89 - Writing effective transitions (Encore)

22:48That's not the point. And frankly, G.I. Joe 2, I'm guessing, is probably in that category. And, you know, how many different ways can you do a sequel based on a cartoon property like that? A toy? I mean, it's not... You could easily see three or four writers coming with very similar stories, and then it's just about the execution tone and all the rest.

23:07John August:Agreed. You and I have both been part of lawsuits where someone has come into suit and say, like, well I wrote this script first and this script then that existed afterwards and clearly it must have influenced we can't prove that you read this script but clearly this must have influenced it because who else could have the idea of doing a script like this and that's the most maddening kind of thing of all it's like who would have the idea of doing a movie about bowling well everyone could have the idea and so my defense in those situations which I've never actually used legally but I think my sort of emotional defense is then if I can show any other script that existed about bowling before your script then you have no case because therefore you must have stolen that idea from somebody before.

23:47John August:Prior art as sort of the defense against those kind of copyrights. But, you know, there are crazy people who are crazy. There's narcissistic people who are narcissistic and self-delusional people. That's always the case. This is not what's going on here. I mean, in truth, we are dealing with two professional writers who had a very privileged relationship with the people that they're suing. Yes. And that is, that has to give everyone cause for concern. It certainly gives me cause for concern. And listen, if these guys have a case and they were infringed upon, I wish them nothing but the best of luck in this, you know?

24:23I feel bad for Red and Paul because, you know, you don't want this hanging over your head as writers. And I just feel like the larger answer for the studios has to be that they just can't get involved in this stuff anymore. If their lawyers knew the way that the producing world in general was behaving, they would lose their minds. Yep.

24:42John August:They would. Yeah, I would agree that I'm sort of on the side of all the writers in this situation. And I'm not rooting for or against anybody. Yeah. I'm more rooting for the case changing something because I feel like this is the kind of lawsuit that you and I have been talking about for years. That someone who has not just some Joe off the street, but someone who actually has a career is going to step up and say, like, this is what happened. and people are going to have to acknowledge the reality behind it. Yep. Cool. Yep. Let's move on and talk about, this was a list that I found today. Actually, I think Stuart actually found this list and passed it on to me.

25:16John August:So thank you, Stuart, for finding it. It's from a blog called Reverse Shot. And it's a list of sort of visual cliches. And, you know, a previous podcast, you and I did this thing called Cut It Out, which is like things we see way too often in scripts or just tropes that need to stop being used in screenplays because there's not, They're clammy. They're just not original anymore. Although, literally, I think people have called out three that I've used recently. Which is fine. So I don't think those count. No, they're not clammy then. Yeah. This was a list of sort of visual equivalents of that. And so it's things that you see that wouldn't necessarily show up in the script, but then you see them in movies.

25:55John August:You're like, you know what? Let's stop doing that because that's just, we've seen that shot way too many times. So I thought we'd take some turns reading through this and discussing some of our favorites. So I looked at the first one on this list, which is moving clouds that are sped up. Yeah, Kiana Scotsy time-lapse. Yeah, exactly. So here's the thing. It's like time-lapse, it's lovely and it's great, but we've seen those moving clouds a lot. And so maybe we could do something else rather than those moving clouds. Yep. Yeah, I mean, sometimes when they're part of something else that's going on, I'm okay with it.

26:24You know, if it's just the clouds in that standard shot, then it is pretty boring. It's pretty boring. Yeah. The next one is we're in a long shot and a guy's really far away and walking toward the camera and you're thinking, oh, I'm going to have to watch him walk the whole way. And it turns out, yeah, you are going to have to watch him walk the whole way. Does that happen?

26:41John August:It does happen. It happens a lot over opening credits where we see somebody walking and walking and the credits are just showing up on the screen. They're like, oh my God, we have to watch this person the entire time. It's kind of an indie vibe sort of thing. It's sort of an indie vibe thing. Sometimes it's a walk and talk where it's literally at the camera stationary and it's a walk and talk towards the camera. And every once in a while, that'll work just great. But man, it just drives me crazy because I start to notice that, wow, we're just going to stay in this shot for forever. It has to be a really fascinating moment for me to want to stay in there and not really notice that we're staying in this moment.

