718 - No Worries if Not
Scriptnotes Podcast
John August
4.8 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 30 December 2025
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
John and Craig circle back on all the euphemisms and stock phrases that float around Hollywood. Using some favorite examples, they attempt to define and demystify the current industry-speak so everyone is looped in when we come up for air after the holidays.
We also wrap-up 2025 with a look at Scriptnotes by the numbers, check-in on Disney's deal with OpenAI, follow up on that director who scammed Netflix out of $11 million, and answer listener questions on the guilds' involvement in video podcasts and reps who won't send out co-written scripts.
In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig navigate how to deal with difficult collaborators.
Links:
- How Disney's OpenAI Deal Changes Everything by Steven Zeitchik and Julian Sancton for The Hollywood Reporter
- Guilty! Director Who Scammed Netflix Out Of Millions Faces Decades Behind Bars by Dominic Patten for Deadline
- Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too! by Robert Ben Garant & Thomas Lennon
- Down to Puck: Why Women Are Going Wild for 'Heated Rivalry' by Seth Abramovitch for The Hollywood Reporter
- Search Engine annual meeting
- Order a signed copy of the Scriptnotes Book!
- Charli XCX's Substack
- Trailer for Divinity by Larian Studios
- Get your copy of the Scriptnotes book!
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription (now with fewer emails!)
- Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
- Scriptnotes on Instagram
- John August on Bluesky and Instagram
- Outro by Nick Moore (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. Okay. My name is Craig Nason. And you're listening to Episode 718 of Scriptense. It's a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters. Today on the show, you may have heard us discuss industry euphemisms, but really no worries if not. At the end of the day, we're bumping this just in case got buried. So whether you're coming up for air after the holidays or just getting your ducks in a row, we want to be respectful of everyone's time as we discuss stock phrases that are endemic to Hollywood. We'll also run down the numbers on script notes, both the podcast and the book. |
| 0:38.1 | We'll answer a listener questions, including, what's the deal with video podcasts? |
| 0:41.3 | What is the deal? |
| 0:42.5 | And in our bonus segment for premium members, how do you deal with a difficult collaborator? |
| 0:46.4 | We'll talk about that. |
| 0:47.7 | We have no experience, but we're just, in theory, what would it be like to deal with a difficult |
| 0:52.0 | collaborator, Greg? |
| 0:53.5 | In theory. |
| 0:54.5 | Yeah, no, it is entirely theoretical. |
| 0:56.7 | It's all entirely theoretical. |
| 0:58.7 | This episode we're recording on December 14th, |
| 1:01.1 | but it's coming out enough later that there was news, |
| 1:04.4 | but the news is going to be so outdated by the time we actually air this episode. |
| 1:08.0 | So Disney made a deal with Open AI to license characters and give Open AI a billion |
| 1:12.2 | dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Notice that. Notice that. Paramount is now doing a hostile bid for Warner Brothers. |
| 1:19.6 | We don't know how that's all going to sort out. That won't have changed by the time this episode |
| 1:24.3 | comes out. That's going to take a while. Yeah. It's going to take a while. Everything's going to take a while. |
| 1:28.1 | Everything will take it sometime. Yeah. So I'm not delighted by any of this news, frankly. No. In general, we don't want fewer entities that pay for our work. Yeah. But it's happening. It's happening. on the whole, I'm not excited |
| 1:44.6 | by companies that |
| 1:46.7 | distribute our product, |
| 1:48.0 | making deals with AI companies to train models on our stuff. |
| 1:51.1 | Don't love that? |
... |
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