Podcast appearances and mentions of John August

Nineteenth-century American economist Henry George blamed poverty and depressions on landlords. George argued that their rents were associated mainly with public investments and should be shared with the community. Show host Gene Tunny speaks with returning guest John August about Georgism—the economic philosophy of Henry George that advocates for a single tax on land value. They explore the ethical and economic arguments behind taxing land, its historical popularity, and how it is perceived today. The discussion covers economic rent, speculation, tax distortions, and housing policy, critically examining Georgism's assumptions and limitations. John is the Fusion Party candidate for Bennelong in the upcoming Australian federal election. Please let Gene know your thoughts on Trump's tariffs and any questions or comments regarding this episode by emailing Gene at contact@economicsexplored.com.TimestampsIntroduction (0:00)John August's Background and Campaign (4:19)Georgism and Its Influence (7:25)Economic Theory and Georgism (11:35)Critique of Georgism (16:19)Land Value Taxation and Economic Rent (23:15)Impact of Georgism on Economic Policy (31:54)Conclusion and Future Discussion (49:33)TakeawaysGeorgism, developed by Henry George in the 19th century, proposes a radical approach to taxation by advocating for a single tax on land values to address economic inequality and reduce speculation.While most economists reject Georgism, the theory continues to have passionate advocates who argue that land value taxation could create a more productive and just economic system.The Georgist perspective highlights how public infrastructure and community development can increase land values, creating unearned income for property owners without compensating the broader community.Modern Georgists have moved away from the original concept of a 100% land value tax, instead advocating for a significant increase in land value taxation as part of a broader tax reform strategy.The theory raises important questions about property speculation, economic rent, and the potential for less distortionary forms of taxation that could promote more equitable economic development.Links relevant to the conversationJohn's federal election campaign website: John August for Bennelonghttps://www.fusionparty.org.au/john_august_bennelongGrand Pursuit: The Story of Economic Genius - Nasar, Sylviahttps://www.amazon.com.au/Grand-Pursuit-Story-Economic-Genius/dp/0684872986Fixing Australia's Housing Crisis: Fusion's Plan w/ Owen Miller – EP277https://economicsexplored.com/2025/03/27/fixing-australias-housing-crisis-fusions-plan-w-owen-miller-ep277/Trent Saunders and Peter Tulip's RBA Discussion Paper “A Model of the Australian Housing Market”:https://www.rba.gov.au/publications/rdp/2019/2019-01/Lumo Coffee promotion10% of Lumo Coffee's Seriously Healthy Organic Coffee.Website: https://www.lumocoffee.com/10EXPLOREDPromo code: 10EXPLORED Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com.

This week we have another Disney remake episode with Aladdin (1992) and Aladdin (2019).-----The Movies:Aladdin (1992)Directed by Ron Clements & John MuskerWritten by Ron Clements, John Musker, Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio iMDb Rating: 8.0Aladdin (2019)Directed by Guy RitchieWritten by John August & Guy RitchieiMDB Rating: 6.9-----Find us on:Discord - https://discord.gg/dxgmcfj552Tumblr - @ItTakesTwoPodInstagram - @ItTakesTwo_podFacebook - @ItTakesTwoPodYoutube - @ittakestwonzBluesky - @ittakestwoOur website - ItTakesTwo.co.nz-----

Welcome back to purgatory!!!! This week the boys discuss a late 90's classic GO from 1999 directed by Doug Liman and written by John August. The film stars Sarah Polley, Timothy Olyphant, Katie Holmes, Desmond Askew, Nathan Bexton, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, William Fichtner, Taye Diggs, Breckin Meyer and J.E. Freeman!!! Thanks for checkin us out, you can our back catalog on Podbean.com and you can find us where all other podcasts are found. Intro Track "Angel" by Massive Attack https://youtu.be/66A_3uwuZ_I?si=bB4eMfX0XBA9vZR4 Outro Track "New" by No Doubt https://youtu.be/E61D9p3-3vM?si=lmLGAicuvKWnqJJZ  

In this episode of No Film School, GG Hawkins and Jason Hellerman chat with John August, an acclaimed screenwriter, podcaster, and software developer. Known for films like Big Fish and Aladdin, as well as co-hosting Scriptnotes with Craig Mazin, John August discusses his career, the evolution of screenwriting tools, and how he's simplifying life for writers with his app, Highland. In this episode, No Film School's GG Hawkins, Jason Hellerman, and John August discuss: John's journey from journalism major to one of Hollywood's most recognized screenwriters How working across different mediums—from novels to musicals—has shaped his storytelling The philosophy behind creating Highland, a screenwriting app designed to keep writers in the flow Practical advice for writers starting out in today's industry Memorable Quotes: “Your ability to have an idea but then actually articulate the idea… to yourself, to your team, and to the audience is so fundamental and so important.” “When I see something in the world that bothers me, I try to fix it. My instinct is to get involved and figure it out.” “A screenplay is a luxury. You know you have about 120 pages. There are constraints, and those constraints help you figure out what's important.” Resources: John August on IMDb Highland App Scriptnotes Podcast Find No Film School everywhere: On the Web: No Film School Facebook: No Film School on Facebook Twitter: No Film School on Twitter YouTube: No Film School on YouTube Instagram: No Film School on Instagram Send us an email with questions or feedback: podcast@nofilmschool.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Host Gene Tunny discusses significant economic issues from the year. He features clips from interviews with experts on various topics, including the economic consequences of Donald Trump's re-election, the U.S. budget deficit, the gender pay gap, and environmental impact. President Reagan's budget director David Stockman criticizes Trump's policies for being anti-capitalist, citing a $8 trillion increase in public debt. Fiscal policy wonk Dan Mitchell argues that higher taxes are not the solution to the U.S. budget deficit, as spending is the primary issue. Leonora Risse (Assoc. Prof., University of Canberra) explains the concept of "greedy jobs" contributing to the gender pay gap. Marion Tupy of the Cato Institute discusses the long-term decline in commodity prices, and Daniel Lawse of Verdis Group emphasizes the need for sustainable, long-term thinking in business and policy. Daniel also reflects on the modest lifestyle of Warren Buffett, another Omaha resident. John August discusses the impact of immigration on Australia's housing crisis.If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for Gene, please email him at contact@economicsexplored.com.Timestamps for EP265Introduction (0:00)David Stockman (6:20)Dan Mitchell (11:20)Leonora Risse (23:50)Marian Tupy (32:15)Daniel Lawse (41:49)John August (48:06)Links relevant to the conversationEpisodes featuring the clips:https://economicsexplored.com/2024/01/28/reagans-budget-boss-david-stockman-on-trumps-economic-policies-ep224/https://economicsexplored.com/2024/04/17/is-uncle-sam-running-a-ponzi-scheme-with-the-national-debt-w-dr-dan-mitchell-ep235/https://economicsexplored.com/2024/03/10/the-gender-pay-debate-understanding-the-factors-behind-the-gap-w-dr-leonora-risse-ep230/https://economicsexplored.com/2024/10/16/abundance-mindset-exploring-the-super-abundance-thesis-w-marian-tupy-cato-institute-ep258/https://economicsexplored.com/2024/06/01/helping-seattle-aquarium-others-go-to-net-zero-and-beyond-w-daniel-lawse-verdis-group-ep242/https://economicsexplored.com/2024/04/17/housing-crisis-and-immigration-australias-tough-choices-w-john-august-ep236/Leonora's review of Career and Family: Women's Century-Long Journey toward Equity, by Claudia Goldinhttps://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1475-4932.12716?domain=author&token=UPATKK2WTIAEZ49UMRMVPrinciple of Charity podcast episodes on degrowth:https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/can-degrowth-save-the-planet/id1571868650?i=1000674757240https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/can-degrowth-save-the-planet-pt-2-on-the-couch/id1571868650?i=1000675655623Lumo Coffee promotion10% of Lumo Coffee's Seriously Healthy Organic Coffee.Website: https://www.lumocoffee.com/10EXPLOREDPromo code: 10EXPLORED Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com.

