625 - Back in the FYC
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2024
⏱️ 64 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Craig take a look at the many For Your Consideration scripts suddenly available to read to see what lessons can be learned from movies that were actually made. They find best practices for establishing setting, using “we see” and “we hear,” complicated setups, directing on the page, and how to get right into your story.
We also look at the possible sale of Paramount, the International Phonetic Alphabet and setting 2024 goals, before answering listener questions on UK credits and our writing routines.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig chew on a difficult question — would we eat lab-grown human meat?
Links:
- The Vultures Are Circling: Who Will Walk Away With Paramount? by Alex Weprin for The Hollywood Reporter
- The Holdovers by David Hemingson
- All of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh
- May December by Samy Burch, story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik
- Saltburn by Emerald Fennell
- Killers of the Flower Moon by Eric Roth & Martin Scorsese
- Barbie by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
- Across the Spider-Verse by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller & Dave Callaham
- Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan
- American Fiction by Cord Jefferson
- Weekend Read 2
- Gartic Phone
- Dungeons & Dragons – Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
- 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 Zach Lo (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.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, this is John. Heads up that today's episode has just a little bit of swearing in it. |
| 0:04.0 | Hello and welcome. My name is John August. |
| 0:09.0 | My name is Greg Mason. |
| 0:10.0 | And this is episode 625 of script notes. |
| 0:12.6 | They podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. |
| 0:16.6 | Craig, it's finally here. It's award season. |
| 0:20.0 | You're so excited. What does award season mean for you Craig? It means losing its succession a lot. |
| 0:24.8 | Yeah. It's probably going to be, it's going to be quite the Blitzkrieg and well deserved, you know, it would be tougher probably if I didn't love |
| 0:36.3 | succession and I also didn't know Jesse Armstrong and know him to be a |
| 0:40.1 | fantastic person and an amazing writer and leader of his whole staff. |
| 0:44.3 | So it's their final season. |
| 0:46.3 | I think we're all getting swept under the tide. |
| 0:49.2 | I'll cry on to the lapels of Mike White, or perhaps he'll cry on mine, or maybe a shocker. |
| 0:57.3 | But I doubt it. It's going to be, we're going to be at the Golden Globes, so because of the strikes, everything got squished in death. So we're going to be at the Golden Globes, so because of the strikes everything got squished in two. |
| 1:04.4 | So we're going to be the Golden Globes, and then a week later, AIFI, which is nice because it's not a competition. |
| 1:09.5 | Then Critics' Choice and then the Emmys and it will be one crushing |
| 1:15.2 | philosophy or award. Do you know I've been trying to think like practice my face |
| 1:21.2 | when they announce that I lose multiple times. |
| 1:25.8 | Like what do I do with my face? |
| 1:28.1 | Because I'm worried that... |
| 1:29.1 | Oh yeah, like somehow, yeah. |
| 1:31.1 | Yeah, like my sadness will leak through, although I'm not sad, but I also don't want to be a goof about it. |
... |
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