27:14John August:A steady cam can be the same kind of situation. Like if I notice that your steady cam shot has gone on for two minutes, I'm just going to start looking for the cut and I'll stop paying attention to the scene. Unless it's Goodfellas. Unless it's Goodfellas. But Goodfellas, it's just such a good shot that it's amazing, but how often is it really going to be that shot? Are you Martin Scorsese? Yeah, I mean, Joe Wright does a lot too, and I got fatigued by Joe Wright doing it. All right. Third one, an alienated teen or adolescent girl on the passenger side of a car driving down the highway, window rolled down, her hand swaying in the wind as it zips down a road to who knows where.

27:46John August:Yeah. Yeah, we've seen that a lot, folks. I mean, if she has something in her hand that she lets go, that's also a good thing. Top down, feeling youthful. Yeah, we've seen it. This one's pretty great. Overhead shot a protagonist in the rain, arms spread, just letting the downpour come. Yeah, that is really Baroque. Yeah, so Shawshank Redemption is sort of the classic version of that, but in Shawshank Redemption, he just did crawl through a sewer tunnel. So he kind of wants the shower, but we need to stop doing that. Yeah, because people don't do that. People don't really do that. People really don't want to be in the rain overall.

28:26John August:In movies, they seem to kind of love it. But whenever it's raining, I'm kind of like, how fast can they get out of the rain? I mean, maybe you like the rain, but then you don't put your arms out and look up at the sky and go, yay. Yeah, because it's not comfortable. Because rain hitting your eyes is not good. That's weird. That's how turkeys drown. Yeah. Number five. So it's a side angle above boob shower shot of women cleaning themselves after the previous events. So it could be like a terrible date or something awful happened. but that's that sort of frantic scrubbing. Also in the bathroom here, things like we're into the mirror, the shots are into the mirror, people washing their faces and looking up to examine their white face in the mirror with their mouth open.

29:04John August:Yeah, just people looking at themselves in mirrors is happening a little too much in movies overall but that washing and then looking at yourself in the mirror is, that's just a kind of cliche. Yeah, washing and looking at yourself in the mirror, that I do feel like I can make a list of 20 movies that do that. Yeah, that's a good point. uh next one we have is protagonist on mass transit looking pensive everyone else also looking miserable uh and maybe layered with some melancholic electronica yeah the point being is like so you're on mass transit so you don't have a car i guess but like just being miserable on a train is just well yeah people are miserable on train don't you get it man we're all alone together that's what it means yeah we're all alone together and everyone's got their headphones on and it's meant to be a great big point.

29:51John August:Yeah. No, not so much really. I think if you're going to put somebody on a train, we should know the reason why they're on that train. Something should happen that they're on that train because if it's just them going to work, then it's just kind of a stock shot of people going to work. Yeah, they're sad on a train. They're sad on a train. Next up, this would be a Mexican or Sicilian or Indian or Iranian child running through the streets without a care in the world, smiling and laughing, running right by a mother who hardly notices them, so busy she is hanging in laundry. I do see that a lot. It's sort of like the third world, happy children, moms doing laundry.

30:25John August:Tired mom. Tired mom. Happy kids, tired mom. Yeah, I guess that generally speaking, the running, laughing children is annoying to me. You know, like, what is that? Is that a game? The run and laugh game? Yeah. I don't know. What are they doing? They're running and laughing because they can. Maybe they have a stick in their hand and they're running it across the fence. Yeah, exactly. And laughing and, yeah. No, no, no. No, no. No, no. Cut it out. A guy goes to open a safe or a refrigerator or something like that, and boom, all of a sudden we're shooting from inside out that thing looking out at them.

30:57Yeah. That's even cliché for bad commercials. Yeah. You know, the beer ads, you know.

