745 - Road Trip

17:46John August:Let's think through this because I would argue that road trip is not a genre. It's really a structure. It's a format of storytelling. Let's just sort of list off the things, not examples of movies, but the kinds of things. So I would say the odd couple road trip, like classic. Basically all of them. Runaway or a fugitive. Someone's trying to get away from a place. So it's a question of whether they're pursued. As long as they have somewhere to go. Somewhere to go. They're not just trying to get away. Grief or reconciliation. And so like characters who are traveling to get to a moment, to a funeral, let's bury that past and get to a thing.

18:19John August:Right. Romantic road trips. Sure. Which are odd couple road trips. Yeah. Crime sprees. Crime sprees? I'm not sure they're road trips. Well, because they're on the road, but are they headed to a destination? They often aren't. Well, that's the thing. They often aren't. So you have like road trip elements in Natural Born Killers, but I don't think of it as a road trip movie because they don't necessarily, they're not like, hey, look, we got to get from here to there and then we'll stop doing our crimes. Yeah. They're doing crimes on the road, but it's not a road trip. I hear there. Delivery or a mission?

18:49John August:Always. Absolutely. So identity is delivery. Yeah, delivery. The postman. One last ride. Sure. Yeah. Why not? Among all these things, the aspects that are going to be the same is that you generally have protagonists plus one or more other people in that vehicle and their relationship is changing over the course of it. So they could start as strangers and they become friends. They could start knowing each other and have tension that comes along the way. Let's talk about the vehicle. Whatever they're in becomes kind of the home set for things. And a lot of times we want to see that change. We want to see something go on with that.

19:24John August:I'm thinking back to we're the Millers and they're driving this motorhome and terrible things happen to the motorhome by necessity. Yes. You want to discriminate between a disaster movie and a road trip problems with our vehicle movie. So a movie where the airplane is in jeopardy is different. But when you look at, say, Tommy Boy, which is one of my favorite road trip movies, at one point they lose the door to the car and then there's a deer that beats the crap out of the car and the car just gets worse and worse as they go. And that's fun. Yeah. I'm looking at Surat, which is another like road trip movie with multiple vehicles, but it ultimately compresses down to one vehicle and just terrible things happen to the vehicles as they are happening to the people.

20:09John August:Obstacles. Obstacles, yeah. A fundamental question with any story that is involving a road trip is, why don't we just fly? Like what is the alternative? And so in its DNA, you have to have a good answer to that question. It honestly becomes kind of like the equivalent of the cell phone problem. She's like, well, why don't you just call them rather than like going over there to see them? Yeah, in the case of Identity Thief, I think it was that she didn't have a valid ID. Yeah. So she couldn't fly. Yeah. And therefore they had to, they had to drive. It was actually a very easy one, but you're absolutely right.

20:39The movie Road Trip, I don't think they have the money really to fly. Yeah. And also there's a sense of like, this'll be fun. Yeah. We don't have money to fly works with romances typically that are about younger adults. The Short Thing is a great road trip movie where they're limited by finances. It's a little harder to get away with now because flying is so much cheaper than it used to be.

21:01John August:Yeah. If you're looking back through classic movies that involve a road trip, you should understand that it was a much bigger percentage of a person's income to buy a ticket to go someplace. Yeah, it's much bigger. Let's talk about Episodic, which I think is one of the biggest knocks against a road trip movie. It's just like, we get in the car, we get out of the car, we do a thing, we get in the car, we get out of the car, we do the thing, and it just feels like a bunch of stuff happens, but there's not development. There's not, and that our characters often aren't in control of the situation.

21:27John August:There's encountering a new thing and dealing with it and getting back in the car. So that's the fun of it. I mean, that's kind of why you go to a road trip movie is there are two people and, or let's say three in the case of As Good As It Gets. There are three people, for instance, on the road trip. They, their stories and how they develop as humans, that is the non-episodic line that you follow. The things that happen to them repeatedly happen in different places. But that doesn't mean they're any more episodic than things happening to you in the same place. It just feels a little bit that way.

22:03But the fun of a road trip is, well, the thing that's going to happen to us is at least happening in a new environment. The people who drop in are often bizarre, shocking. Think about my favorite road trip moment of all time, Pee Wee's Big Adventure. when he gets a ride with Large March. That's just awesome.

22:25John August:Yeah. But that brings up one of the essential challenges here, which is also the episodic nature of it, is that those supporting characters, those recurring characters, they're harder to get to recur in a way that feels germane and organic. So people will drop in and that is the person we meet in this one place, but it's harder to bring them back in and through. And that's just the reality of it. They are single serving. Yeah. And that's why they need to be memorable. and that's why their presence has to impact the character in some meaningful way or change the relationship in some sort of meaningful way.