There is a prominent bird in the 2000 film Charlie's Angels that makes absolutely no sense. This so-called Pygmy Nuthatch doesn't look or sound like it should, or live where the characters say it does. The bird is so elaborately wrong that it has haunted the birding community, including Slate's very own Forrest Wickman, for almost a quarter of a century. In this episode, Forrest embarks on a wild goose chase: Why can't hundreds of filmmaking professionals with a $100 million budget accurately portray a single bird? This episode was reported and written by Forrest Wickman. It was edited by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. In this episode, you'll hear from Charlie's Angels screenwriters John August and Zak Penn, director McG, animal trainer Guin Dill, and sound editor Michael Benavente; and bird experts Nick Lund, Nathan Pieplow, and Drew Weber. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond's yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond's YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a prominent bird in the 2000 film Charlie's Angels that makes absolutely no sense. This so-called Pygmy Nuthatch doesn't look or sound like it should, or live where the characters say it does. The bird is so elaborately wrong that it has haunted the birding community, including Slate's very own Forrest Wickman, for almost a quarter of a century. In this episode, Forrest embarks on a wild goose chase: Why can't hundreds of filmmaking professionals with a $100 million budget accurately portray a single bird? This episode was reported and written by Forrest Wickman. It was edited by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. In this episode, you'll hear from Charlie's Angels screenwriters John August and Zak Penn, director McG, animal trainer Guin Dill, and sound editor Michael Benavente; and bird experts Nick Lund, Nathan Pieplow, and Drew Weber. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond's yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond's YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a prominent bird in the 2000 film Charlie's Angels that makes absolutely no sense. This so-called Pygmy Nuthatch doesn't look or sound like it should, or live where the characters say it does. The bird is so elaborately wrong that it has haunted the birding community, including Slate's very own Forrest Wickman, for almost a quarter of a century. In this episode, Forrest embarks on a wild goose chase: Why can't hundreds of filmmaking professionals with a $100 million budget accurately portray a single bird? This episode was reported and written by Forrest Wickman. It was edited by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. In this episode, you'll hear from Charlie's Angels screenwriters John August and Zak Penn, director McG, animal trainer Guin Dill, and sound editor Michael Benavente; and bird experts Nick Lund, Nathan Pieplow, and Drew Weber. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond's yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond's YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There is a prominent bird in the 2000 film Charlie's Angels that makes absolutely no sense. This so-called Pygmy Nuthatch doesn't look or sound like it should, or live where the characters say it does. The bird is so elaborately wrong that it has haunted the birding community, including Slate's very own Forrest Wickman, for almost a quarter of a century. In this episode, Forrest embarks on a wild goose chase: Why can't hundreds of filmmaking professionals with a $100 million budget accurately portray a single bird? This episode was reported and written by Forrest Wickman. It was edited by Willa Paskin. It was produced by Max Freedman. Decoder Ring is produced by Willa Paskin, Evan Chung, Katie Shepherd, and Max Freedman with help from Sofie Kodner. Derek John is Executive Producer. Merritt Jacob is Senior Technical Director. In this episode, you'll hear from Charlie's Angels screenwriters John August and Zak Penn, director McG, animal trainer Guin Dill, and sound editor Michael Benavente; and bird experts Nick Lund, Nathan Pieplow, and Drew Weber. If you have any cultural mysteries you want us to decode, email us at DecoderRing@slate.com Want more Decoder Ring? Subscribe to Slate Plus to unlock exclusive bonus episodes. Plus, you'll access ad-free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking “Try Free” at the top of the Decoder Ring show page. Or, visit slate.com/decoderplus to get access wherever you listen. Disclosure in Podcast Description: A Bond Account is a self-directed brokerage account with Public Investing, member FINRA/SIPC. Deposits into this account are used to purchase 10 investment-grade and high-yield bonds. As of 9/26/24, the average, annualized yield to worst (YTW) across the Bond Account is greater than 6%. A bond's yield is a function of its market price, which can fluctuate; therefore, a bond's YTW is not “locked in” until the bond is purchased, and your yield at time of purchase may be different from the yield shown here. The “locked in” YTW is not guaranteed; you may receive less than the YTW of the bonds in the Bond Account if you sell any of the bonds before maturity or if the issuer defaults on the bond. Public Investing charges a markup on each bond trade. See our Fee Schedule. Bond Accounts are not recommendations of individual bonds or default allocations. The bonds in the Bond Account have not been selected based on your needs or risk profile. See https://public.com/disclosures/bond-account to learn more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, I'm sharing some of my favorite writing podcasts with you. Happy listening! ⁠The Author Burnout Cure with Isabel Sterling⁠ ⁠Fiction Writing Made Easy with Savannah Gilbo⁠ ⁠Unpublished with Amie McNee and James Winestock⁠ ⁠Scriptnotes with John August and Craig Mazin⁠ ⁠The Screenwriting Life with Meg LeFauve and Lorien McKenna⁠ ⁠Post Mortem with Mick Garris⁠ ⁠How to Horror with Mick Garris⁠, a three-night course hosted by ⁠Story Summit⁠ Related Episodes: ⁠#246: Let's Talk Craft Books⁠ ⁠#207: The Books I Read on Vacation⁠ ⁠#243: Spooky Season TBR⁠ Let's Connect: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠Threads⁠ ⁠Email⁠

When a shy groom practices his wedding vows in the inadvertent presence of a deceased young woman, she rises from the grave assuming he has married her. Directed by Tim Burton & Mike Johnson Written by Tim Burton, Carlos Grangel, John August, Caroline Thompson & Pamela Pettler @thedeadlightspod

Fredrik talks to Jack Cheng - author and creator of the iPhone note capture app Bebop. Jack describes where Bebop came from and how he built it, and how and why Copilot and other AI tools became integral parts of the workflow. Being aware of the maintenance cost of each decision, keeping things focused, avoiding building yourself into a bloated corner - sometimes even deciding certain things don’t belong in your app. Coding on the side, needing to balance the time you have? Use it to your advantage! Jack also talks about the other apps he uses for working with notes and writing, and how different apps feel right for different types of writing. (Yes, Obsidian once again makes an appearance.) Thank you Cloudnet for sponsoring our VPS! Comments, questions or tips? We a re @kodsnack, @tobiashieta, @oferlund and @bjoreman on Twitter, have a page on Facebook and can be emailed at info@kodsnack.se if you want to write longer. We read everything we receive. If you enjoy Kodsnack we would love a review in iTunes! You can also support the podcast by buying us a coffee (or two!) through Ko-fi. Links Jack Detroit Jack’s books See you in the cosmos The many masks of Andy Zhou The slow web - Jack’s blog post Copilot Captio - the app Jack used which let you email a note to yourself Obsidian Nvalt Fsnotes Zapier Bebop Jack’s post introducing Bebop Ruby on rails Typepad Swift Swiftui Objective-C MVC App intents Visual studio code Xcode Figma Cursor is the editor with more builtin LLM features Support us on Ko-fi! Morning pages Jack’s newsletter Ghost Highland 2 John August Cot Share extensions Testflight These days - Jack’s first novel, financed through Kickstarter Robin Sloan Robin’s text about how an app can be a home-cooked meal WWDC - Apple’s yearly developer conference The Humane AI pin Rabbit See you on the bookshelf - Jack’s podcast about creating See you in the cosmos Booksmitten jackcheng.com Jack on Instagram, Threads, and Mastodon Titles Addicted to the slot machine of social media Just spin up an Iphone app A specific thing I want to build Advanced auto complete Gold coins along the way Freeze all these features The maintenance cost of every decision The speed of capture Tiny dopamine hit Use it to your advantage Immediately useful You can’t not be cliché Today as the title

País Estados Unidos Dirección André Øvredal Guion Dan Hageman, Kevin Hageman, Guillermo del Toro, John August, Marcus Dunstan, Patrick Melton. Libro: Alvin Schwartz Reparto Zoe Colletti, Michael Garza, Gabriel Rush Música Marco Beltrami, Anna Drubich Fotografía Roman Osin Sinopsis Un grupo de adolescentes debe resolver el misterio que rodea a una serie de repentinas y macabras muertes que suceden en su pueblo. Producida por Guillermo del Toro.

Rachel Miller is a founding partner of Haven Entertainment (haven.la), a management and production company based in Los Angeles. Haven produces award-winning documentaries, feature films and television shows; represents top writers, directors, actors, and comedians; and collaborates with brands to develop cutting-edge digital content. She is Executive Producer of Netflix's limited series Devil in Ohio starring Emily Deschanel which debuted to #1 in the US and #3 in the world and within 48 hours of its premiere rose to the #1 TV series in the world on Netflix. Miller also produced the 3D documentary Under the Electric Sky, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and sold to Focus Features.   Miller is the founder of non-profit Film2Future, which builds a direct pipeline for underserved diverse youth to gain access to Hollywood – all at zero cost to participate. Since its inception in 2016, F2F has educated over 225 students, placed students in over 135 paid internship/PA opportunities and its students have earned over $2 million in college scholarships. She encourages all entertainment industry professionals to get involved in the organization and to support the next generation of diverse filmmakers. Miller is an active public speaker with an emphasis on emerging talent, pipeline strategies and inclusion. Recent appearances include UCLA, New York University, the CBS Diversity Program, Alliance of Women Directors, AFI (American Film Institute), Monterrey Film Festival (Monterrey, Mexico), the Rio International Film Festival (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and on many podcasts including John August's ScriptNotes.   In Miller's free time, she can usually be found curled up on the couch reading esoteric Russian novels or YA adventures.    Resources Film2Future Haven Entertainment  Rachel Miller's IMDB ──────────────────────────── ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Stay Tuned with Tipsy Casting on IG⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Watch the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Tipsy Casting YouTube Channel⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Jessica ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ & ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow Jenn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn More About ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jess ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠& ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Jenn's⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Casting

This episode of Film Center News, we sit down with John Stapp to talk about how to harness one's creative vision.

