Scriptnotes, Episode 678: The On-Set Producer, Transcript

The original post for this episode can be found here.

John August: Hey, this is John. A standard warning for people who are in the car with their kids, there’s some swearing in this episode.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

Craig Mazin: Biddy, biddy, biddy, my name is Craig Mazin.

John: This is episode 678 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Today on the show, how does a series maintain its look and feel when directors change each week? We’ll talk about one solution, which is the on-set producer responsible for upholding a showrunner’s vision on set. We’ll also talk about TV development and answer listener questions on pitching, shipping an app, and writing by hand, plus the scourge of directors’ chairs. What can be done about these implements of torture?

In our bonus segment for premium members, let’s talk about officiating weddings, because me and Craig and our guests have all been officiants officially at weddings. We’ve married people. We’ll talk about the process of marrying people.

Craig: We marry people and we’ve married people.

John: We have, yes. Both as a transitive and as an intransitive verb.

Craig: No. They’re both transitive.

John: They’re both transitive, but different.

Craig: Just different verb meanings.

John: Yes. We’ll dig deep into the verb meanings behind–

Craig: Welcome to nerd corner. Do you know what I did when I introduced my– do you recognize that sound?

John: No. Tell me.

Craig: Biddy, biddy, biddy.

John: I don’t know what it is.

Craig: Do you have any idea? That is from the Buck Rogers television show way back [crosstalk]

John: Oh my God. Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and I remember it. [crosstalk]

Craig: The little robot. Biddy, biddy, biddy.

John: So good.

Craig: Was it? [laughs]

John: Well, I enjoyed it, but I also kind of enjoyed Gil

Gerard. I think that may have been why I was watching the show.

Craig: Erin Moran.

John: Erin Moran.

Craig: There we go.

John: Everyone has a thing to–

Craig: Everyone’s got–

John: What’s the robot?

Craig: By the way, early network executives were like, “I don’t care what happens in space. I want a guy that everyone who likes guys would like. I want a girl that everyone who likes girls would like. Put them in the spacesuits. Go.”

John: Go.

Craig: They were right.

John: They were absolutely correct.

Craig: Nailed it.

John: Our guest this week is a guy that all guys will like and that all girls will like. Helping us figure all this out is Dan Etheridge.

Craig: That’s so much pressure.

Dan Etheridge: Wow.

John: He is a producer whose credits include Veronica Mars, iZombie, High Potential, The Carrie Diaries, and Cupid. He co-created Party Down and on the feature side, he produced seven movies, more than seven?

Dan: Yes, I think that sounds right.

Craig: For a moment there I thought you meant Seven the movie and I was like, “What?”

Dan: It’s pretty incredible.

Craig: What a weird outlier in that resume.

Dan: You’re welcome.

John: There’s a bunch of movies including my film, The Nines.

Dan: That’s right.

John: Dan Etheridge, welcome to the show.

Dan: Thank you. Thank you. Nice to be here.

John: Dan Etheridge, in addition to being an incredible producer, you are also one of my dearest friends on earth. It’s so great to finally have you on the podcast.

Dan: Back at you.

John: All right.

Dan: What’s it been, like 30 years as of this year?

John: That we’ve been friends?

Dan: Yes.

John: I guess our friendiversary is probably coming up pretty soon, because it would have been– What year did we meet? That would have been– I’m going to call it in ’95.

Dan: ’94. ’95.

John: ’95. Yes. Right in there. Great.

Dan: Right in there. That’s the time. Then what year was God?

John: God the short was 1998.

Dan: Okay.

John: Yes. Shortly after.

Dan: A few years later. Right on.

John: God, a short film with Melissa McCarthy.

Craig: Yes. The great Melissa McCarthy.

John: So good. So much fun. We have actual news. In addition to everything else, my company makes the app Highland for the Macintosh. Today we are coming out with the new version, Highland Pro, which is a new app from the ground up. It is made for the Mac, of course, but also iPhone and iPad. Today, as you’re listening to this episode, it is available in all of the app stores. On the podcast, we talk about Nima, the helpful elf. This is a work done by Nima and Dustin, if you’ve heard of the show. It’s mostly what they work on, but also Drew, Chris. Drew is just cutting a video for the launch of it.

Drew: I thought you were giving me credit for making this app, and that was not true.

John: No. Drew uses the app regularly.

Drew: All the time.

Craig: That’s almost the same thing as making it.

John: Yes. Drew and I have been using the app for the last two years. We’ve gotten to see all the beta development things. It’s so nice to actually have the rest of the world be able to use it.

My goal with this new version of Highland Pro is to get rid of all the stuff that can distract you in the world as you’re writing. A couple of examples is we have a new thing called the shelf. Sometimes when you are writing something, you need to cut a scene and then you will just cut it and paste it into an extra document, sort of a scratch file. Craig, I see you nodding. It’s a thing you do.

Craig: I do that.

John: You do that.

Craig: I do that.

John: Then it’s work and you’re breaking your flow from doing it. In Highland Pro, you just grab it, you drag it to the side, to the shelf, and it just stays there.

Craig: Yes, that’s a really smart idea.

John: It’s always there. Nice.

Craig: It stays within the file.

John: Yes. Craig, you probably leave notes for yourself in a script to go back and do some stuff. Do you boldface them?

Craig: Rarely, I do an all caps, boldface, fix this, or make this go better.

John: In Highland, you can just put double brackets around things to make a note or just put an equal sign in front of it as a note. It’ll always stand out. It’ll always show up in the navigator on the side for like, oh, these are the things, the work list you leave for yourself on stuff.

Craig: I wish I used a navigator on the side. It’s there. I never look at it. I just scroll like an idiot.

John: You don’t need to. You can just do this. The coolest new thing that we introduced in this version of Highland is what we call lookup. So often when I’m writing something, I’ll need to switch to Safari to find something. It could be a rhyme for something, it could be, what year was Madison president? It could be some small little thing. I’ll find myself just getting sucked into a hole because I switched over to the browser because I left my typing environment to do it. Now in Highland, you just type slash and then whatever you’re looking for. If it’s a rhyme for green, if it’s a distance from Denver to Houston, it gives you the answer right there in the documents.

Craig: Does it connect up with Google or something?

John: It does. For things like rhymes and for dictionary, for definitions, it’s using an outside service, an API that’s called WordNet something. Those answers are blazingly fast. If it’s something it doesn’t know how to do, it reaches out to one of the services, reaches out first to our server and then to one of those services, and gives you an answer as quickly as it can. It’s basically Googling it. I just want to give you the shortest possible answer.

Craig: You don’t have to leave.

John: You don’t have to leave.

Craig: You’re forcing me to write more. Stop it.

John: I’m hopefully making your writing process smoother and more enjoyable.

Craig: I don’t know about you, but I love the distractions.

John: You love the distractions sometimes.

Craig: Yes. I can’t wait for Final Draft to steal all of your ideas, John.

John: It’s going to happen here soon. What question– Drew has it open here. What question do you want Drew to ask? Let’s pretend you’re writing something. It’s something you need to know.

Craig: Got it. When was the first locomotive in operation in the United States?

John: He’s typing.

Craig: I hear him.

Drew: It says the first locomotive introduced in the United States was the Tom Thumb, which was built in 1829.

Craig: Oh [crosstalk]

John: Wow. Did you know that already? Was that–

Craig: New. Nor do I know if that’s true.

John: Yes, absolutely.

Craig: Seems made up.

Drew: Tom Thumb.

Craig: Tom Thumb. Sus.

John: What I tend to use it for is, I don’t need the absolute verifiable fact. What I need is, what is that? What am I thinking of? Sort of the reverse. There’s a word I’m thinking of that starts with an L that means this thing. It’s so good for that.

Craig: Confirmation.

John: Yes. The kind of stuff that could stop you for 2 minutes and just break that pattern. Just getting you out of there really quickly. Also, you don’t have to go open a menu. You don’t have to do anything. You just type slash and then what you want, it’s there, and it goes away.

Craig: Great.

John: Highland is out today. It’s on the Mac App Store, the iPhone App Store, the iPad App Store. You can try it there.

Dan: I think that my blurb, I believe it was from Bronson Watermarker or either Weekend Read, probably Weekend Read.

John: Probably Weekend Read, yes.

Dan: “Staggeringly useful,” and that applies very much here as well. Very nice.