22:56When you have a situation like as good as it gets, you don't really need the people dropping in and out because you have three people. There is a triangle. They are dropping in and out of each other, interacting with each other's relationships. Yeah.

23:11John August:So obviously in any movie, every scene should help address the central dramatic question, like the overall theme of what this movie is about, what is it trying to explore. But that feels especially germane with a road trip movie, making sure that each stop along the way counts and that there's progress between the relationships in sort of tackling this fundamental thing. The story is different because of this moment that happened. Because if it's not, then why are we showing the stop? Then why are we showing it? Everything has to earn its weight. In a comedy, something can earn its weight by being really funny.

23:45And if it's really, really funny, there are times where you don't necessarily need to have a massive impact on the characters or perhaps the impact is they are both experiencing the same trauma.

23:57John August:Yeah. So planes, trains, and automobiles, there are definitely, you know, some things that happen where it's not necessarily like, oh, this is changing everything. But they're funny. Yeah. So it's fine. And one other way to sort of address the episodic nature is making sure that choices made have consequences later. obviously among your group that can happen but like a choice made at a pit stop that then like three towns later has repercussions, that feels rewarding. And often what we will know as we're going through the road trip is that one character has a secret that they are not sharing with the other, which creates tension.

24:32So then as the road trip progresses, we are not simply receiving the events as they occur, we're also waiting for this bubble to burst or for them to kiss. or for one to kill the other, whatever. There should always be some little time bomb that has been planted, metaphorically speaking, of course.

24:54John August:So let's talk about driving scenes themselves because we talked about it economically, but also just creatively, what's great about them and what's challenging about them. I think one of the things that's weirdly nice is that because you have two characters who are not, they're theoretically mostly looking forward. So they can look at each other, but they can look forward, they can look out the window. there's opportunities for dialogue which are just a little bit different than two people across the table from each other. And so I think sometimes it's easier to get certain lines out because they're not delivered to the person, they're delivered sort of straightforward.

25:26John August:That said, you're really, you're boxed in by the number of kinds of angles and shots you can have in there. And like there are opportunities for coverage and sort of how you're showing it over the course of a movie, you're going to go through all the ways of doing it. Yes, two people in a car, presuming that they're both in the front seats one driving, one in the passenger seat. You've got a forward two shot. You've got raking frontals. You've got French overs. You've got clean singles. You've got clean frontals. You've got the question about the headrest and why do you remove the headrest? Typically we do.

25:55A lot of times we'll remove the rear view mirror, which people don't notice, which is remarkable to me. They just don't notice that it's gone. But one thing that you do get, even though you are limited, as you say, to various shots and angles, what you do get as a rider, which is invaluable, is a moment where people are forced to either talk or not talk. But what no one is going to ask is, why are you guys having this conversation now? If two people are running from the cops, they're not going to just start talking to each other while they run from the cops. Something is bigger. If you're driving and you've got two hours, at some point, someone's going to start talking.

26:33We took great advantage of that in The Last of Us season one. Ellie finds out all about Joel's brother. and a little bit of Joel's past because they had nothing else to do except drive for a while. That's a golden opportunity.

26:50John August:So I would also say those scenes from the first season remind me of like the power dynamics in a car are interesting to explore and they're always going to be there. So whoever's driving has control over the wheel. Someone has control over the stereo and the music that's being played. Someone has control over kind of when we're stopping. And so like the kid with the weakest bladder going to get us to pull over. So those dynamics are all worth exploring no matter what the actual genre of the story is. Yes. Where you stop, when you stop, why you stop. All of these things matter. And the other thing that you get to play around with is how these people interact in a way that is different when they're not in the car.

27:28Yeah. And it is different. There are choices to be made. How do you deal with the hotel room? Yeah. It's classic. Got to share a bed. Yeah. Planes, trains, automobiles. classic gay panic scene from the 80s. Those aren't pillows. There are choices that you can make. And yes, over time, we changed the way that we approached comedy. Yeah. But putting people together in a different environment is fun. How many times have we seen in the movie, like, oh, sorry, we only have one room. Obstacle.

27:57John August:Well, one of the things that's nice about stopping on a road trip is that they're brand new to this location. So they're exploring at the same time we're exploring it. So they have no more information than we do. so they have to figure out what's going on there. They're trying to read the dynamics, understand what it is. And so there's conventions about sort of what a gas station is like, what a diner is like, what a motel is like. But like all things as a writer, you need to understand those conventions to see what things are helpful because you get them for free. You don't have to explain how a motel works, but what things you can change and upend our expectations.

28:29And every single time you arrive at a new environment, consider as a writer which one of these characters should be privileged in this space because it should change. Some characters do better in one situation. Some characters do better in another. And in this way, we start to create an interdependency. Most road trips are some form of an odd couple journey. And as you go, you want to create codependency, interdependency. You want to see... So one of the greatest road trip movies of all time is Rain Man, which a lot of people don't think of as a road trip. Yeah, but it's 90 % a road trip. It's a road trip.