Screenwriter and co-host of Scriptnotes podcast John August joins Matt to discuss the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the 2003 film Big Fish. John talks about how he hadnt seen the 1971 Willy Wonka movie before writing the script, Johnny Depps original Alfred Hitchcock take on the Wonka character, and how his collaboration with Tim Burton started. Plus, John shares his process of method writing which helped him get in the right mindset while writing his new book Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire.This episode is brought to you by Mubi.com (www.mubi.com/WasThere). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Screenwriter and co-host of Scriptnotes podcast John August joins Matt to discuss the 2005 film Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the 2003 film Big Fish. John talks about how he hadnt seen the 1971 Willy Wonka movie before writing the script, Johnny Depps original Alfred Hitchcock take on the Wonka character, and how his collaboration with Tim Burton started. Plus, John shares his process of method writing which helped him get in the right mindset while writing his new book Arlo Finch in the Valley of Fire.This episode is brought to you by Mubi.com (www.mubi.com/WasThere). Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Let's GO! This week on One Moore Hollywood Podcast, we are thrilled to welcome screenwriter and podcast mastermind John August on to the show! With a plethora of iconic movie credits to his name (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, just to name a few!) John has also used his knowledge and insight of Hollywood to help aspiring writers through his podcast Scriptnotes. On this episode, John discusses how his versatility has helped him through his long career, why he was inspired to start Scriptnotes, and the blockbuster hit project he passed on writing -- and why he has no regrets about it!We want to hear from you! Reach out to us on social: @OMHPod and don't forget to subscribe to the podcast channel to be notified of new episodes, dropping every Thursday!

For this very special episode of Working It out, Mike welcomes John August, the screenwriter behind Charlie's Angels with Drew Barrymore, Tim Burton's Big Fish, and his breakthrough film Go, which is celebrating its 25 year anniversary. John co-hosts the screenwriting podcast Scriptnotes with Craig Mazin (The Last of Us), which is not only Mike's favorite screenwriting podcast, but his favorite podcast about the creative process (not counting Working It Out). John shares direct, practical screenwriting advice that you'll actually use, whether you're an aspiring screenwriter or you want to pursue creative work of any kind.Please consider donating to Miry's List

The 1967 War happened more than 50 years ago. And yet, the legacy of the Six Day War still reverberates throughout the world. Israelis were convinced they were facing another Holocaust. Instead, they achieved one of the most unlikely – and legendary – military victories in history. This miniseries explores the lead-up and legacy of the 6 Day War. ~~~~   Sources: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YAwi1kDnHEJfFp3A5FzmclHv0-f82zMvbt9Qp9ziKrY/edit ~~~~   Episode 2 of this Six Day War mini-series is generously sponsored by Jane & John August, Michael Staenberg, and The Marcus Family Foundation.

This episode of Economics Explored features a deep dive into the ongoing housing crisis in Australia with John August, a Pirate Party of Australia official and Sydney radio host. Gene and John discuss the significant influence of immigration rates and building restrictions on housing availability and prices. They also consider potential policy solutions to ensure more equitable housing access, including developing a charter city named Turing. Please contact us with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. About this episode's guest: John AugustJohn August is the Treasurer of the Pirate Party Australia. John does computer support work in retail and shareholder communication. He is passionate about justice and ethics in our world, particularly as it plays out in law generally and intellectual property in particular. He has stood on behalf of the Pirate Party in the Federal seat of Bennelong and also as a Councillor for Ryde City Council.Along with technology and law John is also interested in spoken word and poetry. He broadcasts on community radio and hosts the program “Roving Spotlight” on Tuesdays from noon-2pm on Radio Skid Row Marrickville Sydney, and writes about his ideas on the website www.johnaugust.com.au. You can keep up to date with what John is up to via his Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100063805005395What's covered in EP236Introduction. (0:00)Housing crisis in Australia, with a focus on supply and demand issues, affordability, and government policies. (2:44)Population growth, immigration, infrastructure, and housing affordability in Australia. (8:04)Housing affordability and land value taxation. (13:40)A Georgist approach to taxing land. (22:05)Immigration and foreign aid in Australia. (31:24)Reducing immigration and addressing housing challenges in Australia. (37:46)Immigration policy, infrastructure, and zoning regulations in Australia. (41:45)Potential for charter cities (e.g. Turing) and high-speed rail links. (47:34)Foreign aid, shipping, and taxation. (53:35)TakeawaysThe housing crisis in Australia is exacerbated by high immigration levels and stringent building restrictions, which affect affordability.Policy debates are intensifying around whether to restrict immigration to ease housing demand or to relax zoning restrictions on development to boost supply.The concept of "upzoning," similar to Auckland's approach, could be a viable solution to create more housing in existing urban areas.Proponents of high immigration levels often overlook the infrastructural and social costs associated with a rapidly increasing population through high immigration rates.The discussion of housing involves not only economic metrics but also the quality of life and housing accessibility for all population segments.Links relevant to the conversationLeith Van Onselen on immigration and housing: https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2024/04/albo-lies-his-way-out-of-rental-crisis/Previous episode with Natalie Rayment: https://queenslandeconomywatch.com/2021/04/16/missing-middle-housing-podcast-chat-with-natalie-rayment-of-wolter-consulting/John's conversation with Cameron Murray on housing: https://www.mixcloud.com/Johnorg/roving-spotlight-28-november-reviewing-a-pirate-look-at-the-housing-market-with-cameron-murray/Freightened documentary about the cost of shipping: https://thoughtmaybe.com/freightened/Lumo Coffee promotionLumo Coffee Discount: Visit Lumo Coffee (lumocoffee.com) and use code EXPLORED20 for a 20% discount until April 30, 2024.Thanks to Obsidian Productions for mixing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com.

“Life Begins At 3am!” The Back To The Blockbuster team is ready to embark on a wild night on the town with 1999's Go to celebrate its 25th anniversary! Directed by Doug Liman and written by John August, the film stars Katie Holmes, Sarah Polley, William Fichtner, Jay Mohr, Scott Wolf, Taye Diggs, Breckin Meyer, Timothy Olyphant, Desmond Askew, Jane Krakowski, J.E. Freeman, Nathan Bexton, James Duval, Jimmy Shubert, and Melissa McCarthy, in her film debut. Centered around intertwining plots involving three sets of characters, the film is set around Christmas and follows a woman who purchases ecstasy pills, covertly disposes of them, and then sells fake pills at a rave only to be later confronted by an armed drug dealer who sets in motion the other stories that are all linked by this truly whacky event.

Rob & Kay get all nerdy n' gritty talmbout dem action lines. Y'all not gon' wanna miss this one as they finna leave no screenwriting stone unturned. Get it! This Week's Resource: We've said this before, but we are not the only voices on the subject of screenwriting, so we thought maybe you could use this podcast as a jumping off point to investigate the subject further. And as such, Kay and Rob have come up with a medley of YouTube videos on the subject from the likes of Jay Carver, John August and Film Courage, just to start. Happy watching! Notes From the Episode:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Zack's Original Instagram video⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (for our Twitter Drama Bumper) Ace Vane YouTube Channel The Barbie Script ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy your own Vomit Draft Notebook⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy your own Plot Fold Screenwriting Map⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠How to Make a Movie for $1000⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Kay's  Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Rob's Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Zack's Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Email us(!)⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

The Second Part in our Follow the Non-Linear 90s Trilogy Back in 1999 one host was trying to convince his buddies to go see John August and Doug Liman's GO instead of seeing THE MATRIX for a third time while the other lesser host was somehow privy to stars of the adult entertainment world... but had no respect for the work of Canadian great Sarah Polley. Thus begins yet another disagreement in the joys of youth. However we do agree that Jay Mohr would not make for a convincing drug dealer as there are still some things that almost anyone can agree on. Enjoy! Enjoy and catchup on last year's Movie Book Club from Quentin Tarantino's CINEMA SPECULATION! Follow along at our Patreon page as once a month (although sometimes more) we read AND watch films from 1999 for BEST MOVIE YEAR EVER by Brian Raftery! Threads/Twitter/Instagram/Facebook: @trilogyintheory Letterboxd: @projectingfilm & @webistrying Artwork by: @nasketchs Find out more at https://trilogyintheory.pinecast.co This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