Do you remember that you asked me to write something up? I happily did because I really did love the app and I’m not really a writer, but I wrote up like a three, four sentence paragraph that I really spent some real time on. It had the phrase staggeringly useful in it when the blurb appeared, “staggeringly useful”. I appreciated your editing, ever the great writer/producer.

John: You’ve got to be concise. You’ve got to be short.

Craig: It’s a blurb. [crosstalk] It’s a blurb.

John: Blurb. I overdid it. It was my fault.

Craig: You over-blurbed. Very common mistake.

John: Yes, I know. I do it all the time. Let’s do some follow-up. What do you got for us?

Drew: Yes. In the last episode, Craig, you said that there is no way around Google AI summaries.

Craig: Yes. Not at least other than what I’d read was forcing Google to only return answers prior to a year.

Drew: Right. Tom, listener Tom wrote in that you can get around Google’s AI results by including profanity in your search, and it works.

Craig: Yeah. Weird work around. So if I just want to search something, I just got to throw an F-bomb at the end of it?

Drew: Yes, or get creative. Put it in the middle.

Craig: When was the first fucking locomotive invented in the– oh, warning, language warning.

John: Yes. Sorry.

Craig: Okay. Interesting. Also, weird choice by Google to just be like, “Oh, yes. Oh, we can’t let the AI hear those dirty words.”

John: Absolutely.

Craig: That’s interesting.

John: I bet that will work for about the next two weeks and then–

Craig: I switched my search engine to a start page.

John: Oh, very nice. I’m using DuckDuckGo. Dan shaking his head.

Dan: Google.

John: He’s Google. I’ve heard of Google.

Craig: Start pages seem nice. Work great.

John: Good.

Craig: No stupid AI results.

John: We have some follow-up from episode 536.

Drew: Tony in LA writes, “In episode 536, you read my story that my best friend and writing partner had unexpectedly died. Thank you both for your sympathy and advice. It was very much appreciated. You asked me to provide an update after a year. I obviously missed that deadline by quite a bit, but in all honesty, I didn’t have much to update after a year. Writing solo continued to be a struggle. It didn’t matter if I was working on a short or a feature, editing something old or creating something new. I found myself constantly second-guessing my ideas. I felt rudderless. I missed my friend. I missed his voice, his opinions, his humor. I no longer felt joy when writing.

I was still able to keep busy creatively, however, editing a micro-budget feature that he and I had shot before he died. That film is now finished and out on the festival circuit. I’m sad that he’ll never get to see it, but I think he’ll be proud of the work that we did. Since his death, I also started playing D&D.

Craig: Nice.

Drew: We have a weekly Saturday night game. I knew none of these people before, but we’ve become an incredible group of friends. I’ve gotten very close with one in particular, and she and I have started writing together. I wasn’t looking for a new partner, but it just organically grew out of other creative work we were doing together, and writing with her is, dare I say, easy, and I feel joy again. The strangest thing, I can now hear my friend’s voice much clearer in my head.”

Craig: Well, Jeez Louise.

John: No, I’m so happy that it pulled out a happy ending there.

Craig: That has everything. That story’s got it all.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: It’s got D&D.

John: It’s got loss. It’s got a love connection, but it’s a creative love connection.

Craig: A creative love connection, which is great. His email here reminded me a lot of the lyrics from I Miss the Music from the musical Curtains, in which someone has a songwriting partner who dies. He talks about, I miss the music. I miss my friend. I miss the wisdom and somebody to tell me I’m not doing it well enough, but then makes it better. It’s nice that he found– Some people should be working in a partnership.

John: Yes.

Craig: There are partner people and he’s a partner person. I’m glad he found a new one.

John: All right. Let’s get to our marquee topic today, which is the role of the on-set producer. All this actually stemmed out of a gripe I had about directors’ chairs that I vented to Dan and Craig both about, but then I realized like, “Oh, I’ve actually never talked about what Dan does on TV series productions,” which I think is incredible.

Can you describe the function you’ve fulfilled on the last couple of TV shows that you’ve been doing and what your job is, which is different from what Craig is doing as a showrunner. It’s different from what a line producer does. Tell us about what you’re doing on these shows.

Dan: I feel like you all already know this intuitively. I’m speaking to folks out there in the million foot view. There are two pillars of it. One, the creative. You’re there to help effect the showrunner’s vision for the show. Particularly, not just in the short-term, but the medium or long-term.

Then there’s the production pillar. In the on-set producer version of this, which is what I tend to do, you be on set every day. Ideally, you’re bringing a wealth of set experience to that job. What you are doing is every day accruing the experience of that set and the nuances and intricacies of that particular set.

Then I perhaps unglamorously, what I describe the job as, is a transaxle between those two pillars, because as we know, those are intricately linked, but it’s not always possible for the showrunner to be the person who links them or the writer/producer, if you have a strong one, or if you have a junior writer/producer on set that you are helping to educate on how to produce a show.

When I do it, and I think when a lot of folks do on-set producer, is that’s what they’re doing. They’re there every day so that the cast and crew and folks who are there every day know that there is one person that they can always come to who, if they don’t know the answer, knows how to get the answer.

Craig: Exactly.

Dan: Similarly, with the showrunner, ideally, you have a relationship with them and they know that you have their creative back. All of this, I should say, is, in television particularly, you are supporting the episodic director.

Obviously, there’s no infringing on the DGA prerogatives of the episodic director, but ideally, you’re supporting them in their mission and keeping an eye on the longer-term goals of the season of the series. Again, you all, I think, already know that, but the great thing is that every show operates as it wants to operate.

Many shows will not need an on-set producer. For instance, if the showrunner values being on-set every day and is able to construct the shows so that they can be, obviously, that would mutate or even negate the need for an on-set producer. Again, if you have a strong writer/producer there for their episode, as you should, but then there’s a lot of shows where the showrunner either doesn’t want to be on-set or can’t, or where there’s a junior writer/producer episode who needs to learn how to produce and needs a colleague and a partner in that. That’s when an on-set producer could be valuable.

Craig: Yes. There are times, I have a producing partner who’s usually on-set, but I’m also there, I’m an everyday showrunner. I call myself an activist showrunner. There are times where something happens where neither one of us know how to fix it. We do need a producee-producer. I call them producee-producers. Okay, so we’re supposed to be here. The problem is the people that are supposed to be not doing construction across the street are. Locations is on it, but when are we going to find out and who, talk to whom, and what are the actual– so you have to dial back to the mothership and a lot of texting goes on. Having somebody there to producee-produce, yes, I can see, especially if there’s not a showrunner there. I don’t know how you would not. I don’t know how a show would function without you.

John: Dan, so many of the shows I’m thinking about that you have been the person on-set because the writing was happening in Los Angeles and you were in Vancouver, you were in New York City, you were someplace different than where that was. You were functioning as the will of the showrunner, making sure that things were actually happening the way that Rob Thomas, in many cases, really wanted things to happen.

Dan: Yes, geography has certainly helped the career of the on-set producer by necessity. There have been a few shows in Los Angeles. For instance, and I don’t think Rob would mind me saying this, Rob finds great value in writing and being in the writer’s room and post. That is where he likes to spend his time. He and I know each other so well and have worked together for so long that he understands that I have a pretty good shot at knowing what he was looking for out of a scene or to answer a question. There’s value in that relationship.

You and I have been on set together throughout the years and I understand, I believe, the John August aesthetic and I believe in it and I’m excited to effect it. I did land this job once by just interviewing and it worked out great. Amy Harris, who’s a terrific showrunner and I love working for her, but you don’t usually do that. I think it’s someone that you’ve come to develop a trust with.

Craig: Yes. Wow. Because I’m not– I guess I’m a much more scared person. I don’t want to say paranoid or less trusting, but on the one hand, when you said, okay, there for the writing and then there in post, I went, “Oh, that sounds like a dream.” Then immediately, my adrenal glands fired.

John: That’s Damon Lindelof on Lost. Damon Lindelof was never in Hawaii.

Craig: Right. I think that’s most people. It’s just like, I immediately go, “Oh my God.”

John: That’s how people are built.

Craig: It’s how people are built, exactly.

John: Let’s walk through the process because as I understand it, you get involved, on a classic show, as the room is figuring stuff out, you get a sense of what the season is going to be like and helping the showrunner figure out what are the sets we’re going to need? Where are the issues? Then it transitions into production and you have a much stronger role there. Talk us through from pre-production into production and what your day might look like while you’re working in production.