29:09And the nature in which the stops create this relationship between two brothers that do not know each other.

29:18John August:Yeah. They don't have to stop in Vegas, but it's a smart idea. And it creates this excitement. I would also say, as you're looking at who are the characters who are going on this road trip, put characters in that car who can do interesting things in places. And so like Rain Man is a great example of like Dustin Hoffman's character is a character who acts in an unexpected way in these places because of how he's built. Pee-wee's big adventure. Like those could be like normal places, but Pee-wee is just an extreme character who's ending these places, which is great. And so I think one of the downfalls of boring road trip movies is that the people in the car are the least interesting people.

29:53John August:And so therefore like - This would be bad. Yeah. Therefore all of the crazy people you meet along the way are, they're extreme and exciting. like, oh, I wish I could spend more time with them. You need one person to, I mean, typically, if it's a comedy, you need a straight man and you need a funny person. And that could be, and straight man is a genderless concept. It's just essential. Somebody has to be the serious one. Somebody has to be the ridiculous one. And you can extend that to things that aren't comedies like Rayman. Somebody is a conventional person and someone is an unconventional person.

30:28By the way, side note, I was just thinking about this because, you know, MGM, understandably, renamed the Sheep movie from Three Bags Full, which was the name of the English translation of the novel, to The Sheep Detectives. And I assume that they did that because they probably did some research. It occurs to me that no movie today could possibly be called Rain Man. The movie's Rain Man. It has nothing to do with rain whatsoever. And obviously we understand, but it imparts nothing to somebody who hasn't seen the movie. It would never make it through testing today. Never.

31:06John August:Not in a million years. Yeah. Something about like my brother, brother's keepers, everything like that. Mysteries of the heart. God only knows what they would call it. You know, they probably would call it spectrum. Yeah. You know, like that's the thing. They just, it's just the way it is now. Rain Man, what a great title. We used to, guys, we used to be able to do that. We're focusing a lot on the structure of like, there's two people in the front seat of the car, but of course we can have more people. And so we can have a backseat, we can have a whole separate like world of the backseat or the way back, which I spent way too much time in as a child.

31:37John August:The way back. The no seatbelt zone. Oh yeah, rolling around. And of course motorhomes have, you know, more space in there. So generally, I guess I'm thinking about like the car where like people are kind of fixed in their places, but sometimes they are just, they are mobile sets and that's an opportunity there too. It creates all the additional challenges of people moving around in a space. Yes, and that space can be a mobile home. It can also be a boat, which people do. And as you're thinking about this, one thing that, you know, we'll get back to the economics question. The interior or something like an RV, build it on the stage.

32:15You're not shooting inside a real RV. There's nowhere to put the cameras. Build it. And the good news is that is your standing set now. Shoot everything in the RV all at once.

32:24John August:We're also mostly talking about sort of the one vehicle movie, but there's also caravans, which can be great. And where you have the opportunity to move people between vehicles can be great. Surratt works as a caravan movie. And that's also worth thinking about is that if they're in multiple vehicles, yes, it's more complication, but also it's more opportunity. Have you ever seen the Spike Lee movie Get on the Bus? I know the movie and I feel like I've seen it, but I may have only seen clips of it. Weirdly. Yeah. Even though I do not think it is Spike Lee's best film, I think I've watched that movie more than any other Spike Lee movie and I think it's because it's a road trip movie.

33:01Right. And I love a road trip movie and I love how contained it is. Yeah. And when you watch that movie, it is interesting to see how Spike Lee does direct inside of that bus. Yeah. Which is a real bus. It's not a set. Bus is big enough for you to shoot in. and how he has characters talking to each other when they're next to each other, across an aisle, way, way behind. Characters will talk forward to people that are way, way back there. People have to shout to be heard or they're whispering to each other quietly. It's fascinating how much creativity he can get just geographically inside of a bus.

33:38It's really, I don't know, there's something about that movie. I just can't stop watching it.

33:42John August:Yeah, it reminds me, we should also get Spike Lee on the show at some point. We should get Spike Lee on the show. I feel intimidated. I do feel intimidated too. Yeah. But he's smart and talented. Yeah. Let's talk about, you know, every road trip generally structured, like people are leaving a place and getting to a place and they have a destination in mind. But, and that finale of the movie probably involves a destination to some degree. So, some possibilities is that they arrive, but they're changed. So, like what they went into this going to is not that. Hopefully, that is the case. That is the classic hero's journey.

