433 - The One with Greta Gerwig (Encore)
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 26 September 2023
⏱️ 69 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Greta Gerwig (Barbie, Little Women and Lady Bird) discuss adaptation, ambition and authorship. With the screenplay in front of them, they look at specific scenes in Little Women and explore how its non-linear timeline changed how the movie works.
We also answer listener questions on writing for the page and starting a family as an aspiring writer.
In our bonus segment for premium members, Craig shares what it was like winning a Golden Globe for Chernobyl.
Links:
- The Original Episode: 433 – The One with Greta Gerwig
- Follow along with the Little Women script in Weekend Read 2
- Little Women Script
- Greta Gerwig
- Hollywood Assistants Are Fed Up by Rachel Abrams for the New York Times
- Mothers: An Essay on Love and Cruelty by Jacqueline Rose
- New York in Color Jigsaw Puzzle
- Behave by Robert Sapolsky
- 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 Threads, Instagram and Twitter
- John on Mastodon
- Outro by Jemma Moran (send us yours!)
- This episode was originally produced by Megana Rao. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and is edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is John. |
| 0:03.0 | Today's episode is one from the vault. |
| 0:05.0 | Back in episode 433, I sat down with Greta Gerwig to talk about her film Little Women. |
| 0:11.2 | This is one of those only unscripted notes kind of interviews where we go through pages |
| 0:13.8 | of the script and really look at the choices she made during writing, why she made those |
| 0:17.4 | choices, how they manifested on the screen, and even get into sort of the specifics of |
| 0:22.9 | how you hide stuff from the studio in the writing process so you can actually get what you |
| 0:26.4 | need while you're directing, gets really specific and, man, I just love Greta Gerwig. |
| 0:31.2 | You can tell I have a total talent crush on her throughout this interview. |
| 0:34.9 | Greta Gerwig, of course, after this went on to make Barbie, which is one of the biggest |
| 0:37.7 | movies of the summer, we cannot wait to get her back on the show to talk with her about |
| 0:42.0 | that project. |
| 0:43.0 | But in the meantime, listen to this episode because you're really going to get a sense |
| 0:45.6 | of what a talented filmmaker she is and how that talent first manifests on the page. |
| 0:50.8 | So enjoy this episode. |
| 0:51.8 | We should be back next week with a brand new one. |
| 0:54.2 | Thanks. |
| 0:55.7 | Hello, and welcome. |
| 0:58.3 | My name is John August. |
| 0:59.8 | Hello, I'm Greta Gerwig. |
| 1:01.6 | And this is episode 433 of script notes. |
| 1:04.0 | Wow. |
... |
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