Dan: Just to tee that up, to each showrunner his own or her own, in the case of Rob, who I’ve done many shows with, I will tend to be in the writer’s room. That is an exercise in listening, for the most part, and exercises in learning and listening, seeing how they’re developing the aesthetic of the show so that I can best help to affect it when we get there.

Obviously, one hopes that you have a great line producer-producer on the show. If you do, they’re also going to be absorbing that aesthetic. As pre-production starts, obviously they’re beginning to do the mechanical work. I will start to help out. If you have a producer-director, they might be doing this, but we often just go with an on-set producer and I’ll be doing it, so you’ll be starting again.

It’s that transaxle quality. You start to help to oversee sets, make sure they’re being developed in the right way, not just on the brutal level of construction, where you’re going to put the camera ports, but does it live up to what I’ve been hearing in the writer’s room?

John: And not just for the episode, the first episode [unintelligible 00:17:14] but where it’s going down the road.

Craig: Exactly.

Dan: Which is something that you can provide, not just to go back to sets again, but if you have a new set in the middle of the season, the episodic director obviously will have a lot invested in that set because it’s their episode, but you know what it needs to do five episodes down the line. That’s the value you can bring ultimately.

I do think, to answer your question, day by day, once we start shooting, I’m on set every day. I might step away for the tone meeting, which we can talk about what that is, or maybe you all touched on that before.

Craig: I think we’ve probably talked about tone meetings.

John: We’ve talked about it, but let’s recap the tone meeting. The tone meeting is the discussion where the director for that episode gets up to speed with what the showrunner and what the creative team wants to do for this episode, and gets the conversation that happens here. It feels like your function is to really know what that is and be able to remind the director of, this is what the goal is of this scene, of this episode.

Dan: You have done many tone meetings. Showrunners will do tone meetings in different ways. I always think of it as a conversation between the showrunner and the director that I get to eavesdrop on. Sometimes other folks will be invited to eavesdrop as well the first day, depending on how the showrunner wants to have that done. But I think it’s invaluable for me to be there for exactly that reason.

It’s really a support thing. The director is taking all this in, but they’re taking in a lot. When they’re on set, sometimes they turn to you for the support of, is this in keeping with the flow of the show? It’s good to be able to be there for them when they need that.

John: That’s great. You’re on set from basically call to wrap to make sure that everything is working okay. Who are your conversations with? Obviously the director is an important conversation. It’s making sure the director feels supported, but also understands what the goal is-

Dan: Exactly.

John: -of certain scenes. You also have ongoing relationships with the talent because you are the person who sees them every day, whereas directors will drop in and drop out.

Dan: That’s right.

John: Talk to us about that.

Dan: First of all, and again, I’m not just saying this as lip service. I have absolute respect to the prerogatives of the episodic director and speaking to the actors. I would never speak to the actors in terms of directing the actors. That is verboten and wouldn’t do it. It’s not good for the show, even if it wasn’t a policy. They need to hear from one creative voice.

But there are questions that they will have about things that are going on during the series. Look, different actors have different idiosyncrasies, different strengths and weaknesses, different fears and turn off. Over time, as you get to know them, you can help address them, assuage them to mitigate them so that then the director and the actor can do their best work on set.

John: Absolutely. Because you have all the intel on the actor and know what the actor needs and how things tend to work, you can have the private conversation with the director to get them up to speed. These are things to be thinking about with this. Here’s how you might want to organize your work.

Dan: That’s right.

John: Let’s talk about, you know what the season is supposed to be. You have some sense of where things are going, but a lot of the series you’ve been working on, they’re still writing episodes as things are going along. To what degree is there a feedback mechanism from you to this is what’s happening here in production and this is what you’re doing there? How helpful are you in terms of being able to communicate back to the writing room and the writing process and to the showrunner, these are the issues we’re running into and let’s be thinking about that as you’re putting together stuff?

Dan: Not to sound like a broken record, but it is showrunner dependent and the relationship you have with the showrunner. Obviously with someone like Rob, we talk all the time, and just by nature, it comes up, how are things working, how are things doing? I’ve worked with other showrunners who are terrific, but they don’t need that kind of support and also they can get that feedback a little bit from the line producer if it’s a little more mechanical. You are there to offer it and should be there ready to offer it, but it’s not always a part of the job description to be honest.

John: You’re tending to address the problems that are coming up in the day’s work, that is, to make sure that you get the best episode shot as was written.

Dan: Yes.

John: If it’s helpful to communicate back, great, but that’s not your main function.

Dan: Yes, and there are bigger picture just in terms of, like you said, in tone and certain things, you want the consistency that you want to help bring to it. Otherwise, you hope, and often the showrunner has got the vision for the season and you’re just trying to help execute it.

John: Now, the other people who are obviously stakeholders in this are the studio and the network who may have opinions too. Hopefully they’re communicating–

Dan: Oh, they do.

[laughter]

John: They’re obviously communicating opinions to the showrunner, but I can imagine they could also be showing up on your sets.

Dan: Yes, that is true.

John: That is true.

Dan: That is true.

John: Talk to us about how to manage that, because I think even as, hopefully our listeners are writers and they’re on set, but they’re also going to encounter suits who are going to show up and want to do things. What are some things you’ve found to be helpful? What are some things to really avoid when it comes to you have visitors on set who are decision makers?

Dan: I am not saying this to be politic, though I probably would be politic as one, but my more recent experiences, I’ve actually had some pretty capable and lovely executives come down the set. That doesn’t mean that everybody gives a great note every time somebody gives a note, but it does mean that there is a collegial respect for you. You do need to take in what they are saying, and you do need to try to see if that fits within what you’re doing, or in certain cases, to figure out a way to do it, because sometimes they’re just your bosses flat out. I know this is different for different showrunners and-

Craig: Different networks.

Dan: -different power hierarchies, but I would say, generally speaking, if you’re in my job, your job is not to put up any sort of fight or a wall, but to try to form a relationship with them where you can understand the heart of notes that they’re offering and giving, and if you do feel like there needs to be some pushback, you can either hopefully have that dialogue with them, or get the showrunner down there to do it, if it’s going to be something that you know to be invasive, again, where your relationship comes to bear, because you then have to sense, is this something where if we do this, it’s going to really hurt the show in a way they’re not going to like?

Craig: I could see a scenario where an executive who isn’t getting anywhere with the showrunner might try and backdoor something in with you.

Dan: I would like to think that I can balance those, but look, I’ll be honest, when certain folks are on set, the studio is the boss of the show, and if they have certain things they want to see done, I would never do anything without roping in the showrunner if I felt like it was pushing against it, because then you would never do that.

Craig: They are paying for it?

Dan: Yes, but you do need to consider what they are saying-

Craig: Always. Yes.

Dan: -and at the very least, bump it up if it needs to be.

John: A couple years ago, Craig and I did an episode where we sat down with a bunch of development executives and talked to them about, here’s how we are hearing the notes that you’re giving us. It was really a session for development executives to really learn about what it’s like to get notes as a writer.

I wonder if you could do a short version of this for if you are an executive who’s visiting a set, what are some best practices, what are some things to think about as you’re arriving on that set to help the process and not throw giant wrenches in there? Are there some best practices?

Dan: Here I want to– and I will stress this again, not to be politic, this is something that happened 15 years ago. This is not anybody I worked with recently, but with a junior executive on set, I think eager to make their voice known, offered some notes about blocking that were not sensical. They simply did not speak to–

Craig: They were bad.

Dan: Thank you.

Craig: They were dumb.

Dan: I over-blurbed. I over-blurbed.

John: They were bad.

Dan: It really was opaque how to grapple with that because it simply was, they didn’t understand how editing might accomplish what they– and were going to cost us an hour. In that moment, one does have to make a snap decision to not do a note, which is a very difficult decision to make.

I guess I would say long-windedly, is that for the folks who don’t yet understand set, there is not a need to give notes to pretend like you do understand set. Happily, over the last couple of shows I’ve worked on, we’ve had executives who are very experienced on set, so they’re not worried about that and they’re not trying to give notes on things that they know, “Oh, we can deal with that in a different way.”

John: Craig, what advice would you have for, not your HBO execs, but just things you’ve noticed as people come to set?