34:14that they start as one thing,

34:16John August:they get there for a different thing. They got to the mecca that they were aiming for, but what they want is different. Who they are is different by the time they got there. Yes. This is pretty much the case for every journey. Whatever you think the initial goal is, the plot goal, it is not what you really want by the time you get to the end. What you want is what you got on the journey. That is why we tell road trip stories. The Odyssey is coming out, by the way. Yeah, the Odyssey. Bit of a road trip. Bit of a road trip. Yeah, bit of a road trip. He has a clear goal. Planes, trains, and automobiles.

34:48John August:No, no, planes, but yeah. But there are sirens. There are sirens. There's Scylla and Charybdis. Yeah. I presume. I think I've seen it in the trailer, so yes. Thank God. Yeah. Another option is they fail to arrive, but find the real destination. So they had a false goal, but end up getting to a different place that is actually what they really should have gotten to. Yep. They return home, but home is different because they are different. So rather than getting to the place, it's really about sort of getting back home. They just keep going. So they... Thelma and Louise. Thelma and Louise. They just go.

35:18What a great road trip that is. Callie Curie, great script. Sir Ridley Scott showing an absurd amount of range. Just absurd. Yeah. So good. Top man. Yeah.

35:30John August:And then there's the other sort of like the failed where it's just like they abandon the vehicle. They just stop. They separate. They check out. And that can be a solution too as long as it feels like it's answering the question that we're trying to explore. Someone, by the end of a road trip movie, needs to be home. And that doesn't have to be the home that they started in. It can be a home that they discover. But I think someone needs to be home. Even in the case of Thelma and Louise, where they keep going, they're dying. They have decided to end their journey together in their new home. Heaven.

36:03Heaven. Heaven. What a ridiculous concept.

36:08John August:So a road trip. So what do you take from this? I mean, a road trip, in many ways, sort of really embodies the idea of a character going on a journey. It's a very literal journey that they're going on. And so it's more clear and explicit why they're going on this journey and where they're trying to hit. But that doesn't get you out of all the other things that a character journey has to do, which is not a literal journey. No, if anything, it reinforces the need for a very clear, specific character journey, relationship journey, because you're doing a magic trick where you're just showing everybody how, like, look, this is, get it?

36:46It's a journey. And then quietly, you have to do this other journey while you're doing the obvious journey. It becomes more important.

36:52John August:Yeah. In preparing for this segment, Meredith was pulling up a list of road trip movies. And so I thought maybe Meredith, can you read through here and we might chime in on some things that would feel especially notable. Sure, just from the top. Yeah. It Happened One Night. Classic. Easy Rider. Oh yeah. Classic. Vanishing Point. Yep. Smokey and the Bandit. Okay, so Smokey and the Bandit is iconic. Yeah, it's so good. And like, it's clear what they're trying to do. They're trying to make this delivery. It's so good. I mean, there's a whole, that whole era of 1970s where on the road, Cannibal Run and all those, it's a mad, mad, mad, mad world, which maybe was the 60s.

37:28Just has its own chaotic energy. Mad Max. Yeah, I mean, yeah. Yeah, the train of going to get to a place. Yeah. The Blues Brothers. Oh, yeah. Yeah. National Lampoon's Vacation. Well, there's like a classic. That movie could have been called National Lampoon's Road Trip. Yeah. Even though, of course, there was. Todd Phillips eventually made a movie called Road Trip. But yes, National Lampoon's. Yes, absolutely. Affirmentioned Pee-wee's Big Adventure. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. Delma and Louise, of course. Yep. Dumb and Dumber.

38:01John August:Dumb and Dumber. I don't remember that as being a road trip, but it is absolutely a road trip. Yep. The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert. Yes, come on. Like the best bus-based, I mean, with all apologies to get on the bus, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, best bus-based road trip movie. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I've never seen it, but I know what it is. It is. The Straight Story. Okay, sure. Almost Famous. So yes and no. So there's this big road trip sequence in it, but it's not most of the movie. I agree. I would argue that like, yeah, like a tour. it's almost like we're not really there's no we're just sort of going around because we have to go to these places there's no it's not like oh my god we've got to get to Omaha if you did a thing that was like hey we're a band and we've got to get to Omaha for this big show to impress these people that's a road trip but otherwise road trip y tu mama tambien y tu mama tambien is great and absolute smart and like it's those characters going through this specific journey and the fact that it's the two of them and then the three of them together.

39:05It's a good example of a trio road trip. Rat Race. Don't remember R.I.S. I love Rat Race. Rat Race, directed by Jerry Zucker, of Zucker Abrams Zucker, has one of the funniest jokes I've ever seen on film. You can watch it. It's a look for the scene with Kathy Bates. Okay. It is so funny. What happens in it is so funny. should have bought a squirrel. That's all I'll say. Crossroads.

