671 - The Best/Worst it Will Ever Be
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2025
⏱️ 75 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Craig look at three extraordinary news stories and ask, How Would this be a Movie? Stories include the United Healthcare CEO assassination, a small town’s process for licensing fortune tellers, and a harrowing I.V.F. mixup.
We also follow up on AI, Flightplan’s source material, Craig’s Belfast accent, and answer a listener question on the order of surnames for writing partners.
In our bonus segment for premium members: Hey Alexa, play John and Craig’s conversation about home automation. I don’t think she heard– HEY ALEXA, PLAY JOHN AND CRAIG’S CONVERSATION ABOUT HOME AUTOMATION.
Links:
- The Wheel Spins by Ethel Lina White
- The Conundrum of the Workshops by Rudyard Kipling
- OpenAI’s controversial Sora is finally launching today. Will it truly disrupt Hollywood? by Wendy Lee for LA Times
- I Went to the Premiere of the First Commercially Streaming AI-Generated Movies by Jason Koehler
- A timeline of the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and search for his killer by Michael R. Sisal and Cedar Attanasio for Associated Press
- How do you license a fortune teller? by Paul Debole
- An I.V.F. Mix-Up, a Shocking Discovery and an Unbearable Choice by Susan Dominus for NYT Magazine
- Monsters, Aliens, and Holes in the Ground by Stu Horvath
- Your Consciousness Can Connect With the Whole Universe by Manasee Wagh for Popular Mechanics
- 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, Instagram, and Mastodon
- Outro by Matthew Chilelli (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 | Hello and welcome. My name is John August. All right. Okay. My name is Craig Mason. And you'll listen to episode 671 of script notes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, it's one of our favorite regular segments. How would this be a movie? Where we take a look at stories in the news and find their adaptable angles. |
| 0:25.1 | We also have follow up on AI, listener questions on partner credits, and at our bonus segment for premium members, let's discuss home automation, Craig. |
| 0:28.4 | So over this past year, we've added a few things to our house, and you just moved into a new |
| 0:31.6 | house. |
| 0:32.0 | And so I'm curious what your take is on home automation and what you're doing and what you're |
| 0:35.4 | thinking about doing. |
| 0:36.0 | This is going to be very educational for me. |
| 0:37.9 | I already can tell. |
| 0:39.2 | I'm going to learn a lot, and this probably will end up costing me a bit of money. |
| 0:42.6 | Yeah. |
| 0:43.2 | What are you going to do? |
| 0:45.2 | But first, I have a small rant, and so, ooh, crazy I want to have a rant. |
| 0:49.7 | You're rubbing my hands together. |
| 0:51.2 | So this is a thing that happened twice. And so because it happened twice, |
| 0:54.5 | I know it's actually a real thing. |
| 0:55.7 | It's not just like one person being weird. |
| 0:57.4 | Okay. |
| 0:57.9 | Okay. |
| 0:58.2 | So I'm at the dentist, and I have a hygienist who's really good. |
| 1:02.1 | She's a fast scraper. |
| 1:03.4 | Like, it's not painful. |
| 1:05.0 | Great. |
... |
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