Craig: I want the HBO folks to come more to set. They’re so, in a wonderful way, hands-off, but then sometimes I’m like, “Don’t you want to come?”

John: Your first season in Calgary, nobody wanted to come to Calgary.

Craig: Calgary is awesome. I’m a big Calgary fan, but no, in the middle of COVID, nobody wanted to get on a plane, sorry, WestJet specifically, and go to Calgary.

My advice would be to at least have a basic understanding of the protocol of the set, and to ask questions rather than make statements. If you do think, “Hey, you know what, this scene might be better if that guy walked over to the ladder instead of not,” it’s probably better to pull someone aside and say, “I have a question. It’s probably dumb, I’m probably wrong. Would it be better if that person did this?”

Because as a question, you might get, “If we weren’t shooting this other angle in about an hour, you’d be absolutely right, but we are, because here’s a plan.” I will walk onto my set in the morning, someone else is directing, I will see the blocking, and I’ll be like, “I feel like we’re missing a thing.” Then I’ll check with the director, and they’re like, “Oh, no, no, totally. It’s just that we’re going to do this after because of–” blah, blah, blah. I’m like, “Great, I didn’t know.” Better to ask as a question.

Just enjoy it, and then leave because it’s boring if you don’t have something to do. When I say something, I mean really, minute to minute, if you are not occupied with a task on set, it turns into a very boring experience.

Dan: It’s such a great point in life generally, but don’t pretend that you know. Ask, and sometimes, in fact, they’ll say, “Yes, we’re planning on doing it,” or sometimes it can lay bare something that you’re missing.

Craig: Absolutely. You know what, that’s a great question. “Hey, Jane, come over here.” It’s a great question. “Why aren’t we doing it that way?” “Oh, yes, well, maybe we should. Absolutely.” There’s a humility to it, which is nice.

John: Yes, the most frustrating kinds of notes I’ve seen on sets from development executives are clearly, oh, this is a casting issue. We are now four days into shooting with this person, and you don’t like the person. It’s like, I don’t know what to tell you. We’ve almost shot out this actor. This is what we have, and so this is not an addressable concern in this moment. I don’t know what to tell you. What can be useful is, really, again, if the executive is asking a question, or stating the concern, like, “I’m worried we’re missing the point of the scene.” There’s probably a more gentle way to say that, but like, “I’m worried that I’m watching this, and I’m not actually getting out of this what I’m supposed to get out of it.”

That’s valid. We might take a moment to actually consider, “Okay, is there something here that we’re missing because we got so caught up in the choreography of the scene that we’re actually missing the point of something?” That’s where a set of fresh eyes could be really helpful.

Craig: Yes, there is something that happens early on in a television series, and we’re talking about the pilot, the first three episodes, where everybody has a panicked feeling that if they don’t get their point of view in the door now, then forever hold your peace, because everything is cemented into place, which then means, as the people who are making something, you start getting panicked by all these people telling you to do stuff that you’re not really sure you’re able to do. You can get a note that says, “Hey, could the lead character, she’s playing an elderly mom. We don’t think she’s funny enough.” You’re like, “Funny.” I’m like–

If you go, “What? It’s too late. We cast her, we’re making it, we wrote it, and we’re shooting.” Then people are going to feel shut out and shut down, particularly in that beginning part. You’ve got to go take deep breaths, take it all in, and then come back and say, “Here’s the thing. We’ve got to go work with what– we’ve got to go dance with the date we brought. We can nudge her, and we’re going to nudge. We’ll get her there. She’s finding her legs under her, but it’s going to be a little awkward, but we’re working on it.” That’s often enough for people to at least feel heard.

Dan: Having that dialogue, being able to have a nuanced dialogue, that’s when I think we know you’re working with a great executive, is when you can have a really nuanced dialogue like that, and they don’t immediately grab the most melodramatic version of, that’s going to be horrible, or that’s going to be great, but we’re working through this problem, and here’s how, and they can hear that.

John: Back in the day when we shot pilots, if something didn’t work, we could re-shoot them.

Craig: It was almost like we’re the dog that caught the car. Everybody hated, “I’m waiting on pins and needles to see if my pilot got picked up, and they’re going to shoot 20 pilots, and green light 6, and the rest of us are all–” Then they were like, “All right, what if we just green light stuff?” We’re like, “Great. Oh, no.”

[laughter]

Craig: Oh no. What do– It’s a horse of a different color.

Dan: Brave new world.

John: Brave new world. A thing that a visiting executive will get to sit in is a director’s chair on set, and so I want to have a little sidebar about directors’ chairs.

This came up because last week I shot two different EPK things, and shooting an electronic press kit, I was seated in a director’s chair, and for, I don’t know, about an hour for each of them, and my legs fell asleep, because directors’ chairs are terrible.

Let’s make sure we’re all talking about the same thing. A director’s chair is a folding chair that has a canvas seat and a canvas back. It is taller than a camp chair. It’s like about 2 feet higher up, so that if you’re sitting in it, you’re at standing height to people, which I think is by design. Your legs fall asleep, they kill your back. Dan, you specifically had an issue with directors’ chairs.

Dan: First I do want to say, I held this in my pocket till now, but also on lookup: The history of the director’s chair.

John: Oh, what did it say?

Dan: Now, there’s a word I don’t know how to pronounce, but it is C-U-R-U-L-E. It is the Roman, it’s that Ottoman style chair.

Craig: C-U-R-U-L-E?

Dan: Yes. I believe that is the–

Craig: A curule.

John: A curule.

Dan: Let’s go with that.

Craig: Curule.

Dan: You can see why it was scary for me-

Craig: It’s a tough one.

Dan: -so I avoided it. I believe I got the spelling of that correct.

Drew: You got it correct.

Dan: That’s where the magistrate would sit. It was a seat of power.

Drew: Absolutely.

Dan: I think there was actually a company also on look up. It was like 1868, that date’s wrong, but it’s close. A company that started manufacturing the director’s chair and it still exists to this day. I think it parked it as sort of a hierarchical chair position hearkening back to the curule.

Craig: The curule. They also managed to make the noisiest possible chair ever for a position that needs to be absolutely silent. I have talked about this a number– We use the director chairs, and by the way, they’re director’s chair and everybody sits in one.

Dan: Oh, yes.

Craig: All the producers sit in them and the cinematographer and the key grip, everybody is sitting in those chairs.

John: Basically at Video Village, it’s a bunch of those chairs gathered together looking at the monitor.

Craig: There are multiple Video Villages because there’s your producer tent, your director tent, your cinematography tent. We use the aluminum frame ones that aren’t the classic wooden X style, but more of a– They’re quieter and they’re better.

Dan: Do you do the lower ones? There’s medium ones and–

Craig: I’m just used to the up one.

Dan: You want the position of power.

Craig: I think it might be a medium one because I don’t feel like I’m a kid at a table. The wooden ones, the footrest is also foldy. After, I don’t know, 4 minutes of use of a new director’s chair, that footrest just starts–

John: Swingin’.

Craig: It just doesn’t catch the little peg anymore. I’ve talked about this with prop guys because the props department handles the chairs. No one knows why. No one.

Dan: No one.

Craig: No one knows.

Dan: They resent it.

Craig: Yes. They totally, they’re like, “So our job is to make all these creative objects for this show and keep track of continuity and make sure that the guns are safe. Also we lug in your chair.” This is, we’re shooting on the side of a mountain and they’re lugging chairs up. Of course, from their point of view, they’re like, whatever it is, it’s got to go be foldable and it’s got to go be light.

Dan: May I rope in another, this is a tangential issue, and it’s an issue of Video Village, but that’s sort of my workspace and it’s other people’s workspaces as well. Here’s a gripe that I have about set that will never be fixed, is that there’s this Venn diagram overlap of the people responsible for assembling Village, obviously the camera and the DP do this, props does the chairs, then you’ve got sound that’s got–

Craig: Location does the tent.

Dan: Exactly. If you do not have a show–

Craig: They’re all yelling at each other.

Dan: If you’re not a show where, let’s say that, fortunately, I work with DPs who very much value getting Village set up. If you don’t have a DP who values that, then suddenly trying to coordinate those departments when they actually have other things to do, very difficult, very angering.

Craig: One of the things that happens during the day when you’re shooting, usually when you’re shooting on location, is they have to move Video Village.

Dan: All the time.