39:37John August:Crossroads, I believe, is the Britney Spears movie written by Shonda Rhimes. Yes. I have not seen that film. I think I saw that in the theaters. There's another Crossroads with the Crotty Kid. Ralph Macchio. Ralph Macchio, who sells his soul to the devil to learn to play blues guitar. Okay. So now we got two Crossroads. I haven't seen that one either. I just know the summary of it. Sideways. Yeah. Oh, yes. Absolutely. Iconic. Euro Trip. Yeah. Yeah. Euro Trip. hysterical hysterical underrated film Alec Berg Dave Mandel Jeff Schaefer wrote and directed with some incredible stuff not the least of which is Scotty doesn't know I want to back up and say a little bit more about Sideways because they're taking this trip and they're going to hit all these destinations I don't know the reason the final destination was so explicitly clear they're just going on this thing but it's the rekindling it's that stuff but also so crucially it's a fail it's a failure and I think that's it is what works so well It is a failure in a way.

40:33But I think if you say, hey, we're going to tour Napa and we're going to go to all these places along the way, that is different than, hey, we're going on like a tour where all these things are set in place because we have to professionally. It does definitely count as a road trip. Little Miss Sunshine. Oh my gosh.

40:50John August:Yeah, again, you're in a van with good people. There's the front seat, back seat. Strong van energy. Yeah. The Darjeeling Limited. I'm going to embarrass myself. I have not seen it. That one's one of those ones. Yeah, it's Train. Train. Right. Train. Zombie Land. Yes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, trying to get one at point B. The Road. I've never seen The Road. It sounds like a road trip movie, but it's... It sort of is, but it's a bit of a walking simulator. It's post-apocalyptic walking. When I think of, you know, the parts that clearly the road influenced Neil Druckmann when he made The Last of Us.

41:26And when I think about the moments in our show where our two characters are just walking and talking and asking questions. That's very The Road. But it is, it's Cormac McCarthy. It's slightly more existential than it is goal-driven. Due Date. Due Date is a road trip movie. Oh, yes. Oh, for sure. Another Todd Phillips movie. We Are the Millers.

41:48John August:Yep, we discussed it. 100%. Locke. Locke is the one where Tom Hardy is driving the car and it's a continuous thing. Haven't seen that one. Yeah, so I've seen it and I think it's real time also. So it doesn't, Yes, it's a guy in a car, but I don't think it actually counts as a road trip. I think that's different. Same year, I actually didn't include this, but I just remembered Nebraska. Oh, yeah. Completely. Yeah, absolutely. That's a good one. Yeah, that is a good one. Mad Max Fury Road. At the Mad Max icon. I don't remember where they're actually trying to get to. No, it's a bunch of, they're in cars, but it's not a road trip.

42:20It's really more of an escape. Yeah. I think escape is different than road trip. Even though they're on the road, she drives them away from Immortan Joe's stronghold, and they're heading towards greener pastures, some sort of mythological greener pastures. But it's an escape because they are pressured the entire time by pursuit. And I think there's a difference between a chase movie and a road trip.

42:43John August:I think you're right. Green Book. Whatever you think about Green Book, it is a road trip. It's a road trip. And those characters, they are starting with one goal, they're changing over the course of it, they're doing things. A movie won the Oscar for best film and everyone's like, No matter what you think of this film. I've never seen it. You've never seen it? I've never seen it. It just didn't look like a movie that I would, you know me. Yeah. You know, I don't watch that much stuff. Nomadland. Nomadland is an interesting one because it feels like a road trip movie. They're on the road a lot.

43:14John August:And if they don't have a clear destination, they're basically just kind of hanging out at places. I'm going to give this, I'm going to put this vaguely in the road category, existential movement. Yeah, sure. Which is different than road trip. It's more like slice of life, except sort of happens to be in movement. Yeah. Doesn't necessarily need about getting from one place to the other. The Mitchells versus the Machines. Yes. So I forget exactly where they're trying to get to, but it has all the characters of like family and station wagon movie. Yeah. And, you know. Yeah. And goals are defeated a lot.

43:50John August:Yeah. I would say so too. A great list and a great topic. So thanks for talking through this. Perfect. Let's answer some listener questions. All right. Do you want to start with Alan? Yes. Hi there. Love the show and Script Notes book, and I'm a premium subscriber. First time writing to you, though. Thanks. I know this is a tangent from screenwriting, but I'm curious to know if John has ever spoken about his editing routine when working on a novel as opposed to a script. I'm currently editing a novel I've written and would love to know how John measured progress at this phase when he was working on the Arlo Finch books.

44:21Writing a draft is easier to measure as you can look at word count or page count. But for editing, sometimes it's hard to know what counts as a good day's work. I'm putting in the hours and I know I still have a few more months of work to go. So any pointers at how to maintain sanity and a sense of progress would be really appreciated. Oh, very nice.

