the context is. And so I'll be curious what he ended up doing to change that line, to make it match there. But it's just fun to see how specific a line comes across in a different language.

50:06Yeah. I wonder what it's referred to in France. It must have a, they must have, I mean, you know, something.

50:13John August:So I suggested like, you know, basically the millennium because like that's about. We can suggest a line because we, the alt line, because our original line was, wow, I haven't seen a condom since 2001. Yeah. So that's, you can take that one. It's simple and direct, but like 9-11 is, it's a fun, it gets a laugh. Yeah. I'm going to pitch Y2K because I feel like I've had Y2K in France since Y2K. Y2K. But my other one cool thing is, okay, Talented Mr. Ripley is one of my favorite films of all time. Craig and I, you were talking about we should do a deep dive on Talented Mr. Ripley. I also loved Netflix version made by the incredible Steve Zalian.

50:53John August:The Simpsons did a episode called Simpsly, which is the Talented Mr. Ripley, but with the Simpsons. Great. And so it's only available on Disney Plus. It's the 808th episode written by Cesar Bazzariegos, directed by Debbie Mahan. The logline is, when a penniless con artist, Marge Bouvier, is sent to Italy to convince wealthy sap, Seymour Skinner, to come home, she's tempted by the trappings of his affluent lifestyle. But there's a big fat fly in the ointment, Skinner's clingy, dim-witted mooch of a house guest, Homer Simpsley. Lies, lust, and Italian lira are abound. He didn't watch that. Of course, it's all black and white because the Aliens version is black and white amazing it's just delightful and you watch this you wonder like who is this for and it's for me me clearly as a person who loves The Simpsons and loves Tyler Mr.

51:45John August:Ripley check it out it's only on Disney Plus this is the title was Simpsley Simpsley Simpsley all right that's coming up I gotta watch that we gotta talk about that I love what I think it's fully there's all sorts of homages and remakes and of course Treehouse of Horror is doing this constantly but like when a thing is so thoroughly one thing and thoroughly it's other thing at the same time, it's just the best synthesis. What an interesting way that they pick the Great Cape Fear episode that they did. And then they're like, it's 2026. And they're like, this is what we're going to do. Yeah, let's do Ripley.

52:19John August:Brilliant. So good. Will, do you have one cool thing to recommend for us? You know, I have so little time for cool things, but I, because I have small kids and I'm writing a ton and we're also moving this week. But I did start reading Griffin Dunn's book. Oh, cool. So good. The Friday Afternoon Club. And it's very funny, really moving memoir about his remarkable career and family. And I'm just a huge Griffin Dunn fan. So I started reading that book last weekend and I am obsessed. Fantastic. The Friday Afternoon Club by Griffin Dunn. I'm going to write a memoir. Yeah. John, you'll come out great.

52:57John August:Don't worry. Absolutely. Craig, do you think he'll actually write the memoir? Fuck no. No, right. So hard. Why would I ever think that my life would be interesting to anyone? What would the book be called? Core Shame, Don't Buy This by Craig Mason. I know, I think there's good stuff in there, but yeah, it's true. It's true. No one cares. No one cares about me. Rashida Jones, you would have a fascinating autobiography, but what is your wonderful thing? I know too many secrets. I can't tell, guys. I've been doing this thing for the past couple years where I make a playlist every month for myself just for myself of songs I hear out in the world it's like new bands people tell me about and I've been kind of obsessed with this there's this new band they're like a collective young there's young people from the UK they're called World Peace DMT and it's just like unlike you know it is just it feels like summer, electric, like fun, exciting, original.

54:02Like you want that to be the soundtrack of your life. Like that's the life you want to have is the soundtrack World Peace DMT is scoring. They're just great. They're just, it's just like fun. And it's, anytime you hear like young people making like great music, there's a little bit, it almost feels a little bit like Passion Pit had a baby with like the moldy peaches. Like it's got, it's just got a good, it's got good history, but also something fresh.

54:31John August:Yeah. Love it. Craig, I think she's making up words. I don't recognize this. You don't know any of those pieces? Okay, sorry, sorry. I know Passion Pit for sure. Moldy peaches, I did not realize, but now I'm just trying to relate. Is it Passion Peaches? Is it Moldy Pit? Yeah, it should be a pit of peach, peach pit. Yeah, totally. It makes more sense. Yeah, peach pit. It's peach pit. All right. That is our show for this week. Scripness is produced by Meredith Stedman and edited by Matthew Shillelly. Our intern is Lauren Loesberg. Outro this week comes from Makeup and Vanity Set. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com.

55:02John August:That's also the place where you can send questions that we often answer on the show. You'll find transcripts at johnaugust.com along with the signup 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. 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 drinkware. Those are all at Cotton Bureau. Drinkware. You will find the show notes with links to things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber.

55:32John August:Thank you, our premium subscribers. You're awesome. You'll get to hear us talk about projects that went away and how we say goodbye to projects that we miss. You can sign up to become a premium subscriber at scriptnots.net where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record. Will and Rashida, an absolute pleasure having you on the show. Thank you. It was awesome. could talk forever. Such a joy to be here with you guys. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

56:24you