Craig: Because you’re turning the camera around and pointing towards all that other stuff. Sometimes the AD is like, yes, we’re going to have to move actually all those trucks, that Condor, those two tents. They have to do this fast because on set, time is money. The chairs at that point, it’s good that they’re light, I guess. You can see the prop people are like, “We’re also trying to get the props ready for the scene. Then we have to move chairs. It’s insane.”

Dan: Then if you have visitors, let’s say you’re in the desert, you’ll have a tent, you’ll have the air conditioning unit, and you’ll have everything set up because they need to be– I can rough it. I can rough it.

Craig: You need a luxury tent for your executive.

Dan: Exactly.

Craig: It’s only fair.

Dan: I do have a solution to offer for directors’ chairs.

Craig: Please.

John: This is a podcast about not just whining about things, but actually fixing– Doing things about it.

Craig: Yes, we like to fix things. What’s the solution?

Dan: After I stupidly sat in those chairs in around 2014, had three years of miserable back pain and two surgeons said, you’re going to have to have surgery. Instead, because I did not want to do that, I just had the grips make me a board, a hardboard, the shape of the chair. Then I got a little cushion on Amazon and I put that board down and do the cushion and I have not had to have those surgeries and it has cured it.

Craig: It’s that curve in the seat that just collapses everything.

John: If you think about it, your buttocks, everything is being wedged into the wrong shape.

Craig: There’s no support. It’s like–

John: There’s no support. There’s no lumbar support either.

Dan: I would say it’s antagonistic to the notion of support.

Craig: It’s undermining you, literally.

Dan: Yes. That’s right.

Craig: It is undermining you by giving you–

John: It’s a terrible hammock for your [crosstalk]

Craig: It’s a hammock. It’s a butt hammock.

John: Yes.

Craig: No, it is– You know what? Yes, they’ve got to fix this because I spend a lot of time on that thing. I’m not getting younger. My back, I got problems.

John: Craig, I’m saying season three, you’re going to stop blocking pages. You’re going to stop doing colored revisions.

Craig: That’s out.

John: You’re going to end up like, find a better seat situation.

Dan: Make pals with construction, get that board. It’s done.

Craig: Are you kidding me? My construction team and I-

John: Are like that.

Craig: -me and Dino, we are tight.

Dan: Then you’re in.

John: In my head, it should be pretty simple because the canvas seat just slides in. There’s little dowels that slide into the edges. It feels like you should be able to make a hard thing that slides in that place

Craig: Yes. The props people will not want to be responsible for it.

Dan: Unless you have befriended them and then if you’ve got a good relationship, they’ll take that board.

Craig: Here’s what I worry about. This is a showrunner thing. It’s different. What I worry about is, if I say, “Hey guys, I’ve come up with this. The guy recommended this. It’s great. Now this is part of our routine is putting this wedge in the chair.” They’re going to go, “Got it.” Because I’m the showrunner. Then they’ll walk away like, “You dick.” Now we’ve got to lug this around for little Lord Fauntleroy’s butt. I worry about that all the time.

Dan: In a show I did called iZombie, fantastic crew up in Vancouver. It was a five year show. I was up there for quite a bit.

Craig: We probably have a lot of overlapping crew, I suspect.

Dan: Yes. Great folks up there to a person. Over time, when they knew that I was having back problems, the board for the chair, then there actually came a sturdier chair made out of wood and with the board. Then the gaffer started to rig an electric cord on the side-

Craig: Oh, nice.

Dan: -and then they gave me lamps. By the time it was done, it was like working the con in a Star Trek episode.

Craig: It’s so funny that you mentioned the– if there’s one spot on a set where more departments intersect, I think it’s the tent. You can’t have light without the electricians. You can’t have tent without locations. You can’t have the monitors without the video playback person. You can’t have the chairs without the prop folks. You can’t have the food without the caterers. Every single thing. Oh, and then the lighting, you’re like, okay, the electricians put a light in, it’s glaring.

Dan: Yes, it’s awful.

Craig: Here come the grips to put a little duvetyne or a little crinkle paper around it. Everyone works on the tent.

Dan: Yes, they sure do. It worried me considerably that this overdone chair on iZombie, was I– did I have a– I was assured that [crosstalk]

Craig: Well, that’s the thing, they always assure you, and then they walk away. [crosstalk] They walk away like, “Can you believe this? This guy.”

Dan: Son of a bitch.

John: Is there any bigger solution to this? Because when you just described, okay, the whole tent situation is crazy because of the split of departments.

Craig: Of course there is. The solution is money. Here’s the problem. I don’t know who owns those chairs. I don’t know if the props people actually own the chairs. That may-

John: Be a rental.

Craig: -then be part of it. Often they do. What happens is, and this is very similar to a key grip. Key grips obviously earn that job by experience and time, but also they’re renting stuff to you. They are a grip equipment company that comes with a guy that understands how to do the job of the grip.

If the props folks, part of their money is renting you the chairs, they don’t want to spend their own money to get new chairs and then turn around and go, “Hey, by the way, our chairs cost five times as much as everybody else. I can get my money back on these,” because no one’s going to pay that to them.

Dan: On lower budget shows, I’ve had the props people say, “These are the chairs I got.”

Craig: Exactly.

Dan: There’s been some higher budget shows where the props people said, “Well, I’ll just buy some new chairs and the show will buy some new chairs and there’ll be mine.”

Craig: I feel like we qualify. We do. We have the nice, the aluminum frame ones. They are definitely nicer. I can’t remember the name. The manufacturers right now are screaming, “Say our name.” I just can’t remember it. It still could be because it’s still a butt hammock. It could be better. Some sort of space age polymer, a nice titanium.

John: Carbon fiber.

Craig: It’s expensive.

John: I will say, you and I had kids 20 years ago, baby stuff now is so much lighter because of carbon fiber.

Craig: Oh my God.

John: The car seats weigh nothing.

Craig: The lugging.

John: The lugging.

Craig: The lugging. Also, we were in that horrible middle spot because now they got carbon fiber, which is great. When we were kids, they just had crap. The strollers that you and I were in was like two sticks and a diaper.

John: Yes. It’s a wheelbarrow for a child.

Craig: We were in that middle zone of like, here’s just an apartment full of plastic to ensconce your kid and roll down the street and press 20 levers to fold-

John: Absolutely. Super heavy, everything.

Craig: -to get your finger caught in it, and they were heavy. Woe is us.

John: Woe is us.

Dan: That’s why I didn’t have kids.

John: Well done.

Craig: Well done. Isn’t that horrible? Our kids, if our kids listen to this, so our youngest, well, you’re only my youngest, they’ve been wanting to do the daughter version of our show, together just an episode. If they hear this, you’re like, “That’s why I didn’t have kids” and the two of us instantly, “Well done. You’ve solved the answer to how to live a good life.”

Dan: Hey, look, when I die alone, just remember that.

Craig: I think you can pay for somebody.

John: That’s true.

Craig: What about all those people making you these chairs?

John: That’s right, definitely.

Craig: That’s when you get the props guy in.

John: That’s when we find out if the assurances were real. Yes. All right, let’s do some more questions. We have one here from Adam.

Drew: Adam writes, I work in post-production as a picture editor. I’ve been kicking around the idea of a post-production software tool for a few years and finally got a working demo or prototype developed this year. After the initial excitement of getting a demo in hand had passed, my first thought was, “Shit, I don’t have any idea what I’m doing next.” My second thought was, “John did something like this. That seems so great. Wonder what he did.”

When you were getting Highland off the ground, I’d imagined there’s plenty you did, didn’t do, or wish you had known that informed and shaped how you pitched, developed, and finally launched the product. I would love any insights, pitfalls, considerations, or tips you’d be willing to share.

John: We’ve talked about this on the podcast a bunch. We’ve had people who have come in with production software, or production scheduling software, or other things like that, and trying to knock off entrenched, bad systems that are there. It’s tough because they’re the entrenched systems for a reason.

Even people who recognize the way we’re doing stuff is dumb, but there’s inertia to it. Adam, it’s great that you’ve got this prototype. You need to get it in front of as many people who actually do the job as possible, and get their feedback, see what it is that would stop them from switching to this right now, and incorporate that as quickly as possible. For Highland, it was really easy because I was just using it every day. I was dogfooding it every day, so I could see what was there, what I wanted to be there. I’d get friends to use it, and we could iterate really quickly for that.