John August, a Sydney radio host and Pirate Party of Australia official, returns to provide feedback on recent episodes about nuclear power, COVID policies, and government outsourcing and consulting. John discusses his generally positive view of nuclear energy with some qualifications and provides his thoughts on the analysis of COVID restrictions presented in a recent episode by Prof. Gigi Foster. John also weighs in on the challenges of government service delivery, noting potential upsides and downsides to outsourcing and cautioning against contractors dominating policy development.Please contact us with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. About this episode's guest: John AugustJohn August is the Treasurer of the Pirate Party Australia. John does computer support work in retail and shareholder communication. He is passionate about justice and ethics in our world, particularly as it plays out in law generally and intellectual property in particular. He has stood on behalf of the Pirate Party in the Federal seat of Bennelong and also as a Councillor for Ryde City Council.Along with technology and law John is also interested in spoken word and poetry. He broadcasts on community radio and hosts the program “Roving Spotlight” on Tuesdays from noon-2pm on Radio Skid Row Marrickville Sydney, and writes about his ideas on the website www.johnaugust.com.au. You can keep up to date with what John is up to via his Facebook page. What's covered in EP22000:04:08 - Discussion on Nuclear Energy00:13:37 - Gigi Foster's COVID Analysis00:25:58 - Economic Impact of COVID Restrictions00:35:57 - Outsourcing and Consulting in Government00:44:20 - Final Thoughts and Wrap-upTakeawaysNuclear power holds promise as an energy source, but challenges around risk management, technology development, and public perception still need to be addressed.In John's view, there are reasonable arguments on both sides of the debate around COVID restrictions, with disagreement centring around difficult-to-determine counterfactual scenarios.Outsourcing can benefit the government, like additional capacity and fresh perspectives, but oversight is needed to avoid issues like mission creep or perverse incentives.  Links relevant to the conversationRecent news about nuclear energy:First new U.S. nuclear reactor since 2016 is now in operationNuScale ends Utah project, in blow to US nuclear power ambitions | Reuters  John talking about nuclear energy on his radio show:https://www.mixcloud.com/Johnorg/roving-spotlight-26-sept-23-nuclear-nuclear-more-nuclear/Pirate Party position statement on bureaucracy and rent-seeking:https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Position_Statements/Government_Bureaucracy_Rent-SeekingVideo mentioned by John: “The consulting industry has infantilised government” - Mariana Mazzucato on taking back controlhttps://youtu.be/ycVBoWsGLJs?si=r7f5qIJds0dENPtIReview of Jobkeeper payment by Nigel Ray: https://treasury.gov.au/consultation/c2023-407908Previous Economics Explored episodes mentioned this episode:https://economicsexplored.com/2023/07/27/sir-david-hendry-on-economic-forecasting-the-net-zero-transition-ep198/https://economicsexplored.com/2023/09/14/gigi-foster-estimates-covid-lockdowns-cost-young-people-116x-any-benefits-ep205/https://economicsexplored.com/2023/10/13/private-vs-public-sector-jobs-consulting-scandals-economics-as-an-imperialist-discipline-w-uqppes-ep209/Thanks to Obsidian Productions for mixing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com.

This week, the Rock God of Podcasting himself, Charles McFall is back on the show! This time, he's brought a movie from 2007 starring Ryan Reynolds, Mellisa McCarthy, and Hope Davis called The Nines. Written and Directed by John August, it's the story of an actor, a writer, and a video game designer and how their lives intersect. But that doesn't tell the whole story. It is that, but it's also not that at all. But does this movie stare in to it's own navel too much? Is it profound? Or profoundly dumb? Let's find out...Thanks go out to Audie Norman (@TheAudieNorman) for the album art. Outro music In Pursuit provided by Purple-Planet.comSupport the show by going to patreon.com/wyhsVisit tvstravis.com for more shows and projects from TVsTravis Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Idiots talk to best selling author Scott Sigler and it's awesome. The fellas mention Wilford Brimley and thats when things really heat up! And, yes Matt fucked up and the show cut off early and we can't find the end.

Screenwriter and director John August (Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, The Nightmare Before Christmas) is known for creating wildly imaginative storylines where darkness and light get turned inside-out. He joins Michel Laprise for a chat about character evolution, story-worlds, and stories that challenge our understanding of darkness. Together they discuss ALEGRIA, a Cirque du Soleil show exploring themes of light vs. darkness, the thirst for change, and ‘sympathy for the devil.'

Hip-Hop artist and founder of THOPFest, 60 East, joins us at iHeart Radio in Burbank, to chat about "Go" - a film with three converging stories, all centered around Los Angeles rave culture, and the madness which ensues on Christmas Eve, 1999.

Hang out with Sandy and Terry as they talk procrastination with a capital P! Everyone deals with it, but how do you stop procrastination? Then, once you do, what do you write your screenplay about? You have three great ideas, but which one do you write? We address this in the latest episode and have a few laughs.  Research for this episode includes articles from the following publications.“Leonardo da Vinci” by Walter Isaacsonproactivitylab.com/the-7-most-famous-procrastinators/johnaugust.com/2009/which-project-should-i-writehttps://screenwritingfromiowa.wordpress.com/2011/08/07/pages-per-day/https://www.pcma.org/the-upside-of-procrastination/https://solvingprocrastination.com/famous-procrastinators/#:~:text=Below%2C%20you%20will%20find%20a,Victor%20Hugo%2C%20and%20Steve%20Jobs

The Labour Party announced their tax policy over the weekend. It included policies like dropping GST off fruits and vegetables and changes to Working for Families. The Policy has received some support, but several organisations advocating for the eradication of poverty and tax reform say it does not go far enough to address the wealth gap in Aotearoa. Caeden spoke about this with Glen Barclay, Chair of Tax Justice Aotearoa and the Better Taxes for a Better Future campaign which is a coalition of 20 organisations aiming to work for better taxes to grow revenue and have a fairer tax system. They started by asking Glen if Labour's announcement is fair tax policy. Caeden also spoke to economist Susan St John for the Child Poverty Action Group's position on the announcement. As they have been quite critical of it, they started by asking what the issues were.

Tom's next guests today are two members of the Writers Guild of America, the consolidated union that represents the people who develop the stories and write the scripts for television shows and movies. The union's 11,000 members have been on strike for 100 days. The strike was joined last month by the 160,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild (which is affiliated with the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA). John Horn, who covers the film industry for NPR, reports that the WGA met briefly with leadership of the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers on Friday, which was the first time the two sides have met since talks broke down on May 1st. Joining Tom from Los Angeles are John August and Danny Tolli. John August is a member of the negotiating committee for the WGA. Danny Tolli is a strike captain and organizer… Both men join us on Zoom...Email us at midday@wypr.org, tweet us: @MiddayWYPR, or call us at 410-662-8780.