44:40John August:So Alan can probably hopefully still find Launch, which is a podcast I did about the Arlo Finch books. I do talk about the editing in there. What's weird, Craig, is so I recorded this whole podcast for Wondery called Launch. And then like Wondery got bought out and sold in different times. So like, I don't even know, moment by moment, where the podcast is still available. It's gotta be. It's gotta be, but it's just crazy. You think like David Zaslav sent it down the invisible K-hole of material? That's what it is, yeah. It's Launch and Batgirl. They both were just gone. But hopefully you'll be able to find that.

45:10John August:What I will say in terms of the editing process, Alan, you're right. It's like, as you're writing, you can say like, oh, I'm hitting like a thousand words per day. Great, I'm gonna finish the book. Like editing, I would really just take a look at like chapter by chapter, like how much of a chapter can you get edited and sort of get into its right shape per time. And it's the grind of sitting down and making sure you're actually doing the work that needs to be done. This last week, I was doing the Sundance Filmmakers Lab. And we were talking at the end about the rewriting process. And Howard Rodman was talking about sort of his process on his books.

45:42And someone had recommended that he read the entire book aloud into a tape recorder

45:46John August:because the parts that he is getting bored at and rushing through are the parts that are the worst. And that may actually be a thing for you to consider for your editing process. Let's try another one. Okay. Dean writes, I've dusted off an old pilot I wrote and have started working on character and episode outlines. Working at advertising where everything is about aesthetics and every document is an overproduced sacrifice to the gods of short intention spans and include gifts, images, video, and color. Sure is. My question is this. If you're creating these documents today, are they multimedia extravaganzas or do you still keep to WordDoc, sorry, Highland Pro basics?

46:24Is this still the norm? Do we lose something by not having a simple text document to concentrate on? Or in this day and age, is it helpful to present a document full of atmospheric imagery to support an outline or episode breakdown?

46:36John August:Craig, for your outlines, for your episode breakdowns, what do those look like? Are they courier, some other typeface? Are they single space lines? What are you doing for those? Because you're sharing those with HBO. Yes. Well, certainly for season one, because they kind of needed to know everything. Whereas season two and season three, I just came and described to them, here's what happens episode by episode. But for that first document, I included a few images and it was very long. It was like 180 pages because it was covering the entire first season and all the events of the first game. There were definitely some images that I threw in just to say like, look, here's a shot from the game that sort of implies, or here's a picture of what this fungus looks like.

47:20Things that would be informative, but mostly, I don't know what font I used, Times New Roman or something like that, and just wrote it in prose and it was all text. These days, everybody has their pitch deck, which is, I feel kind of the death of joy, because like all these things, they just turn into the same goddamn thing. Everybody's doing the same goddamn thing. And so you think like, oh my gosh, look at this smooth pitch deck. Well, you're the 900th smooth pitch deck they've seen. And really they just want something good. I don't think anyone's like, if only there were some vague photographic references to some artistic nonsense, I would buy this.

48:00I love the characters. I love the story and the soul of it and the wit and the passion, but where's the shot of a hand, you know, moving across daisies with a tornado in the background. Oh, F off. Yeah. Especially now with AI, you can just like generate all this nonsense. It's so generic.

48:19John August:Yeah. I just find pitch decks so generic like this. Now people, it's obligated or something? Like they have to do it? I think the most punk rock thing you can do at this point is to show up with a bunch of words in your hand and go, here, bleh. Yeah. Because this is what we're doing. This is how it works. I agree with Craig that I think there could be parts of the process where the expectation is a pitch deck where you're showing all the visuals and doing all these things. But for Dean's actual question about outlines and breakdowns, I think those are text documents. I think you only include an image if it's really kind of essential to understand what the thing is, which is what you were doing with some of the Last of Us stuff.

48:55John August:So the things I've been turning in lately for, like my outline for this animation project, I didn't need to provide the visuals. Like they know what the visuals or language is for this. This is just the text. And this is, it's meant to be read by a person from top to bottom. I'm trying to keep it interesting. Bullet points, people are going to sort of skip through. So I'm giving them paragraphs. But look for what is going to actually be useful for them to make decisions, for you to be able to clearly explain what it is that you're trying to do. And I would say that the notes I've been getting back from the places that I've been working with tend to be just like long emails and it's fine.

49:32Yeah. If you are trying to get a job as a writer director, perhaps then there's value in making references. There probably would be value-making references to whatever kind of cinematic tone you're going to aim for. But there are these people now that will generate a fake trailer for your movie that doesn't exist, which is just a bunch of other movies all smashed into a trailer. And I'm like, who needs that? How does this help me? So A, you're showing me stuff that you just cheated because you just took stuff that's already been done. And B, you're saying that it's basically like all this other stuff that's been done.

50:09So how does this help me? It doesn't. It doesn't. It doesn't. I don't. Maybe this works on some people, but yeah, it's sort of a bummer. To me, the only reason to go on visuals is if you know that the people you're pitching to are completely unaware of so much stuff that you know you're going to be able to present.