The most important thing for you right now is just to make sure that other people are trying it, using it, and getting their feedback, and incorporating it as quickly as possible. It’s probably not enough of a market that you could have a Discord or any sort of message board or forum for it, but just reaching out personally to get people to try it is how you’re going to make it the next best thing. You’re not going to find a big publisher for it. You don’t need a big publisher for it.

Craig: Don’t need one.

John: No.

Craig: This reminds me a little bit of Evercast which didn’t exist, and then now it’s essential. I feel like winning over post-production supervisors is the key because editors if they like it, will be like, “Great.” Then post-production supervisors who have to pay for it are like, “What if it breaks?”

John: Yes, and figuring out what your-

Craig: That’s my impression of them.

John: -figuring out what your business model is for it, because Highland was a consumer app that could be just a thing you buy on an app store. This would not be. This would be something you’d be really selling as a service. There’s a tool called Scripto, which is designed for multicam shows, for late-night writing shows. There, they’re charging the show versus charging the individual user. Maybe that makes sense for it. As much as you’re figuring out the technical aspects of figuring out your app, you really need to figure out what is the model for the app? What is the business model for the app?

Craig: I bet if he just called up the folks at Evercast, because they’ve specifically done this three, four years ago. Evercast is the remote editing platform and it didn’t exist. Then about five years ago, it suddenly did. Now it’s–

John: They got it.

Craig: Yes. Right on time. Right on time. We use it all the time anyway, because we have people all around. They would probably be able to, because it’s such a specific thing, this industry-specific post-production tool. Who do I get it in front of? How do I commit some– Those guys may be willing to sort of tell their tale?

John: Yes. The fact that he was already working in post-production as a pitch writer, he knows what some of the other systems are out there. Get a sense of what is it that you like about them? What they hate about them? What other companies are doing the right stuff?

It’s possible that if your tool is really solving a need, that one of the other companies might be able to recognize it and take in your product. You don’t have to be the entrepreneur behind everything, which is honestly what sucks about doing Highland. I’ve gone through 10 years where I wish I had a marketing person, so I finally hired a marketing person. It’s just all the drudgery of running a business you get when you start making software. Next up.

Drew: Mike writes, after hearing you talk about how you like to break the back of a script, writing scenes out in longhand before working on the computer, I got into writing first drafts of scenes longhand, and I love it. Alas, I don’t have an assistant to transcribe them, so retyping them is a long process. However, there’s tablets like the Remarkable 2 that allow you to transfer handwriting into text. Do you guys know any screenwriters who write longhand on tablets, and do tablets convert the text well into screenplays?

John: I don’t know anybody who’s using it for writing that kind of stuff. The only time I’ve seen a Remarkable tablet in person was I had a meeting over at Amazon, and the executive there, she was writing on a Remarkable tablet, and they are really cool looking. It’s like e-ink, and it just feels really thin and nice, but also you can write on an iPad, and you can try it. I’ve never liked writing on screens.

Craig: I don’t write with my hands at all. I just type. I guess that is with my hands, but I don’t. Yes, if I have to make letters with a pencil or a pen, it’s like, what am I doing?

John: I don’t handwrite scenes that much anymore, but I will say that when I was doing that for my assistant to type up, I would write a little bit more cleanly, a little bit more neatly, and so that when the faxes went through, it could work. I do suspect fax machines, so I go down to the hotel lobby and say, “Hey, could you fax these 16 pages through to Rawson?”

Craig: Can I get into your business center?

John: Yes, absolutely. I know it’s late. I still need to fax something through.

I’ve been to bed and breakfasts and had to use their fax machine to send stuff through, but I’m thinking back to the pretty nice handwriting I did on those things. I have to feel there’s probably really good OCR now for handwriting that could get you pretty close. Mike, it doesn’t have to be perfect. It’s going to spit it out. It’ll be a little bit jumbly, but at least it gets you partway there.

Craig: Yes, and I think GoodNotes has a thing where you can train it. You write a bunch of stuff, and then you type it, and it compares and starts to figure it out.

John: It just feels like as good as AI stuff has gotten for this is a good use of AI is to read your chicken scratch and enter it into.

Craig: This is good. This is acceptable AI.

John: Yes.

Craig: A-A-I.

John: Yes.

Craig: That’s A-A-I.

John: A-A-I. Acceptable AI. Last one here from Tim.

Drew: I have a pitch meeting scheduled with a major production company. Initially, they were drawn in by one of my scripts, praising the writing but finding the film’s tone too dark for their brand. However, they invited me to a pitch meeting to hear my other ideas, particularly for TV shows. I prepared six TV show concepts, each with strong premises that my manager has approved but I’ve never formally pitched before.

Beyond confidence and enthusiasm, any specific tips? Should I present each premise individually and gauge their reactions? Should I talk more generally about them while they peruse log lines to themselves? Or have a full-on show, Bible, and deck for each of them? I want them to be hooked but not bogged down by overdoing it either.

John: I’ve pitched some TV. You’ve obviously pitched some TV. Dan, you’ve developed a bunch of stuff with Rob. What kinds of things can you think about for Tim here in terms of going into pitch stuff? Let’s go back to Party Down, for example.

Dan: Sure.

John: Party Down is a show you co-created. What was the pitch for it? What was written before you went in to talk to stars about the show?

Dan: We’ve tended to have fully thought out and pitches down to the quip and that sort of thing. However, I do think all of that seemed to me, and you would know better than I, under the category of read the room when you’re in the pitch.

Craig: Yes, and I think there are certain things that you can pre-read any room. I can’t imagine any pitch meeting where they would be like, “Well, we didn’t like your first five ideas but we can’t wait to hear the sixth.” If you come in, you’re like, “Listen, I have six ideas but I’m not going to kill you with that. There are two that I really love. See if you respond. If not, I can always shoot an email with the other ones and see if they grab you. These are the two that I really love. I’ll just give you real fast five minutes on each.”

A lot of writers forget, you need to make space for them to talk and they have to then ask their questions and turn it into a conversation rather than, I’m here to sell you on this new nonstick cookware.

Dan: Right. You have to improvise in there. You have to come in with a plan but improvise, which is not profound but that’s nice.

Craig: Plan, improvise.

John: Yes. Generally, if they’re setting up this pitch meeting, it’d be great if you knew going in, from your manager’s job is to do this, to get a sense of what thing they’re actually looking for. You don’t come in there with this rom-com but they’re not doing a romantic comedy series. If you get a sense of what space they’re interested in, then you’re going in there and pitching them, having a conversation about one or two ideas that fit this. In that initial conversation, as you’re feeling them out, you can ask, what things are you looking for? What’s appealing to you?

Get a sense of what their taste is and then decide, this is the first thing I’m going to, this is the second thing and be ready to telescope the pitch. You give them the very short idea of this is a thing set in this world, blah, blah, blah. Is there interest?

Craig: Yes. I’ll go deeper.

John: Great. Let me talk you through what happens in the pilot and where it’s going.

Craig: That’s exactly what happened in my first television pitch, which was Chernobyl where I was like, “I think I got five minutes to figure out how to not have this guy be like, ‘Get out of here with this.’” I’m leaning forward. I’m like, “Let me give you a little bit more on that. Just a touch.” Then it’s like, you’re a crack salesman.

Here’s a little, here’s a little, now you’re a Chernobyl addict. Isn’t that a weird torture analogy?

Dan: You said telescoping, and the converse is also true. If you feel the eyes starting to glaze, then you can get out and get to the next one, get out and get to the next one.

Craig: Pull the ripcord and go.

John: It’s helpful when you’re there in person because you can read the body language and read the room. Unfortunately, so many of these are on Zoom. I will say that the instinct on Zoom is to keep talking as you’re trying to keep the ball up in the air. What can be helpful is once you establish what it is you’re looking for, if you have a deck you can show that shows like the three images of the thing, that can be really useful. Some of the series that I’ve been able to find homes for, I was able to show images that let people feel like, this is what it feels like inside the show, which is just really helpful because it gives them something to look at.

Craig: Yes, without you walking in with like these big posters, which makes you look like a dork.

John: Absolutely.

Craig: Another thing is to check in with them to make sure that, any questions?

Dan: Yes.

Craig: Just so I don’t monologue and steamroll you on a Zoom.

