Hello and welcome. My name is John August.

And you're listening to Episode 698 of Script Notes. It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, we discuss movies that never existed from high-profile projects that got shelved at the last minute to our own experiences with unmade projects. Then it's time for some listener questions covering multilanguage dialogue and multi-part

movies, among other things.

And in a bonus segment of our premium members, if no one paid us to write screenplays anymore,

Craig, if they would never get made?

Yeah.

Would we continue to write them as a form?

Ugh.

Well, yeah, you have an hour to think about that. I don't know if I need an hour, but not right. We'll talk about the pros and cons of sort of the screenplay format as a literary thing, independent of a way to make a movie. Craig, this last week I ran the San Francisco half marathon, which was really fun. So I'd done the second half of it six years ago, this week I did the first half. But as I was running it, I was thinking, like, I wonder if Craig knows these things. And so how do they know when a racer crosses the finish line? How do they know the time of a racer? If I had to guess, I don't think it's as fancy as like an RFID tag in a bib. It is an RFID tag and a bib. It is as fancy as that. The day before the race, you go and you pick up your bib and that's the thing you have paper clipped onto your shirt, or we have a little fancy magnets now because we're fancy. But on the back of that bib is an RFID tag. And so as you're running the race, you're constantly passing through gates that are tracking that you ran through. And there's an app that you install on your phone for friends and family to find you. But also it tells you in real time what your pace is. Oh, so you actually carry a phone with you as you're running. I do carry a phone with you. Wow, because that's extra weight. It's extra weight, but it's fine. Most people are, I think, are running with phones these days. Running with phones.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It would be rough if you were tracking this.

You know, your loved one is in a marathon. And they just stop. Yeah. They stop for a long time. Then you hear sirens. Yeah. It's rough. It's not good.

No.

But it's helpful for your friends and family because that way they can figure out where you are on the race so they can come and cheer you on a certain place.

Yeah, that makes absolute sense. It's a nicer scenario than the one I suggested. But the whole idea of RFID and tracking leads to an bigger question because earlier this summer I was on a cruise in Alaska and on this boat, you wear this little medallion that has an RFID with you,

and it's super handy because, again, you pull up the app, and it's like, I want a cup of coffee. Wherever you are on the boat, they find you. They find you. They bring you this stuff, and it's kind of nice. Oh, they're bringing it to you. They bring it to you, not to your cabin, Just to you.

To you.

Directly wherever you are.

Yeah, I mean, right now, I guess our phones are that thing.

Yeah.

But eventually... cabin just to you directly wherever you are yeah i mean right now i guess our phones are that thing

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