31:05John August:Yeah, it goes back to point of view. It's like, so why are we inside the refrigerator? Is there a really good reason why we're inside the refrigerator? I mean, is there an important story porn happening in the refrigerator or are you just doing it so you can do it? And if you're just doing it so you can do it, that's probably not the best choice. Worst choices would be sort of like shooting up from the sink's point of view or something. Don't do that. Yeah, unmotivated camera work. Yeah. Just why? Next up, epiphanies while jogging. So often it's like the big tracking shot, the gliding tracking shot, then we pull up short while they suddenly have a revelation.

31:41John August:yeah uh you know you can have good ideas while jogging things can happen you can be interrupted from your jogging by something but if you suddenly stop short and like like often like the music will tell you that you had an epiphany like it's like you're responding to the score rather than actually to an event that happened i totally agree there's this very famous moment from good times where uh the dad dies he dies because he uh because john amos wanted too much money i think that was the actor's name, John Amos. So Norman Lear is like, eh, now you're dead. And Esther Roll, I believe, is the woman who played his wife.

32:18And they go through this whole episode where he's dead and the funeral and everything, and she's kind of like keeping it together in this amazing way. And then at the very end, she's alone in her kitchen and she's just cleaning up. And she just takes a dish and then she suddenly smashes it to the ground. She says, damn, damn, damn. And it's awesome. And it's awesome because she didn't need to go jogging. There was no music. It was absolutely quiet. And for sitcoms to be absolutely quiet, it's very eerie. And you suddenly feel like, oh my God, I am watching a reality show because nothing's happening at all.

32:50They're wasting broadcast time watching a woman literally clean for 20 seconds. And there's nothing wrong with that. You don't have to go in the rain or jogging or punch, you know, a punching bag to suddenly realize something important. Damn, damn, damn. You're up. Oh, yeah. Well, damn. I'll just keep doing it. So good. That show is so good. So in documentaries, stock footage of 1950s appliance ads and educational reels for a goofy, eerie conformism effect. That is super duper clammy. You know that? Like, dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-dum. Because, you know, everybody, the whole point is that the 50s were terrible and robotic and nobody was free and everybody was just a cog and a huge machine.

33:40Well, that's not at all true. It was just the style of making those movies in the document.

33:45John August:I also have a hunch that a lot of times the reason why we see them in documentaries is those are free to license. And so it's a simple, easy thing to stick in there. And because we've seen them so much in documentaries, it becomes sort of default, like, oh, we should cut to that. I mean, I think that there's probably stuff from the 60s and 70s you could license as well with like bad like wah-wah-wah. Like, you know, when we were kids, remember those film strips, you know, and they were always like waka-waka with the crazy wah-wah pedal. But I think the point is like ha-ha-ha, stupid 50s people.

34:12And, you know, I'm sorry. They were just in a war. Lay off. Yeah. There's nothing wrong. Oh, I'm sorry. They all worked in a factory and they all look clean.

34:21John August:Ooh, whoop-dee-doo. Terrible thing for that. Related in documentaries is that when you hold on a shot just slightly too long after someone said something ridiculous. Yeah. You get that. It's just like leaving tails on something to sort of make somebody look like an idiot. I know. And you know what? It kind of bumps me out. I happen to love Penn and Teller's bullshit. I don't know if you ever watched that show on Showtime. It's really good. They're so smart. They're so good. And they do such a great job of being skeptics. And certainly I am one of them. But one thing they do that bumps me out is that they're always having people say things or responding or saying a line or responding to a question.

34:56And then they just hold on them pointlessly. to make them look dumb. Yeah. And that in and of itself is bullshit.

35:02John August:Yeah, because really, the reason why there's that silence is because you haven't said the next thing and you're like creating that space for them to look stupid. Right, like there could be somebody talking on the other side of that and they're just listening. But if you take that audio out, then it just looks like they're dummies that say a line and then suddenly turn off like robots running low on battery. No, it's not good. Yeah. This is an obvious cliche, but when people, if something's blowing up behind somebody and they don't look back or acknowledge it blowing up. Damn, damn, damn! Yeah.