John: Absolutely. I think I’ll often say is that as I’m sharing a screen to show images, you are going to get really small in my screen. Speak up if you need anything, because I won’t be able to see you if you’re waving your hand on things. That tends to work. It tends to be helpful. Good luck, Tim.

All right, it’s time for our one cool things. Dan, what’s your one cool things to share with us?

Dan: I almost switched this morning when we got the news of Gene Hackman and wanted to proselytize about Night Moves, which is one of my favorite movies. There’s some B-side 70s Hackman films, like Crime Cut and Scarecrow, great. Yes, there’s that. I don’t know if I just cheated because I mentioned that, but really what I want to take a risk because I’m not a gamer at all, but every 10 years, some puzzle game comes out. I did Zork in the ‘80s.

Craig: Yes, classic Invocom.

Dan: Fool’s Errand, I think.

Craig: Oh yes, I remember about that. Cliff Johnson.

Dan: Yes. It’s been a while, but last year, Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. It’s basically a puzzle game. It’s got a little bit of Zork in it, but it’s an art house puzzle game. It’s got a vibe to it that is a little bit German expressionist cinema, maybe Lynchian fever dream. It’s an exquisite puzzle game and it’s geared for the cinephile. I just, as a non-gamer or one who touches base every decade, that is the real deal. I just heard your Puzzle Box podcast. I need to recommend this to you.

Craig: I love stuff like this.

John: Craig is obsessed with puzzle games.

Craig: This’ll go right on the Steam Deck, it looks like.

John: Fantastic. Craig, what do you got for us?

Craig: I also have a game. I was talking last week about a game that I have not played in, I think, possibly 40 years.

John: Jesus.

Craig: I still think about it and I want to try and see if I can get another round of it going because I loved it so much. That game is Diplomacy.

John: Yes, so I love Diplomacy too, but I value our friendship too much.

Craig: That’s the thing. It’s important to know who you can and cannot play Diplomacy with. For those of you who are not familiar with the game, it’s a little bit like Risk, except there’s no dice. There’s no chance involved at all. There’s nothing random about it. It’s a World War I style map of Europe and you control territories and your job is to try and take over Europe. The only way you can do that is by creating alliances with other players to gang up on other players. Then, of course, the question is, when will you or your ally turn on each other? Are they even your ally at all?

The beautiful part of this game is the movement phase takes about 10 minutes. Then in between, there’s an hour of sidebars, whispers, winks, lying, not lying, mind changing. It is so awesome. It takes eight hours. Yes, it’s totally worth it.

John: I have so much PTSD from my one time playing Diplomacy with friends and some strangers. I was in high school and I hated it. I could never trust anyone ever again.

Craig: It’s a little bit like Mafia, except Mafia is fun and it ends within an hour or so because people are dying. You can see what’s happening after once you die. This is getting hurt or hurting all day long. The movement round, everybody finally writes their moves on the little secret slips and you’re hoping to God that the person who told you they’re going to do what they’re going to do isn’t screwing you over. The slips are collected and then they open up together. That’s when you find out just how boned you are or how–

John: Yes, I feel like with the rise of Survivor and the reality competition shows and Traitors, we get some of that on our screens all the time, but I’ve never wanted to do it.

Dan: It seems like there’s a purity to this.

Craig: It’s so pure because it’s basically like you got an army and you’re trying to go there, but you need somebody to support you from an adjacent territory. Will they or won’t they? What do they want from you? Then the person you’re attacking is like, I know, this makes sense, but think about this two turns from now.

John: Yes, absolutely. It’s always like promises, like I promise I won’t attack you for the next three turns or something.

Craig: Exactly, which you can’t, nobody can promise anything in the game, but it is so pure because there’s no chance. It is all strategy.

Drew: Are you doing it all around a table or can you be like, “Oh, I’m going to go get some dessert in the other room.”

Craig: Oh no, you got to split up. You got to go find corners in the house and then you come back and someone’s waiting and they’re like, “My turn, I need to talk to you.” Then you just sit there waiting, like please don’t fold. Please don’t fold. Come on.

Dan: I got to go get this right away.

Craig: It’s awesome. The rules are not complicated.

John: Oh no. They’re really not. They’re not, it’s just all the social aspect of it, the social psychological.

Craig: You need to be on firm ground with the people with whom you’re playing.

John: Or complete strangers who don’t care that you’ll never see again.

Craig: Even they might pull a knife on you. It is brutal.

John: While you’re decompressing from the stressful game of Diplomacy, let me recommend Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars by Daniel Wallace. Daniel Wallace is the guy who wrote Big Fish. He’s a phenomenal author. I really love this new book.

It’s flash fiction, so they’re very short stories, almost sketches, but refined and distilled like poems are distilled. Flipping through it, it’s like, you read the first three or four pages of a great novel and you’re like, “Oh, I want to read more,” and then it’s gone. It’s just like, no, enjoy the moment that you had in the little scene that you were in.

It comes out in May, but you should pre-order it wherever you pre-order your books. If you have the power to get galleys, which I think a lot of people listening to this show who work on the Hollywood connect with galleys of things, get the galleys for this, because it’s really good and you’ll enjoy it, and it’s quick, and you can read it in an hour or two and get the whole thing done. Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars by Daniel Wallace.

That is our show for this week. It is produced, as always, by Drew Marquardt, edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our episode this week is by Richard Barrett. I just love that after 672 episodes, we still have folks doing completely new things.

Craig: It’s incredible.

John: Yes, a sound that we’ve never had before on the show.

Craig: Who would have thought?

John: Yes. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at JohnAugust.com. That’s also the place where you can send questions like the ones we answered today. You’ll find the transcripts at JohnAugust.com, along with a sign-up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing.

We have t-shirts and hoodies and drinkware. You’ll find there’s a cotton bureau. You’ll find the show notes with the links for all the things we talked about today in the email you get each week as a premium subscriber. Thank you to everybody who clicked through the link and moved to annual subscription to save themselves money, because people were overpaying us, and they shouldn’t.

Craig: We hate that.

John: We hate that. We hate that. You can sign up to become a premium member at Scriptnotes.net, where you get all those back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on, officiating weddings. Reminder to download Highland. It’s free. Get that on the app stores.

Dan Etheridge, thank you for coming on the show. It’s so good to talk to you with a microphone.

Dan: Yes, it was great to be here. Thanks. Thanks so much, guys. Appreciate it.

[Bonus Segment]

John: All right, so as we set up in the intro, you can marry a person, which means that you’re bound together with them for life, or you can marry a person, which you are getting that person married to another person. They’re just different forms of the verb to marry.

Craig: God bless our weird language and the poor people who have to learn it.

Dan: How many weddings have you officiated?

John: I’ve only officiated one.

John: I think I’ve only done one. I’ve done one.

Dan: Boom.

Craig: Whoa, five.

John: Five. Including my wedding. Dan was our officiator.

Craig: Did you catch a gay wedding boom when it was legalized?

Dan: Most of them, I think you’re my only gay wedding.

Craig: You’re just getting–

Dan: Just got my credentials from the universalchurch.org.

Craig: Same. Oh my God, you’re also?

Dan: That’s right, yes.

Craig: We’re all practitioners at the universal precepts of that church, which are to pay $10 to officiate a wedding.

John: I go to services every Sunday, I don’t know about you guys.

Craig: There’s a place to go? Oh no.

Dan: Unlike California, I did a wedding in, I think it was Oregon. It was a different state. They actually did require you to file your credentials and to sign different things that they had to do. I think California is very, very loose.

Craig: I did one in Ohio and I had to file a certificate, yes.

John: We just had to send through our marriage certificate for some form or something that we had to do. I was able to pull the thing and see your little signature there on the day.

Dan: It was a great wedding. I’m not complimenting myself. It was a great wedding.

Craig: Crushed it.

Dan: By the way, I don’t think– You can cut this out if you want to. Sometimes folks, they want you to take everything off their plate and construct the wedding. Sometimes people want to know what’s going to be said. John, I really appreciated this. John handed me a word for word script for what was going to be said.

Craig: That is so John August.

Dan: I think I delivered it like it was mine.

John: Oh, 100%. You owned it. Craig: That’s right.

John: Dan’s also an actor. We should have stressed that you’re an actor first and foremost.

Dan: Previous life.

Craig: Yes.

Dan: Previous life.