50:31John August:So a mild counterpoint to this is, again, going through the Sundance Labs this last week, looking at those filmmakers coming in with their scripts, which is I'm reading the scripts, but they also have like a lookbook and stuff about like who they are and who the other people are involved. It can be really helpful to see like, oh, these are the environments because I just wouldn't know them. So like, oh, that's what this part of Palestine looks like. That's actually genuinely helpful for me because I have one image in my head and seeing this image helps me get it down the image. So basic facts that are required to understand and properly read the text.

51:02Yes. So when I went to HBO and said, I would like to adapt Baldur's Gate. and they don't play video games there. They didn't play The Last of Us. That's fine. They trusted me. But part of it is to say, let me show you these characters in this world and what it looks like and how it feels just so you have a basis of understanding before you go and start engaging with some rights deal with another corporation.

51:32John August:One last question, which I think is pretty short. I'm going to guess Achille. but yeah all right i think so akili writes i'm writing a script that centers around a student starting at a university i was wondering if it would be better to write specific locations in the city toronto and or a specific university or would it be best to keep it vague and thus easier to make this is one of my first scripts i'm a big fan of work like normal people and scott pilgrim which are heavily based in cities and universities and work great but i'm not sure if it's such a good idea coming from a new writer and a spec script?

52:06My advice would be to absolutely write as specifically as you want to write. If you want to put it at McGill, you put it at McGill. If you want to reference certain neighborhoods in Toronto, you reference certain neighborhoods in Toronto. It will get changed, but that's fine. It's a whole thing with universities. You have to get permission and license their names and blah, blah, blah. So it'll become some other generic university, but that's fine. That's for later. For now, it will help you ground everything in

52:34John August:the world. You're going to anchor things to specific moments and locations. So the only thing I would caution is that you may know what these places look like, but we don't. And so don't just use a place name and don't describe what it actually is. Make sure that we can see it on the page too. So we can feel what it is. And so if there's a specific atrium you're using at this building or whatever, tell us what that's like. So we can get a sense of what that actually it feels like. But yeah, specificity, there's no, if you're just saying university, it's sort of, our mind goes blurry because we just don't know what that looks like.

53:03Right, and if you just only, you know, Smithford College or something, you know, then everyone's like, Smithford College. But yes.

53:09John August:You can do a Smithford College if you're actually giving us specific instructions about what it feels like. Sure, but it's better to just go with a place. And if you are in a Toronto neighborhood, just let us know, like, this is the rapidly gentrifying former bad neighborhood full of, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is the Williamsburg of Toronto or something, you know, and that's helpful because it also imparts your knowledge and passion. If someone's going to buy a script about university kid in Toronto, they would like to know that the person writing it knows Toronto like the back of their hand.

53:47It's, and knows to call it Toronto and not Toronto. Yeah. Which apparently is very offensive.

53:55John August:Let's do our one cool things. I have two small one cool things. The first is Toad, which is a concept. The mushroom character from Super Mars? It is that, but also, it's actually a concept, time outside after dinner. Oh. And so it's the idea that like, it's good for you to just like, take some time outside after dinner, which is actually, it's a very simple thing to do, but like we've been trying to do it for the last couple weeks. Toad. Toad. Toad. It just seems like, you take a walk outside, you just sit outside for a little while, but it's nice to be out in that time between like you've eaten your dinner and you're watching some TV and going to bed.

54:28Just a little time outside. Have we talked about it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? Have we talked about that on the show?

54:35John August:I know what we talked about on the air. Have we talked about it? It's a great idea. It's a great meme. You can Google this and on YouTube they have a compilation of all of the it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? What they would do is and this was in the 70s they would get a celebrity to look into the camera lens and go it's at 10 p.m. it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? And sometimes I would say, do you know where your children are? And sometimes I would say, do you know where your children are? They would put their own little spin on it. There was a reason they had to put that on TV.

55:05It's because... In the 70s, our stupid, confused, coked up, rapidly divorcing or group sexing parents had no idea where we were because we were toting. Right? It was dinner.

55:20John August:It was bad toad. It was bad toad. Okay, you have dinner. Now we're going to go outside and play. Great. Beat it. And then 10 p.m. rolls around and a lot of parents like halfway through a box of wine or something smoking in bed, which is why also in the 70s people were obsessed with spontaneous combustion, which was just smoking in bed. They were sleeping in bed, yeah. Yeah. And so like, I don't know, the guy from Good Times would come on and go, it's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? And then somebody at home go, oh, shit. where's where's Randy sit down their seventh beer and it's like oh shit sort their last line it's so good and be like oh god damn it we gotta figure out where our kids are I would say we have over corrected we've created a system where it's like oh my god like a child cannot be unaccompanied like at any moment yes and we our generation loves to go on if we haven't noticed about how like free range we were and how resilient we are except we are We are.