35:34John August:I mean, it's been such an acknowledged cliche that to do it now, it sort of has to be sort of, you have to do something special with it because we've just seen it way too much. Being cool while something's blowing up behind you. Yeah. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Old-timey camera flashbulb close-up opening a shot. Often in slow-mo, so you can see the scorching filament and that this is, yeah, with that sound that goes, do you? Chrisley, Chrisley. Yeah. That should stop. Yeah. And actually, that's a perfect opportunity for us to transition to our third topic today, which is about transitions, because that is an example of a transition.

36:12John August:Right. Sort of a hacky transition. Yeah. It's a transition that somebody probably wrote in there. Okay, maybe it was written into the script or maybe it was a thing that was done on set with the anticipation of like, well, this will be a transition to get us into a new moment to a sudden flash of light that will carry us into a new world. So let's talk about transitions, because I think it's an important part of screenwriting that we really haven't touched on so much over our 88 episodes. Well, one thing that we should probably say right off the bat is that there are people out there in the screenwriting advice world who spread this nonsense that writers shouldn't direct on the page.

36:50Don't tell the director what to do. Oh, please. We're not selling screenplays to directors. Directors aren't hiring us to write. We're writing screenplays for people to read so that they can see a movie. And part of our intention when we write screenplays is to show what the movie should look like. The director doesn't have to do what you say on the page. But you know what? I find that they tend to appreciate that you've written with transitions in mind because it's really important to them. And frankly, if you don't write with transitions in mind, some directors aren't going to notice and they're just going to shoot what you wrote.

37:22and then it won't connect. Transitions are a super important part of moving from one scene to the next so you don't feel like you're just dragging your feet through a swamp of story, but rather being propelled forward through it.

37:36John August:So let's clarify some terms. There's two things we mean when we talk about transitions. And one is literally just the all uppercase on the right-hand margin of the page, cut to or transition to or fade to or crossfade to. That is the element of transition. That is a physical thing that exists in the syntax of screenwriting. And we're only kind of half talking about that. That's a way of indicating that you are moving to something new. Most modern screenplays don't use cut-tos after every scene. That's a thing that you were sort of originally taught to do. You can sort of tell first-time screenwriters because they'll always use a cut-to.

38:12John August:Right. In most cases, you won't really use a cut-to. Right. In personal life, I only use cut-to if I have to really show that it's a hard cut from something to another thing. to really show that I'm breaking time and space to go to this next thing. Usually you won't do that. Usually what you'll do is you want a scene to flow into the next scene. And that's really, I think, where we should talk about it today is how do you get that feeling of we're in this scene and now we're moving into the next scene and there's a reason why we left that scene at this moment where we're coming to this scene at this moment.

38:40Yeah, and I've got some, this is a very kind of nuts and bolts craft thing. There are techniques. I mean, I wrote down a few techniques which I'll run through and you tell me what you think. Right. The first and the easiest one is size. A size transition is to go from a very tight shot to a super wide shot or to go from a very wide shot to a super close shot. Sometimes you can even be in a medium shot where two people are talking and then the next thing you see is a close-up of a watch and then we're into a scene where somebody is checking the time. So just using the juxtaposition of size in and of itself helps feel like things are happening and they're connected.

39:17in the dark one.

39:18John August:So let's talk about what that actually looks like on the page, because you're not describing every shot in a movie, obviously. But if you were in a dialogue situation where it was two characters talking, and they've been talking for a while, the assumption is that you are going to get into some fairly close coverage there. So it's just, it's about those two people. Then if your next shot is a giant, you know, described as a giant panorama of something, something, something, that is a big size transition. Similarly, if you were to cut to, like the close-up of the watch or some fine little detailed thing, they would say like, okay, that's a huge size transition.

39:50John August:So even if you're not describing what that shot was like on the outside, we have a sense of relative scales there. You don't have to necessarily even draw our attention to it because we'll notice that something different has happened. It will help your reader see your movie instead of read it. Yeah. I mean, it's just real simple things like that. Another simple one is music or sound. There's nothing wrong with calling out a piece of music. It doesn't have to even be a specific song. You may just say, okay, like, we're looking at two cops and they're in the break room, they're chit-chatting. And then over the sound of hip hop, we are, and now we're South Central LA, you know, rolling down Crenshaw.