This week, the panel begins by diving into Theater Camp, a mockumentary-style comedy about gloriously talented misfits. Then, they pay tribute to Sinéad O'Connor, the dearly missed Irish singer, songwriter, and activist whose 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live rocked the world. Then, the trio is joined by screenwriter (and co-host of the Scriptnotes podcast) John August to discuss the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, what's going on in Hollywood, and how this “double strike” feels different than others past.   In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel chews over our relationships to our digits, inspired by the delightfully small yet cerebral piece by Charlie Warzel for The Atlantic, “In Praise of Phone Numbers.” Email us at culturefest@slate.com.  Endorsements: Dana: While not released on one of her albums, Sinéad O'Connor's performance of “The Foggy Dew” with The Chieftains at the 1995 IRMA awards in Dublin perfectly captures the singer's gift for singing live.  Julia: A big fan of lighting candles at dinner, Julia recommends Mole Hollow, a Massachusetts-based company that produces stunning handmade candles in bright, vibrant colors.  John: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's novel, This is How You Lose the Time War, is a beautiful and intimate story with science fiction influences, told through the exchanging of letters, epistolary-style. Shout out to Twitter user @maskofbun for the viral recommendation.  Stephen: He doesn't normally join the bandwagon of clear winners, but Patrick Radden Keefe's profile of art dealer Larry Gagosian for The New Yorker is so impressive, it left Stephen speechless.  Outro music: “Forbidden Love” by OTE Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong.  This episode is sponsored by the podcast About the Journey. Learn more here: https://traveler.marriott.com/about-the-journey/ If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows. You'll also be supporting the work we do here on the Culture Gabfest. Sign up now at Slate.com/cultureplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the panel begins by diving into Theater Camp, a mockumentary-style comedy about gloriously talented misfits. Then, they pay tribute to Sinéad O'Connor, the dearly missed Irish singer, songwriter, and activist whose 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live rocked the world. Then, the trio is joined by screenwriter (and co-host of the Scriptnotes podcast) John August to discuss the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, what's going on in Hollywood, and how this “double strike” feels different than others past.   In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel chews over our relationships to our digits, inspired by the delightfully small yet cerebral piece by Charlie Warzel for The Atlantic, “In Praise of Phone Numbers.” Email us at culturefest@slate.com.  Endorsements: Dana: While not released on one of her albums, Sinéad O'Connor's performance of “The Foggy Dew” with The Chieftains at the 1995 IRMA awards in Dublin perfectly captures the singer's gift for singing live.  Julia: A big fan of lighting candles at dinner, Julia recommends Mole Hollow, a Massachusetts-based company that produces stunning handmade candles in bright, vibrant colors.  John: Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone's novel, This is How You Lose the Time War, is a beautiful and intimate story with science fiction influences, told through the exchanging of letters, epistolary-style. Shout out to Twitter user @maskofbun for the viral recommendation.  Stephen: He doesn't normally join the bandwagon of clear winners, but Patrick Radden Keefe's profile of art dealer Larry Gagosian for The New Yorker is so impressive, it left Stephen speechless.  Outro music: “Forbidden Love” by OTE Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong.  This episode is sponsored by the podcast About the Journey. Learn more here: https://traveler.marriott.com/about-the-journey/ If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and exclusive content on many shows. You'll also be supporting the work we do here on the Culture Gabfest. Sign up now at Slate.com/cultureplus to help support our work. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The Folk Mafia #106 - John August Lee - The Kingston Trio by Josh Reynolds

Episode Summary In this episode of Sunny Side Up, host Brian Hopper interviews Chris Clemente, a seasoned marketer and online marketing director. They discuss audience segmentation, content personalization, and the transformative impact of AI in B2B marketing. Chris emphasizes understanding the target audience and tailoring content to their needs. Data-driven segmentation, including sub-specialties, cohorts, regions, and age groups, is crucial for crafting effective messages. A/B testing is highlighted as a valuable tool to determine optimal strategies for different audience segments. Ethical considerations in AI marketing are explored, such as data privacy and transparency. Crafting relevant messages that drive engagement requires an audience-first approach, considering where people are in their customer journey. Technical writing's role in documenting processes and knowledge transfer is emphasized. Chris shares insights on balancing new technologies with expertise, and the importance of embracing AI responsibly. The interview also touches on Chris' background in web development and his recommended books. About the Guest Christopher is an Online Marketing Director. His background is in web development, but he has been working in email for the last 10+ years. He's worked with agencies and ESPs, and also worked with clients from the American Cancer Association to the Academy Awards, along with running the marketing channel at WebMD. At Medscape WebMD, he oversees the email channel health of physician and healthcare professional users. Connect with Chris Clemente Key Takeaways  - Personalizing content based on audience data is essential for effective marketing campaigns. - Segmentation allows marketers to target specific subgroups and deliver relevant messages. - Understanding the customer lifecycle helps in crafting tailored content for each stage. - Documenting processes and defining target audiences can streamline content curation and distribution. - Adapting to new technologies is crucial for marketers to stay relevant and thrive in their field. - Introverts have valuable contributions and should be recognized for their unique perspectives. - Happiness cannot be solely achieved through money and fame; other factors play a significant role. - Autobiographies and biographies offer insights into personal growth and different life experiences. - Attention to design elements influences A/B testing outcomes and reader engagement. - Storytelling skills are valuable in both screenwriting and marketing contexts. - The impact of AI on industries raises concerns about ownership and creative expression. - LinkedIn provides an effective platform for professionals to connect and network. - The marketing industry is evolving and becoming increasingly complex, requiring ongoing discussions and resources. - The value of continuous learning and adapting to changes in the marketing landscape. Quote   “With AI it's either adapt and succeed, or you're just going to fall by the wayside.”  – Chris Clemente Recommended Resources Books Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking by Susan Cain Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir by Matthew Perry Cinema Speculation by Quentin Tarantino Podcast Scriptnotes Podcast by John August and Craig Mazin Shout-outs Fabio (Manuel) Carneiro – VP of Product at Nordstream John August – Writer  Jordan Elliott - Director of Product at ieso ⁠⁠Connect with Chris Clemente | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on LinkedIn ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠Website⁠⁠⁠⁠ | LinkedIn

In this episode of the Economics Explored podcast, host Gene Tunny chats with John August, Treasurer of the Pirate Party of Australia and host of the Roving Spotlight show on Radio Skid Row in Sydney. Together, they discuss previous episodes on topics such as the invisible hand, Goldbacks, and cryptocurrencies. Listeners are encouraged to share their thoughts on these topics.Please get in touch with any questions, comments and suggestions by emailing us at contact@economicsexplored.com or sending a voice message via https://www.speakpipe.com/economicsexplored. What's covered in EP194[00:02:44] The invisible hand. [00:04:27] Hidden assumptions in economics. [00:08:15] Problem with gambling addiction. [00:14:39] Soviet Union. [00:26:03] Military expenditure and Soviet collapse. [00:30:16] Social media and liberty. [00:33:37] Censorship in social media. [00:39:01] History of currency. [00:40:47] [00:44:25] Central Bank Digital Currency. [00:50:34] Crypto as a solution. [00:55:46] CBDC concerns and conspiracy theories.Links relevant to the conversationJohn's website where you can find his writings and a link to his radio show:https://johnaugust.com.au/Gene's previous conversations with John:https://www.mixcloud.com/Johnorg/roving-spotlight-24-may-22-post-election-all-over-gene-tunny-economics-internet-purchases/https://economicsexplored.com/2022/06/21/advertising-surveillance-capitalism-w-john-august-ep144/https://economicsexplored.com/2022/05/11/the-pirate-partys-economic-policy-platform-w-john-august-ep138-transcript/Recent episodes mentioned in the conversation:https://economicsexplored.com/2023/05/12/govt-wellbeing-budgets-frameworks-useful-or-useless-w-nicholas-gruen-ep187/https://economicsexplored.com/2023/04/29/the-invisible-hand-economic-religious-or-mystical-concept-w-dan-sanchez-fee-ep185/https://economicsexplored.com/2023/04/12/what-are-goldbacks-and-whos-buying-them-e-g-preppers-libertarians-collectors-w-goldback-founder-jeremy-cordon-ep183/https://economicsexplored.com/2023/03/31/odd-way-to-fix-housing-crisis-proposed-by-aus-govt-invest-in-stocks-first-w-dr-cameron-murray-sydney-uni/https://economicsexplored.com/2022/09/18/bitcoin-books-w-author-ex-fighter-pilot-lars-emmerich-ep157/https://economicsexplored.com/2023/03/08/crypto-arbitrage-searcher-dave-belvedere-on-crypto-and-dapps-such-as-wizards-dragons-ep178/https://economicsexplored.com/2022/12/19/aussie-energy-crisis-net-zero-transition-w-josh-stabler-energy-edge-ep170/Thanks to Obsidian Productions for mixing the episode and to the show's sponsor, Gene's consultancy business www.adepteconomics.com.au. Full transcripts are available a few days after the episode is first published at www.economicsexplored.com. Economics Explored is available via Apple Podcasts, Google Podcast, and other podcasting platforms.