56:21We just are. It's just a fact because we got toted like as kids. Yeah. It's insane. Yeah. What an insane thing. It's 10 p.m. Do you know where your children are? Yeah. Your children should be in bed. Like for sure. It's Wednesday. Why is your kid out there at 10 p.m.?

56:41John August:And there was truancy. There was all this stuff. There's so much stuff going on. Yeah. And you know, because I was on my bike at my friend's house, whatever. In any case, I think we could bring back a little toad. And we can bring back a little toad for kids. Toad for kids too. Toad for kids too. Yes. My second one cool thing is slightly timely, but they keep happening, are prop house auctions. Oh yeah. And so I'll put a link in the show notes too of one of them that's happening in Los Angeles. It is a very specific LA and probably New York thing, but there are so many props that are purchased for movies and then rented out from rental houses that they at some point just need to sell off the stuff that they have.

57:15John August:And so you can get like framed photos of like of fake families, including celebrities. You can get, you know, office chairs that were abused in the office. In the offices for things for like, you know, ridiculously low prices and weird art. Stuart Friedell, our former journalist producer, is a huge fan of Prop House Auctions. Of course he is. Megan McDonald, our former producer, took me off to two of the typewriters I have in my house I bought at a Prop House Auctions. Oh, fantastic. I recommend you check these out and so we'll put a link in the show notes to one of them but you can look for them other places too.

57:45Amazing.

57:46John August:Craig, what do you got for us? It's 10 p.m. Yeah. Do you know where your children are? Like, that's how they should have said, like, what the hell is wrong with you? Craig, at what point did you not know where your children were? It didn't mean no points. Well, okay. How old were they when you stopped knowing where they were at 10 p.m.? Oh, you mean like when they were like, okay, I'm going to go out with my friends and I'll be back by midnight? Yeah, yeah. You know, late teens. But also, they have phones. They have phones now, too. They're all on our account, like the cloud account. I can go find my kid on my phone.

58:16Yeah. It's 10 p.m. Anyway, what a world we grew up in. The Lords of Waterdeep. All right, tell me more. Okay, this is my one cool thing. This is a board game. All right, great. That is, I guess, a style of board game that is specifically a German style game. So it's not, it's a little bit, I guess, like Settlers of Catan in that kind of manner, slightly a resource management game. But it is one of those games that is both brilliantly simple and brilliantly clever. So there's not a ton of rules you need to learn, but you realize quickly, every turn I have about six choices and each choice will get me something in one way and hurt me in another way.

59:01Which do I choose? And best of all, it is based on licensed material from Wizards of the Coast. So everything is based on D &D, all of the quests that you have to get, You get quest cards and all the buildings you can build. And the resources are wizards, clerics, fighters, and rogues. Yeah, so that's your wheat, your steel. Exactly. It is so much fun to play. Highly recommend. And if you do want to play it on, there's also an excellent version available on iOS. Oh, great. But I would recommend getting the physical game, playing it around a table. Absolutely.

59:42John August:maybe outdoors after dinner. Perhaps you can play it outdoors after dinner. I love it. Yes. It's 10 p.m. Yeah. It's literally 10 at night. Yeah. You're sitting there and you don't know where your kids are. It's 1979. Yeah. Really, shame was one of the key. Shame. Absolutely. They were literally like, guys, come on. Guys. It's 10 p.m. It's 10 p.m. Like, why are you making us say this? Can you imagine now? Can you imagine? It would have to be like, it's 2.30 in the morning. Have you checked the children? This is just not a thing. Kind of great. It's kind of great old days. That is our show for this week.

1:00:21John August:Scriptcase is produced by Meredith Stedman. I agree. Edited by Matthew Cilelli. Our intern is Lauren Loesberg. Our outro this week is by James McLaren. If you have an outro, you can send us a link at askjohnoggs.com. That's also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You'll find transcripts at johnoggs.com along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. The Script Notes book, which we mentioned today, is out and available wherever you buy books, as is Wolf's Belly. You'll find clips and other helpful video on our YouTube.

1:00:49John August:Just search for Script Notes and give us a follow. You'll find us on Instagram at Script Notes Podcast. Sometimes we put up little videos of the shows that we shoot. You'll find t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware at Cotton Bureau. You'll find the show notes with links to all the things we talked about today in our email. You get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you again to our premium subscribers. Doing God's work. That's good stuff. you make it possible for us to do this each and every week. You can sign up to become one of those. Premium members at scriptness.net. We get all the backup episodes and bonus segments like the one we're about to record on our own personal road trips and vacations.

1:01:23John August:Fantastic. Craig, nice chatting with you. Thank you.

1:01:40in