40:29Just to kind of help the reader understand there's a connection here. Similarly, you can use sounds. Two people are talking quietly about what needs to happen. And the next thing we hear is a siren. And by the way, you can pre-lap that audio or you can have it just be a hard cut. But something that jolts us in a weird way, the funny thing about transitions is they're almost anti-transitional at times. It's not about... Because the point is you want people to understand I'm in a new place at a new time. And if it all just flows together like mush, it's almost too transitional.

41:07John August:Absolutely. There are times where you want that really smooth with legato sort of flow from one thing to the next thing. And there's times where you want big, giant, abrupt things, like that cliche flashbulb, to tell us we're at a new place in a new time and there's brand new information going to be coming your way. Exactly. There are one cool thing you can do, I wouldn't overdo it, but it's fun here and there, is what I call a misdirect transition. So a guy says, they'll never see us coming or whatever, and he's got a gun and we go to a close-up, bullets going into the gun. Pull back to reveal, interior, it's another character loading a gun.

41:44Exactly. Little tricks, basically.

41:46John August:Yeah, and again, so that's the thing. If you did that, you know, three times in a movie, you'd be gold. And if you did that 10 times in a movie, we would want to strangle you. Probably, unless it was just like everything was so clever and it's kind of like a, I don't know, like a lock, stock, and two smoking barrels kind of move. Yeah, I was going to say, like one of the sort of the Asian action films might do that more often. So yeah, if that's your style, then it's going to work, but otherwise it's going to probably feel too much. A similarly related thing is Archer does these amazing transitions from scene to scene where a character will, they'll pre-lap the character, they'll pull a line of dialogue up above the cut that seems to be about the scene that you're in, but it's actually about a completely different moment that's happening on the other side of the scene.

42:30John August:It's very clever how they do it, and that's a way of misdirecting you sort of comedically from what you thought you were talking about to something completely different. Right, exactly, exactly. And there is a general kind of, I suppose the most conventional transition is the pre-lapped audio. So two people say, well, that didn't go very well. The next shot is a courthouse. And over the courthouse, we see everyone, please come to order. It's the most standard kind of TV-ish thing, but it helps you move at least inside and outside in ways that are not so clunky. another sort of tricky dialogue method is the question and answer transition.

43:07Exactly. Or someone will say, someone someone isn't telling us the truth and the next shot is a woman smiling. You know, and then we you know, it's just like little it doesn't even have to be a dialogue answer in other words but just that the transition itself is giving us information.

43:23John August:That's very much a TV procedural kind of thing. That's the thing you would see in Law and Order where we need to find a witness who can and then like the next shot is going to be the witness who can do that. Or like, this is the question we need to have answered. So you ask the question on one side of the cut and you come to a possible answer on the other side of the cut. Right. Does anyone know where Luke is? Cut. You know, a guy on a boat dropped. In a very general sense, what you're trying to do as you end a scene is you're trying to put the reader's head, the viewer's head, in a place where they have a certain image in their head.

43:56John August:And so when you come to the far side of that cut, that is changed or that it's addressed in some meaningful way. So thematic cuts are another common way of doing this. So classic is sort of Lawrence of Arabia, the match that transitions to the sunset. Right. That is a fire. There's fire on both sides of the cut. So you're thinking fire, and then you see this giant image of a fiery sun. That is a natural transition. So sometimes you'll do that with imagery. Sometimes you'll do that with a word that matches. Sometimes you'll do it with a question that seems to be answered on the far side. Those are natural ways to sort of get people across the bridge there.

44:29Yeah, these, the ones we've gone through here are very rudimentary. And they're generic because we're discussing them in generic terms. Find your own and find ones that are meaningful to you in your story. But really do make sure as you're writing that you're not just bone on bone here. That there's something that helps move us through little tiny things. It makes an enormous difference. It really, really does. And frankly, it puts you in greater control over the movie that will eventually exist. I agree.