Theme Song: “Not Your Fool” written and performed by Alexa Villa; courtesy of Sign From The Universe Entertainment, LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the panel begins by unraveling Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Then, the three discuss Platonic, a new Apple TV+ show starring Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen. Finally, they are joined by Slate staff writer Luke Winkie to examine the surprisingly wholesome journalism storyline found in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.   In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel reflects on their professional lives with a listener question: What is your relationship to your work after you've completed it?  Email us at culturefest@slate.com.  Endorsements: Stephen: “Trespassing on Edith Wharton” by Alissa Bennett for The Paris Review — An essential piece and “exemplary specimen” that's critical to the discussion of what literary criticism looks like in today's digital media age.  Dana: “The Dress Diary of Mrs. Anne Sykes” by Kate Strasdin for The Paris Review — An excerpt from the fashion historian's upcoming book The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe. A fantastic glimpse into the Victorian period, what people wore then, and what they did in those clothes.  Julia: Holedown — A mindless, addictive iPhone game that Julia describes as “Asteroid, but down instead of up.” This endorsement comes from John August, the host of her favorite podcasts, Scriptnotes.    Outro music is "Back to Silence" by OTE Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong.  __ This Pride Month, make an impact by helping Macy's and The Trevor Project on their mission to fund life-saving suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, the panel begins by unraveling Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. Then, the three discuss Platonic, a new Apple TV+ show starring Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen. Finally, they are joined by Slate staff writer Luke Winkie to examine the surprisingly wholesome journalism storyline found in The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom.   In the exclusive Slate Plus segment, the panel reflects on their professional lives with a listener question: What is your relationship to your work after you've completed it?  Email us at culturefest@slate.com.  Endorsements: Stephen: “Trespassing on Edith Wharton” by Alissa Bennett for The Paris Review — An essential piece and “exemplary specimen” that's critical to the discussion of what literary criticism looks like in today's digital media age.  Dana: “The Dress Diary of Mrs. Anne Sykes” by Kate Strasdin for The Paris Review — An excerpt from the fashion historian's upcoming book The Dress Diary: Secrets from a Victorian Woman's Wardrobe. A fantastic glimpse into the Victorian period, what people wore then, and what they did in those clothes.  Julia: Holedown — A mindless, addictive iPhone game that Julia describes as “Asteroid, but down instead of up.” This endorsement comes from John August, the host of her favorite podcasts, Scriptnotes.    Outro music is "Back to Silence" by OTE Podcast production by Cameron Drews. Production assistance by Kat Hong.  __ This Pride Month, make an impact by helping Macy's and The Trevor Project on their mission to fund life-saving suicide prevention services for LGBTQ youth. Go to macys.com/purpose to learn more.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we tackle questions from our March Webinar titled The Secret To Getting Ahead in Hollywood. We host a webinar every month. Register for the next one using the link below.Show NotesFree Writing Webinar - https://michaeljamin.com/op/webinar-registration/Michael's Online Screenwriting Course - https://michaeljamin.com/courseFree Screenwriting Lesson - https://michaeljamin.com/freeJoin My Watchlist - https://michaeljamin.com/watchlistAuto-Generated TranscriptsMichael Jamin:You're listening to Screenwriters Need to hear this with Michael Jamin.Everyone, it's Michael Jamin. Welcome back for another episode of Screenwriters. Need to hear this. We're doing a q and a, another q and a as if you're new here. So at once a month, Phil and I, we do a free webinar on screenwriting. And sometimes we talk about writing, sometimes we talk about breaking into the business. Sometimes we talk about at Get industry types to attend your event that's coming up. Each one, each month is a different topic and it's about an hour long and it's free. But we got a lot of questions at the end and it can only have time to answer so many of them. So here are the ones that I missed. So thank you all for coming, for listening. Here are the ones that I couldn't get to.Phil Hudson:Yeah. And this is for the March webinar. And we also have the April webinar questions to get through too, because oh, weMichael Jamin:Got some many questions. A lot,Phil Hudson:Lot of questions.Michael Jamin:The March webinar, what was on, I'm so sorry Phil, I'm putting you on the spot. What was that one for?Phil Hudson:Let's, let's see if I can pull it off. One second.Michael Jamin:Yeah,Phil Hudson:Pressures on. Ding to, I've got it up. The secret to getting ahead in Hollywood. Four things you must know.Michael Jamin:Yeah, the secret to getting ahead. Okay, so here are the questions. Yeah,Phil Hudson:So hit me, Phil. Now to be clear, there are several, there were a lot of questions here. I mean, there were like 70 questions we didn't get to. That webinar is an hour long and it's dedicated to 15 to 20 minutes of q and a. And you actually, you try to push through a lot of the stuff to get to the questions. And despite that, we still have so many. So I have removed duplicate questions. So in our last episode, doing the February q and a, you answered a bunch of these and there are other questions we've already talked about on the podcast or you have talked about on your social media. So if your question is not here and we don't answer it, apologize. But that's already been discussed pretty in depth. So lots of great content just go to at Michael Jamin writer to learn more or look at past podcast episodes related to your topic because we've covered a lot of this alreadyMichael Jamin:@MichaelJaminWriter on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook.Phil Hudson:So yeah, @MichaelJaminWriter, right?Michael Jamin:Just making sure. No, I'm sorry. I dunno,Phil Hudson:My own name. Mi... Michael Jamin, some other guy.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Phil Hudson:So cool. Well, question number one, Robert Cowie asked, is there such a thing as a perfect script or is it in the eye of the beholder?Michael Jamin:No. Such a thing. As a matter. As a matter of fact. And it's a great question. I remember working on, just Shoot Me, this was my first staff writing job. And some of the older, more experienced writers, great writers in that show, people Hall I'll interview on the podcast. They turned a script. And I remember reading it thinking, oh my God, this is hilarious. This is gold. And then they would get notes from the Showrun. I'm like, w w what? Why are they getting, this is perfect. And you can always improve. You could always make it be better or slightly different. The Showrun runner was looking for something a little different, but there's no such thing, no writer ever turned a script. You could be Shakespeare, you would get notes. It's just how it works. So there's no such thing as a perfect script.Phil Hudson:Writing is rewriting, and eventually you reach to a point where you stop because you could just spend forever trying to make it better. And then five years from now, you're going to look back and think, that was horrible. I could have done better. Yeah, because you're progressing in the art, right? Yeah. You use Picasso as an example all the time about mastery. And in the course, I think he even show examples of his work as a teenager moving into his twenties. And then he becomes so good at the rules, he can bend the rules and become something truly unique. And that's the path of mastery in any craft.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Yeah. Cool. And that's actually part of the fear as I was talking to my wife Cynthia this morning, cause I'm putting, getting ready to put my book out, a paper orchestra, and I'm like, once I put it out, I can't stop tinkering with it. I'm done. I no can no longer tinker with it. I'm done. And that's going to be a little difficult for me because I can't, there, there's always things that I wish I could do different when I look it over and it's like, no, you got to let it go. And now she's like, well, that's what your second book is for, is to do things differently in your second book, but you got to let it go at some point.Phil Hudson:Yeah, excellent point. Jenin, Macumba music. And I apologize if I mispronounce that I have a pitch meeting with a big league company. I am terrified. Any tips on how a pitch meeting should go?Michael Jamin:You should pitch them what you think it should be and then you should be open to hearing their ideas and incorporate their ideas and make them feel ownership in it. Because if you say, no, no, no, this is my way, the highway, well, they're not going to have any pride of ownership, but if they bounce an idea off you and they go, oh, and that excites you. Oh, that's interesting. Yes. Even if it is your idea, but they're just rephrasing it. I love that. Make them feel like it's their idea. Make 'em feel like you're being heard, that they're listening, that you're listening to them. That way they will fight more because it's their own, now it's theirs. So they'll fight for it. So 'em in them inPhil Hudson:It's a collaborative medium, despite the fact that you're the writer. It's many hands, lots of people, lots of iterations of it. What gets submitted and is not what you shoot. What you shoot is not necessarily what's going to air because there's editing, there's lots of iterations of this.Michael Jamin:And I tend to fall in love with whatever draft I'm working on, and then we'll get a note that's terrible and I'll do the note and I'm like, oh, this is pretty good because I fall in love with whatever. And then my partner will say, don't you remember how much you hated this note.Phil Hudson:That's so funny. One note, it's a bit of a tangent, but I think is an important note here. You've said in the past what you do when you're doing a new version is every day when you sit down, you save a new draft of your script so that you can always go back and you keep that. That's not directly related to pitching, but I think it does speak to keeping your versions so that you can see how it changes and grow and go back.Michael Jamin:Yeah, that's a good point. I'm going to talk more about that. But the truth is, I save him to make myself feel better, but I almost never look at 'em. I almost never go back to them. ButPhil Hudson:Glad whenMichael Jamin:You have to allows me the, but it gives me the freedom to tear it apart. I go, I still have it, I have it. If I want it now, I can just tear it apart and feel