John: Let’s talk about best practices for being the officiant. Like you, I’ve seen situations where the officiant was clearly following a plan given by the couple being married. Other times where like, they were just doing their own thing and the couple had no stake in this. I tried to hit a middle ground with the one wedding I did, which was during the pandemic. I was there in person, but everybody else was on Zoom. I sat down with the couple and really talked about what things do you want in what I’m going to say?

Craig: What do you not want?

John: Exactly. How do we emphasize this?

Craig: What you’re getting at is, your job as the officiant of a wedding is to get the hell out of the way of the people that matter. No one is there to see you. The good news is the expectations are zero, which means you actually can kill. Meaning you can get laughs, people can really be impressed by what you do. They can be moved, they can cry because their expectation is nothing but get out of the way and make sure you don’t because a problem. Make sure that you do touch on the things that they want to be touched on. Keep it short and get the hell out of there.

John: Now, Drew, you are the most recently married. I thought your officiant did a really nice job.

Drew: She was great.

John: Talk to us about the conversation you had with her.

Drew: I remember she was a justice of the peace who knew what she was doing. I remember us giving her our initial outline for it. She was like, “You’re missing five minutes. This isn’t going to be enough for people,” which I was surprised by. I was expecting-

Craig: There’s no such thing as a too short wedding.

Drew: That’s how I felt.

John: I can’t be fast enough.

Drew: I agree.

Craig: 10 seconds, best wedding ever.

Drew: Her argument was that like, if people come there and show up and are dressed up, that they’re expecting a little bit more of a full ceremony as opposed to, and we just wanted to–

Craig: They just want the food. Just get to the food. Drew: Agreed, yes. It’s the party.

Craig: Nobody wants to sit there.

Dan: We had a nascent stage party down idea that never made it to camera. One of the actors abused the officiant role to test out a monologue.

Craig: That’s awesome. With the note cards like, no. Anyway. Won’t be including that one on the road. For our premium members, I guess you could tell the story of the part of the episode that was inspired in part by our wedding. Do you remember this?

Dan: Oh, yes. The gay wedding episode, the season finale of season one. That’s right.

John: Absolutely, Adonis Catering?

Dan: Yes, Adonis. We did, a rival catering company came in to cater that particular wedding, and it was Adonis Catering filled with just the most beautiful men of all time. I did have a template for that.

Craig: That should be a thing.

John: Yes, it was a thing.

Craig: Oh, it was a thing.

John: We did not intentionally hire them because of their beauty, but we were always like, “Oh, these are all models.”

Craig: It just worked out.

John: They’re all incredibly attractive people who are our waiters.

Craig: That is a thing in LA. When you go to parties and behind the bar and the people passing hors d’oeuvres around, many of them are here in town to be actors or models, and they’re working these jobs at night because they get the auditions in the day, they do these jobs at night. You can feel like an absolute troll. I’m asking, “Can I have a drink?” Oh my God. This is weird. I’m sorry.

Dan: I think there was, I think, I might be misremembering, I think there was a character prototype at your wedding of the person in charge of it all. Kristen Bell came in and played that very officious–

Craig: That’s good casting. That’s always good casting. It’s Kristen Bell. Yes, you’re just the greatest.

John: Pretty much the one when you decide on Kristen Bell.

Craig: The greatest.

John: Some bad officiating I’ve seen at weddings includes anything about Webster’s Defines.

Craig: Oh, god.

John: Or quotes.

Craig: Mawage.

John: Mawage, yes.

Craig: That, oh, you.

John: Yes, one of the worst weddings I’ve ever been to was just a series of quotes about love being read by a person who had no idea who the couple was. It went on for 20 minutes.

Craig: No.

Dan: That’s the corollary to, because I agree with everything you said about brevity. You’re also there because you ideally know them. Make it personal in the brief time that you have.

Craig: It’s actually rife with potential disaster. You want to make sure that both sides of the family are acknowledged, even though they might not like each other. There may be exes in the crowd. You don’t want to talk about, oh, after a lifetime of struggle, they found each other. Then people sit and they’re like, “Wahh? We- Come on…” We thought we were still friends. There’s just so many ways to go wrong. Then jokes. If you’re not funny, don’t. Do not because the problem with being not funny isn’t that people won’t laugh because the joke isn’t great. The problem is you won’t know what will upset people. That’s the problem that unfunny people have. You will upset grandma because she’s going to be there.

Dan: You make a good point about vetting. I do try to give them a look at the script or what have you, because of all, you don’t know there might be some minefields in there.

Craig: No question.

Dan: Or you forgot to mention so-and-so because it’s politics.

Craig: No question.

John: I’m a strong believer in the couple themselves exchanging vows and saying things and not being silent witnesses to it. I think you both said things during your vows.

Drew: We did, but we went basic. Like, do you? I do.

Craig: Do you take this person to be your lawfully wedded–

Drew: I feel like they’ve just been, those have– we’ve iterated them enough that they’re perfect. They’re just simple. We don’t need to say, we don’t need to write our own vows to each other.

Craig: That’s what we did because I don’t want anyone to hear what I have to say to my wife at all. That’s private.

Dan: I think this is the reason I’m not married yet because I don’t want to have to say anything overly private in front of a bunch of people.

Craig: You don’t have to.

Dan: I don’t want to.

Craig: You can just do the Nicene Creed or whatever the term is for that. Ridiculous, it’s not that.

John: The counterpoint I’ll make is Megan McDonnell, our previous script producer, her wedding, it came time for the bride and groom to speak. Megan did a great job. Her groom, her now husband, knocked it out of the park. It was definitely, the thing was, everyone for the rest of the night was like–

Craig: Low expectations. No one expects the guy to be good at that. Everyone expects the girl to be just naturally expressive and emotional and she’s going to tear up at the right moment, and you’re going to tear up because, they have access to their emotions and this guy’s just going to be dirt to dirt. When I met you were good and I thought we were good. Then he, yes. See, as the guy, you come in and dunk.

Drew: My favorite is when people go, “You look so beautiful today,” looking down at their paper.

Craig: You mean last week when you wrote that?

Drew: When you wrote that.

Craig: Or possibly last night when you wrote this in a fever sweat?

Dan: I made a rookie mistake I just thought of in my second one, which is, I do think I can land a joke, but this one I didn’t land and it was right out of the gate. Hot out of the gate. I did a look down to pick up the names of the bride and groom, whom obviously I’ve known for decades and I don’t need to look and get their names. Assuming that that would elicit a little bit of a warm chuckle as people understood that. I soon realized, no, most of the people in the wedding don’t know me. They think that I don’t know the bride.

Craig: They literally don’t get it.

Dan: The crickets there was like, this is going to be rough and I got to hold a climb out of home right away.

Craig: You know what? That’s where you do appreciate the studio executives showing up and being like, “I do have a note.” I know you’re going to say the audience isn’t this dumb, but.

John: Takeaways from this. Officiants should not overshadow the couple getting married. We like short, we think short is great.

Craig: Short’s great.

John: It’s an important part of the night. Obviously, you want it to go really well, but it’s actually a pretty small part of the night. People are there to celebrate you together.

Craig: If someone’s aunt comes up to you in the middle of the party and says, “I thought what you said was so funny and so sweet,” you’ve done a great job. Then that’s that. Two minutes, two minutes.

Dan: Yes.

Craig: Two. You go past two minutes, you’re in so much trouble.

Dan: Be sure to end it with the line by the authority vested in me by the great state of California and the universallifechurch.org.

Craig: Exactly. I pronounce you, .org.

Dan: Get the last joke right in there.

Craig: Then you have to say copyrightuniversalchurch.life.org.

Dan: Yes.

John: All right. Lessons for everybody. Thank you, Dan.

Craig: Thank you.

Dan: That was fun.

Links:

• Highland Pro | Download on the App Store
• Dan Etheridge on IMDb
• Buck Rodgers’ robot sidekick
• [The Tom Thumb locomotive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Thumb_(locomotive)
• Statpage and DuckDuckGo
• I Miss the Music from Curtains
• Curule
• Evercast
• Scripto
• Night Moves, Prime Cut, and Scarecrow
• Lorelei and the Laser Eyes on Steam
• Diplomacy
• Beneath the Moon and Long Dead Stars by Daniel Wallace
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
• Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
• Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on BlueSky, Threads, and Instagram
• Outro by Richard Barrett (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.The post Scriptnotes, Episode 678: The On-Set Producer, Transcript first appeared on John August.