44:59John August:Another thing I would stress is that you probably want to save your powder a bit and use those big transitional moments for big transitional moments. So don't paint a big, giant landscape of something if it's not an important moment that we're going to, something new. So don't always give us those big transitions. Some things should be sort of straight, simple cuts where we're just getting from one thing to the next so that when we do the bigger thing, we as the reader will notice, okay, something big and different has changed here. When you're reading through scripts, after a while, well, the first couple of scripts you read, you probably read every word because it's all a new form to you.

45:32John August:But after you've read like 30 scripts, you recognize you stop actually reading the interior, exterior lines, basically. They sort of just skip past you. You could sometimes jump back up them if you're curious, but you're really just sort of looking for the flow of things. And so most times you're just jumping over that. You don't really kind of know or care where you are. So even though we tell people to just be very specific in those things and give us those details, a lot of times people aren't going to read those. They're just going to read the first line of action that happens after the scene header, if you're lucky.

46:02John August:So save those bigger moments for the bigger moments that you really need that reader to stop and slow down and pay attention to, the fact that we are in a new place, a new time. This is a new section of the movie. Well said. Well said. Great. Craig, are you ready for some one cool things? I have two cool things. I have six cool things, so it's going to be... I have 12 cool things. It's going to be an arm's break. So you go first. Okay. Well, one's fast and one's short. Sorry, one is fast and one's a little longer. But they're both sort of linked together by charity and the notion of charity. The first cool thing is that, and I had no idea this was going on, but studios, I read this in the LA Times.

46:39It was forwarded to me by Todd Amorday at the Writers Guild. Studios are donating their old sets to Habitat for Humanity. And Habitat for Humanity, actually, they're not using the sets to build houses because sets are not built for people to live in. But what they do is they sell a lot of the stuff that they get to people who, and then they collect the money and they use that to help build homes for people. And in fact, The Hangover Part 3 sent over a whole big bunch of stuff to them, 10 truckloads of stuff to have that for humanity. And I was, there's an interesting, there's a scene that happens in the movie in a cellar basement and the walls were this kind of cool, faux, brick, rocky wall kind of stuff.

47:23I remember thinking, oh, that looks real. It's actually just foam, right? It's painted foam. It's kind of painted foam. And somebody bought that stuff. They have a test that you received about 60 sheets of faux brick wall used for a wine cellar set in the hangover part three. One customer bought 40 sheets for$25 each using a custom-made spa. Now, I may not want to go to that spa. That might be weird, but I think that's cool. So, well done. Sony, I think, kicked this thing off, but they're all doing it now. that's really, really great. I never really thought, huh, where did all that stuff go? The other thing is a repeat of something that we did, we helped promote last year.

48:00And that's Joe Nienalt, who is a screenwriter, is once again doing the fundraising for the Heart Walk 2013-2014. Last year, they raised almost$45 ,000. And they are looking to do it again. And they're doing their same campaign. And the way it works, listen up people who say, no, no, read my script. No, it's going to read my script. Well, shut it. Here's the story. Daniel Vang is a manager at Bender Spink. They are a real, legitimate production management company, unlike some of the people cited in your average Brooks Barnes article. Is that his name, Brooks Barnes? Oh, yeah. Yeah, Brooks Barnes.

48:39I tried to forget his name. Anyway, they're real producers. They're real managers. Daniel Vang is an actual human being who reads things and is involved in this business. If you donate$25, Daniel will read the first 10 pages of your script. If you donate 50, he will read the first 50 pages. If it's great, he'll keep going. If you donate$100, he will read your entire script. $100 and a guy at Hollywood will read your script. Not a guru, an actual guy. And here's the best part. He doesn't pocket the money. It goes to charity. It goes to the American Heart Association. So we're going to put the link on John's website so you can go there and take advantage of this and stop whining.

49:25Yeah, I'm going to read my script. Save a life. Do something positive for once. Absolutely. The angry man is yelling at you to do something positive.

