693 - Setups That Don’t Feel Like Setups
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 1 July 2025
⏱️ 63 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Craig plant the idea for setups that have the most satisfying payoffs. Different from exposition, setups introduce ideas and concepts to an audience, priming them for a later revelation. They look at the sleight of hand required to have your setups deftly planted, take root in your audience’s mind, and grow into something delightful.
But first, we look at the new California tax credits, the 2025 WGA annual report, follow up on AI and VFX, postmodernism, and verticals. We also answer listener questions on music videos and outing yourself to potential employers.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig look at the New York Times’ new list of the 100 best movies of the 21st century. We all know Craig loves pitting movies against each other, so there’s definitely no umbrage here.
Links:
- The Best Movies of the 21st Century by NY Times
- California lawmakers approve expanded $750-million film tax credit program by Samantha Masunaga for LA Times
- WGA Annual Report – employment and earnings, residuals
- Michael Graves
- How ReelShort CEO Joey Jia Used a Chinese Trend to Disrupt the U.S. Entertainment Industry by Chad De Guzman for Time Magazine
- Sundance Labs
- Sabrina Carpenter – Manchild
- DJ Snake, Lil Jon – Turn Down for What
- Madonna – Vogue
- a-ha – Take On Me
- Riz Ahmed – The Long Goodbye
- Phil Collins – Don’t Lose My Number
- 30 minutes with a stranger by Alvin Chang for The Pudding
- Chris Perkins
- Mike Birbiglia’s top ten movies of the 21st century
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
- Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
- Craig Mazin on Instagram
- John August on Bluesky and Instagram
- Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at [email protected]
You can download the episode here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome. My name is John August. |
| 0:04.3 | My name is Chris. |
| 0:08.5 | And you're listening to Episode 693 of Script Notes. |
| 0:11.5 | It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. |
| 0:14.6 | Today on the show, how do you introduce an idea to the audience? |
| 0:18.0 | We'll discuss setups that don't feel like setups, and most importantly, |
| 0:24.7 | make your audience feel smart. But first, we have a lot of follow-up from listeners, |
| 0:29.4 | some actual news, and some listener questions. And in our bonus segment for premium members, |
| 0:34.6 | Craig, I want to discuss the New York Times feature on the top 100 movies of the century so far. |
| 0:39.4 | Good, a list. Yay. A list, but also there's the meta around the list. I think it's actually probably more interesting than the list itself. Okay, I'm not for that. You get to see different |
| 0:42.9 | filmmakers and actors give their top 10 list, which is like a performative, revealing kind of thing. |
| 0:50.0 | So I want to discuss that. And we'll keep that as a special feature for our bonus, |
| 0:57.8 | people who get to hear our unfiltered takes on these lists. Where did Scary Movie 3 land? |
| 1:00.6 | It tops out on so many lists. |
| 1:02.4 | It's crazy. |
| 1:03.6 | It should be in there. |
| 1:05.4 | It should be top seven. |
| 1:07.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:07.5 | Spoiler, I have no movies in the official big 100 list. |
| 1:10.6 | Well, I'm going to go ahead and presume I don't either. |
| 1:13.7 | You don't, you don't. |
| 1:14.6 | But perhaps we can make some more movies with all the new California tax credit money coming. |
... |
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