good. But if I didn't save it, I probably wouldn't want to let go of it.Phil Hudson:Yeah, it's playing. That's what your wife taught me in acting classes we're we're going to play. Yeah, right. Cool. Bobby Kin, excuse me, Bobby Kenon, any thoughts for making the transition from playwriting to screenwriting or television writing?Michael Jamin:Well, it's good for you that you're doing that story. Story. What difference does it make whether you put it on a stage or a screen, a large screen or a small screen, who cares? It's funny, when I'm writing for television, do you think I care if someone watches it on 40 inch television or on their six inch iPhone? Do I care? It doesn't change the way I'm writing it? Maybe they'll be able to see less, but I don't really, that's not my business. That's their problem. So it doesn't really change anything. It tips from becoming a playwright. Well, obviously now you have more sets to play with because on in a play, you literally can't have too many sets because where are you going to put 'em all? How are you going to get stage them? And so plays tend to be a little more talky, whereas a TV show or a movie tends to be like, well, let's wa what are we watching now? Oh, the characters on a rollercoaster. Okay, you can't do that in a play. But is story structure a story structure? And if that's something you want to learn, for sure, we got a course, you've go to michaeljamin.com/course, and we teach story and story structure. SoPhil Hudson:Yeah, there's another question in here and it's kind of buried, so I apologize. I'm not going to find the person who said it, but they asked the question. Oh, here it is. Mark Mohawk. And I think that's a fake name. It's not really. Yeah, mark Mahaw. I was going to say, yeah, I, I'm worried I'm saying something.Michael Jamin:I was going to make a joke about his name.Phil Hudson:Can you talk aboutMichael Jamin:Mark, what is itPhil Hudson:In? I think this relates to that, talking about different sets and things. When you talk more about shooting things on your own, when shooting diy, would you prioritize dialogue for budget purposes?Michael Jamin:Well, I prioritize story. The priority is you could shoot everything on your phone. The only thing you have to have is good sound. And I would, that's critical. If the sounds bad, I don't care. You don't want to, if I'm hearing wind noises more than the dialogue, if I'm hearing the background actor of more than the foreground actor, that's a problem. So sound is really important. More so than camera, work lens with camera, you're going to shoot it on, but prioritize dialogue. You should prioritize tell telling a good story. So if you could tell a story with no dialogue, that's fine too.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Aaron Sorkin, lots and lots of dialogue. Yeah. Lots of other writers. No dialogue. I think the movie Drive, have you seen Drive?Michael Jamin:Loved it. Very fluff. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Blew my, blew my mind. Dude. Barely talks. Barely talks. Yeah. But it's so emotive and so expressive and it's just so masterfully shot. Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying if it calls for it or if that's your style, and maybe that will develop your style. I think in film school, it was an indie film school that I went to, and they focused a lot on that. It's like what assets and resources do you have? And utilize the tools that you have to make what you can. Yeah. That might be a park bench. And you've talked about that as an example in the webinar you did.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Phil Hudson:Park bench. Two people talking could be boring. Put it in the living room. It's one of the greatest shows ever made.Michael Jamin:Yeah. All in the family, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yep.Phil Hudson:Cool. All right. This is another one of those dub boy, d a u boy. B o y I. Sorry, I slotted that. All right. Your recommendation for new writers to be good or contribute in a writer's room?Michael Jamin:What's my recommendation? Yeah,Well just know that you're not getting paid what the more senior writers are getting paid. And so, God, I was just listening to, who was I listening to? Saying the same exact thing, which is relax. I mean, you're a new writer. Just relax, soak up, learn, be a sponge. Don't feel like you have to argue, don't feel like you have to contribute too much. Y you're Jo, you're going to be white knuckling it the first several months, if not seasoned, because you're going to be in way over your head. So just absorb, don't feel compelled that you have to contribute as much as everybody else. My feeling, because just talking to hear yourself talk is not helpful to the rest of us.Phil Hudson:I was talking to a friend who is a staff writer on his first season, and he said, I asked him how it went and asked him if he was nervous to talk. And he's like, what I found interesting is I knew better than to talk very much only when I had a good idea, but I didn't feel that the people just above him, the story editor and senior story editor were talking enough, they were not contributing enough. Oh,Michael Jamin:They were not.Phil Hudson:And feedback from the showrunner, he said, was that the showrunner agreed that those people were not carrying their weight. So at what point, what's the transition point? At what point do you feel like you should be contributing more?Michael Jamin:And it's really hard to know. I mean, that's why it's so important. AndPhil Hudson:Maybe we should clarify for people too. What are those levels, right? Because it's story, it's staff writer, story editor, senior story editor,Michael Jamin:No, executive storyPhil Hudson:Editor. Executive story editor. And then it's was itMichael Jamin:ScriptPhil Hudson:Co-producer,Michael Jamin:Producer,Phil Hudson:Producer. Go ahead.Michael Jamin:Super. Then supervising producer, then co-executive producer, then executive producer. And so the higher up you go, the more you're expected to contribute. And that's why in the beginning, I didn't even know what a good pitch was. I didn't know what a good pitch was versus a bad pitch. The more you learn, the more, yeah. I mean, that's one, when we talk about it in the course, I think one of the valuable parts of the course is hopefully when you go through it, is you get a sense of what a good idea is and what's what story structure is. So you should know you damn well should be known at the end of the course. What constitutes a good pitch? What does this be? What should that beat be? What is a story? How does a story unfold? How does the scene unfold? This is all important stuff that, so you're not just throwing out ideas. I think a lot of problems, Hey, what if, well, we're not pitching, we're not playing. What if right now we're actually trying to break the story. And we're not free reigning right now. Now we're further down the road.Phil Hudson:Just a note, note on the value of that segment about knowing what a good idea is this season in the Tacoma FD writer's room, when I was sitting there, I'm trying not to talk other than I'm answering a question or providing research, because that's kind of my role. And I remember you were all trying to figure out what are we going to do for the cold open of this episode? And you were thinking of an interesting reason to get our firefighters there. And for whatever reason, this story popped in with my friend had a roommate who jabbed an EpiPen into his leg backwards, and it hooked into his thumb, but he was super drunk, and so firefighters had to come. And I just pitched that and I just remember everyone be like, that'll work. And they wrote it up and that was the working cold open. And it changed and it didn't work because they did something very similar later. But I was like, oh, perfect. That was a good idea. Proper time to bring it up. And it worked like that, right? Then that came from your course.Michael Jamin:Oh good. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Cause I wouldn't have pitched anything. First of all, you say don't talk if you're an assistant, but secondly, I did. I knew it was a good pitch because of your course, and that's why I opened my mouth and it was on the board for a week. So yeah. Yeah. Made me feel warm and fuzzy.Michael Jamin:Absolutely.Phil Hudson:Awesome. Lorenzo, can you name a couple of screenwriters you respect and you think could be a good source of technical mastery?Michael Jamin:Well, John Hughes, I, I don't know him personally or, I dunno if this person talking about people I know personally. I mean, I love John Hughes. The Breakfast Club is a play, is a stage play, but it was a movie, but it feels like a stage play. So it very talky and wonderful and so authentic. And it really felt, he remembered what it was like to be a teenager.Phil Hudson:All of his movies capture that time. I mean, it's a John Hughes movie. You know what it is when it's coming up becauseMichael Jamin:Yeah. So is there anybody better than him? That's my opinion. No, but that's the style of writing that I like. So Sure.Phil Hudson:Michael Scott, and I think, I don't know if you want to bring this up, but occasionally when you do the webinar, you will give away a free access, a free seat in your course. Lifetime access.Michael Jamin:Yeah, that's a good reason to show up.Phil Hudson:Michael Scott won. Michael Scott was our winner. Oh,Michael Jamin:That's right. He won. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Yeah. So Michael Scott said, do you recommend attending PGA West Producers Guild of America events and networking with showrunners? I think he might mean wga a West.Michael Jamin:Yeah. I've never been to a PGA Producer's Guild event. I don't even know what kind of events they have. And show runner goPhil Hudson:The West, I think means he, he's means wga a, but Michael, I'm sorry. I've forgot that wrong.Michael Jamin:Well, I would, I'd go, but I wouldn't go for a net. I wouldn't go to network. Net networking is gross. People smell it a mile away. I say network with people at your own level, which might be which, whatever level you're at, that's who you network with. Don't network. You don't have to kiss the ass of the show of some showrunner. He or she will smell it a mile away network with people at your own because they rise up. They'll rise up as assistants become whatever, agents, managers, writers, that's your friend group. That's your circle.Phil Hudson:Yeah. I've talked in the past about the Writer's Guild of America Foundation who puts on these events. They have this thing called the Golden Ticket. And when I first moved here, that was what I did. I paid the money for that, and it got me a front row seat at all of these events. And what that allowed me to do was just have a better learning experience and the opportunity to have conversations with these people if I wanted to. And I remember I went to the WGA in Hollywood, and I was riding the elevator up, and I wrote up with John August, and I had met him at Sundance where I was doing translation work. So I was like, oh, hey John. And he was