49:33John August:Do it. Stupid idiot. No, it sounds very good. And so last year, a lot of people did take advantage of that, obviously. And I think it's a great opportunity for people to get their scripts read. Yeah, for sure. Do it. What about you? What's your one cool thing? Couldn't be cooler than saving lives, but okay. So for the last 12 years, 13 years, I've had an assistant. And so I've had a string of assistants who've all gone on to do really, really well. And I got thinking about them over this time that I was in Chicago because like Stuart, poor Stuart, Stuart who edits this show, God bless Stuart, was here sort of alone, sort of keeping the home fires burning and working on his own crafts and projects.

50:10John August:But this summer, it was actually a very eventful summer for many of my former assistants. So I thought I would actually sort of go back through my last six assistants, my only six assistants, and just sort of track their progress. This is an amazing thing. Honestly, it is an amazing thing. So Stuart is my current assistant, and Stuart keeps all this stuff running here. So God bless Stuart. My assistant before him was Matt Byrne. Matt Byrne is working on Scandal now. And when he started working on Scandal, it's like, oh, that shows, yeah, is it going to last? Is it going to work? The ratings were dicey.

50:41John August:Now the ratings are really, really good. It's like one of the top, I think it's the top drama running right now. Matt was just, so he's a staff writer on Scandal. And he was just today in a podcast for Scandal. So I will put a link to the podcast, which Matt talks about his role in Scandal. Nice. It's been fascinating to watch Matt sort of, you know, become a big TV writer, which is fantastic. Chad Creasy and his wife, Derek Creasy, Chad was my assistant before Matt. They are writers on Mistresses, which is a show that airs on ABC this summer. It's very exciting for them. Excellent. Dana Fox, who's a friend of the show.

51:15John August:Dana ran the show Ben and Kate. She's written a gazillion movies. But this last week, she got named Hollywood Reporter's Comedy Class of 2013 for all of her rewriting. And he is a member of the Fempire. She's a member of the Fempire. She's a Femperer. Yes, with Diablo Cody and the other very talented women who write movies and television shows. Ross and Thurber, who was my sister before Dana. The king of them all. King of the Mall. Well, he got engaged, which is what I'm so personally happy for him for. But he also, he has a movie coming out this summer called We're the Millers. Wait a second.

51:49He got engaged just recently? Yeah. No way. I thought, okay. Yeah. So I'm so traditional. I was at his house and I met his, now his fiance. Yeah. I thought, oh, I guess he's married. No. Stupid me. He wasn't even engaged. Yeah.

52:02John August:So we're very happy that he got engaged and we're very happy he has a movie coming out this summer. Great guy. Great guy. Great guy. And so back to my very first assistant who predated Rossum by only like two days, but Sean Smith had a baby. Yay, congratulations, Sean Smith. Sean Smith, who's a television writer who created the TV show Greek, just had a baby. So yay. So he made life. He made life. There's other people who made television shows, but he made life. Now, you've got to be leaving out one assistant who's like, eh, he's in his mom's basement. I've had essentially really no dead assistants.

52:35John August:I've had, the only people who I'm sort of leaving out are people who are like filled in for like a week at a time. But like, those are not the real assistant people. So Stuart, I assume, sits there thinking, soon it will be my time. Soon it will be Stuart's time. Yes. It was tough while I was in Chicago because I didn't have, for the first time, I didn't have an assistant. I didn't have like a full-time person who was my person. So I ended up drafting in some people from the music department. And there's an observer from the director's choreographer's guild who was there who ended up sort of de facto becoming my assistant because there's things that I just needed someone to do.

53:05John August:So Amber Mack, I thank you very much for that. But it was weird sort of just being, you know, solo for a time and like having to like figure out how to get this thing to print. So I'm very grateful to be back with an assistant. Oh, that sounds wonderful. I have assistants. I underutilize them. I tend to do everything myself. Sometimes I forget that there's somebody who can do it. honestly like the last 10 years have been a process of gradually recognizing that certain jobs are better performed by somebody who's not me and so with an assistant and then with ryan nelson who does all the digital stuff for us i was recognizing that people have skills that i'm better at and and when directing a movie i've had to definitely step back and recognize that like i could i have an idea of how to light a scene but i should never be anywhere near a light I shouldn't really edit.

53:58John August:I sort of know how to edit, but I really shouldn't edit. These are things that people are going to be better at than I am. And that's, it's not humbling. It's empowering when you realize that someone else can do that job. And when you're directing also, your personal life needs to be attended to. I mean, you suddenly are like a baby. Yes. Somebody has to put food in your mouth for you. Yeah, someone has to literally bring food and say, eat this food, because otherwise you will not eat that food. Right, exactly. Yeah, it's a good thing. So, listeners, if there's anything we talked about on today's show that you would like to find a link for, well, you can find the links at johnaugust.com slash podcast.

54:33John August:And so all the previous episodes will be there as well. But on this episode, you'll see links to things like the Heart Walk. What was that thing you called? The Heart Walk? Yeah, the Heart Walk. Heart Walk. You'll see things to the podcast that Matt's featured in. You'll see stuff for this lawsuit. And the sketch for between one and two glasses of wine. Exactly. We'll have Stuart find that and put that as well. If you like the show, you can subscribe to us on iTunes. That helps other people find us. You can leave us a comment there. I was looking at comments today. People leave really nice comments for us.

55:02I haven't been back in a long time. I tend to spend my time on the internet just reading the terrible things people say. Some guy, like out of nowhere the other day, some guy sends me a tweet. I just love these people. They're like, you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to send a guy a tweet telling him he's not funny. That'll be fun. That'll be good. Why don't I do that? Let me start a fight. Yeah. That'll make everyone's day better if you say that kind of thing. Oh, well, okay. All right. Fine. I guess I'm not funny, but you didn't make me any funnier. You didn't make me less funny.

55:34John August:Yeah. I'm as you found me. What's wrong with people? I don't know what's wrong with people. What is this story? So, Craig, I would like to propose, and we haven't talked about this, so I'm going to propose it here on the air. I would like to propose for next week, perhaps, that if people have a question that's not about screenwriting, but about their personal life or other advice, they send in that question. Because I feel like we talk a lot about screenwriting here, but we have a lot of listeners who are not screenwriting people, and we have a lot of opinions. We do. And we're so wise. So next week, let's have an episode that's just entirely off topic.

56:08John August:Oh, yeah. Where we just talk about what should, really anything is fair game. And so we will, obviously we'll pick which questions we're actually going to answer. Sex. But I'd like a very wide, I'm going to cast a very wide net here. So anything you would like us to answer, we'll happily try to answer on the podcast next week. Sex. Sex. I'm happy to talk about sex. Yeah. It can be our first like sort of mature rated thing. I'm happy to talk about sex. No, it's great. I think it's a great idea. I, more than anything, because I'm kind of fascinated to see what you, what you think about some of these things.

56:37I'm happy to talk about it. I feel like the two of us are so different, but we're so similar. we just we are really different about a lot of stuff we are but I feel like we always end up in the same place

56:49John August:I think it's largely because I create a very open space where like I allow you to be over on this edge of crazy and I say well it's fine that you're on the press of this crazy here's the other side of what that might be I get it I get it you're just humoring me that's cool too I think it's going to be a great show I think it should be a good fun show so we want to encourage people to send in any question you want to ask about anything so you would send those questions to ask at john august.com you can also tweet us if it's something short but i just said it's a longer thing and we'll read it on the air dude you're not funny yeah that's always a good be funnier be funnier okay okay all right twitter that's gonna be good i'm gonna get on that last thing so if you want to see me tomorrow night at the academy there should there should still be tickets left i don't know i'll be recording this on a friday so who knows but they tell us that even if it is sold out they always have a line and almost people who are in line almost always get in.

57:41John August:So if you want to come see us tomorrow at 730, me tomorrow at 730 at the Academy, you can come to that and you can mark your calendars for, God, I forget the dates, June 29th and July 28th for our live podcasts. Look, the sirens are coming. The sirens are coming to tell us it's over. This is the end of the episode. This is it. Keep them. Thanks for a good podcast and I'll see you next week. Thanks, John. Bye.

58:10I'll be the future of the Old Prum retrograde fromруca-re CHANNEL That is beautiful.

58:37IGOR