like, oh, hey. And I was like, yeah, I was the Sundance translator. He was like, oh yeah, that's right.And he was like, you enjoying la? And I was like, yeah. And that's all I said to him. And it's cause it just wasn't the right time to attack the guy who's had to go talk on stage and read the room. I understood dynamics, just acknowledge I knew who he was and we'd met before. That was it. That was the most networking I did at any of those events outside of the other people who had paid for the golden ticket and because we were talking to each other every week and sitting there and going to the festival that they put on, I met a lot more people through doing those things.Michael Jamin:That's your net. That's networking. It's not gross. It's not, Hey, what can you do for me? Hey, let's just chat. Yeah. We have something in common.Phil Hudson:Cool. Danny Casone, I'm probably messing that up. How do you develop better writing skills and how do you find someone to bounce your ideas off of?Michael Jamin:Well, the one thing we have in our course is a private Facebook group, and those people trade scripts, and they've all been through my course, so they have some degree of knowledge. So that's a great way to do it. But what was the first part? How do youPhil Hudson:Develop better writing skills?Michael Jamin:Oh yeah. You take classes. That's how you do it. You learn. I How are you expected to do it? How are you expected to do it on your own when you don't know? Yeah. Read. That's why you take a course.Phil Hudson:Read, read and apply. That's the other thing is you can get too caught up in learning how to do something. And that is a form of procrastination because you're not sitting down to execute. You're going to learn a lot more by executing and reading it and realizing how bad it is than you would learning and learning and learning and not sitting down and just doing the work. So yeah, don't procrastinate, just do the work and you'll learn a ton. But as far as ideas, like you said, it's the private Facebook group or the people you're around, all those things. Someone else asked in here, although I'm not a member of the course, can I sign up for the private Facebook group as long as I'm carrying my weight and contributing,Michael Jamin:No, sorry. Sorry.Phil Hudson:You got a lot of those requests.Michael Jamin:Sorry. Because that's just the role to get in. It's like the people who put skin in the game, they've been to the lessons, they're contributing with their knowledge with what they've learned. It's not social hour. It's like it's class. So it's like saying, Hey, can I just go to med school and contribute? Well, no, you're either in or you're out. Yeah.Phil Hudson:The And the quality of every interaction in that group is better because everyone is coming at it from the same foundation.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Yeah. I do think they're very serious. I do think the quality of the conversations in that private Facebook group, cause I see it, the comments and I believe comments, it's very high. It's much higher than, say, way higher than Reddit, way higher than some public Facebook group. It's way, hi. It's just higher.Phil Hudson:One example I'll give on that, A friend of mine was like, you got to join this Facebook group. It's awesome. And I joined and I was just trying to introduce myself. I was like, Hey, I'm Phil. I'm new the group. I just wanted to share this thing that I heard about Steve Spielberg said that the opening shot of every film is a metaphor for the whole thing. And I got berated by 50 people saying, I thought everybody knew that this is, what do you mean you're just learning? And I was like, you guys are dicks. I'm out. And I just left the group because I was like, you are not my people and I do not want to be in here with you.Michael Jamin:Yeah, there's a people, yeah, exactly. People on social media could be dicks and I don't see any of that going on. Maybe because I think they know. I'll kick 'em out if I see thatPhil Hudson:You will. Another on that note. So one thing you and I have to do for the course is there's this whole thing that you did with me, which is coming up with an idea, breaking an idea, writing the idea, and getting a pilot. And it was a pilot episode of Tacoma fd, and we still have to go over that final script because someone was like, Uhland. And the group was like, Hey, Phil, did you guys ever, did you finish it? I was like, I did. I need a, it's printed. I just need to send it to Michael so he can give me notes.Michael Jamin:Yeah, we'll do that'll talk.Phil Hudson:And he was like, well, I was just revisiting and I always thought this be this moment at the end of your act too. And I was like, dang, that's better than what I wrote. And then he was like, then maybe this is how the Eddie comes back. I was like, dang it, that's better than what I wrote. Right? This is just, they're thinking about story at the same way. And I was like, I learned some valuable things off of those two comments, and he hasn't even read the script.Michael Jamin:So yeah, it's a good group.Phil Hudson:Yeah. All right. Manola films, can you please talk about the show Bible? What is a show bible and do we need 'em, I think is the ultimate question.Michael Jamin:No, I don't think you need, no. The show Bible, when we work on a show is the writer assistant or the S script supervisor will assemble the episodes that we've shot and put it together and for whatever reason, whoever needs to look at it. I'm like, who wants to look at this? When you're pitching, you think you need a show, Bob, because you want to sell a show, but you're not going to sell a show. So what are you worried about? Your writing sample? Your script is a writing sample. It's a calling card. It's for you to get more work. Why put the, you're not going to, what are you going to do with the Bible not pitching anybody? And if you do pitch someone and they want a Bible, fine, they'll put together a Bible. But that's not what the point of your main goal right now is to have a killer script as a writing sample. That's hard enough. Forget about a Bible.Phil Hudson:There's another writer who's pretty active on TikTok and social media, and he was talking about a Bible, and I asked him, I was like, what do you think the value of the show Bible is? Because I've heard I shouldn't need one. He's like, well, you got to know where your story's going. So when you pitch, you can answer the question, what's where are we going? What's going on? So understand that much about it if you're in the opportunity to sell it. But he wasn't advocating for what I think the pros and the experts are referring to as a bi bible, which is this character and his backstory and his arc through seasons one through 10. And this is the, it's not the detailed, it's just know where you're going with your story. There are also some really interesting Bibles story, Bibles that are available online that I won't link to because they're not our ip. They're not something that you want to link out to, but you can search for 'em and find them. That again, is literally what you said. It's something that an assistant does for the show.Michael Jamin:SoPhil Hudson:Monica, and by the way, it's to help the writers, the new staff writers. We had new writers on Tacoma FD this season, and they were asking me for that, and we didn't have a Bible, and so I had to send 'em all the scripts and they had to read through all the scripts instead of just reading a bible to understand what stories have been told, who the charactersMichael Jamin:Are. They should be reading the scripts anyway. They should. That's the thing. There youPhil Hudson:Go. Yeah. Okay. I'm putting that on you guys. If you're listening. Sorry, you didn't complain when I sent you the script. Yeah. Monica B, what about if you work in a different area of Hollywood, for example, does that experience help when you are ready to pitch a script?Michael Jamin:No. No, it doesn't. I mean, it's great that you're working in Hollywood. Maybe you can make some connections, but if you are working in post and you don't want to, if you want to be a screenwriter, just know not where we, that's not the bullpen. That's not where we're pulling talent from. You're close, the closer you can get physically to the job you want, the better. So you're getting close, but eventually you want to get in on the production side, you want to get closer to the writers. It's good that you have that job, but it's not a transferrable skill.Phil Hudson:I've turned down those jobs because it's not the direction I want to go. Okay.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Phil Hudson:So Flyboy 2 43 is starting out writing as a hobby part of the way to become a professional in your spare time if you're at the bottom.Michael Jamin:Yeah, you should be writing. Yeah. If you enjoy writing, you for sure if you like writing, but if you don't like writing, if you're not writing as a hobby, then what makes you think you're going to like it as a profession?Phil Hudson:Philip Mullings Jr. Can you use scripts that you've written on a show as a staff writer in your portfolio?Michael Jamin:Well, I don't have a portfolio. None of us have a portfolio. We just have writing. We have scripts that we've written. So if you were creditPhil Hudson:Staff, right, you have a credit that your agent's putting out there.Michael Jamin:Yeah. But if you were, say you were on a let's staff writer on floppy in the Boys on the Disney Channel, and you wrote a script, fantastic. But if you're trying to get work on some other show, a sophisticated adult show you're floppy in the boys script that was produced is not going to be of any service. So you know, have to have a writing sample that will match the tone of the show you want to work on.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Got it. Alex Zen Draw comics. What do screenwriters do when they're having health problems that may hinder their writing pursuits?Michael Jamin:Well, what are you going to do? I mean, if your health comes first, what are you going to do? You have to be healthy enough to write and healthy enough to work. So that's a problem. What do you do? You know, focus on getting healthy.Phil Hudson:I wanted to include this one because it's an area we haven't talked much about, which may be like the W G A health benefits and some of those benefits that you get from being in the guild. I can tell you, as someone who previously held an insurance license, disability insurance is probably a good idea for most people, which is if you are unable to perform your work for which you get paid, you can get a percentage of that pay. Now, that is not an endorsement for anybody or anything, but it is something to consider for every adult. If I get a hand, if I get handicapped or something, how am I going to pay my bills?Michael Jamin:Yeah. It's just very hard to prove disability if you're a writer, because as long as you have a functioning brain, you can still write. So disability's easier if you're working on a construction because you can't, how are you going to climb a ladder? But if you're hard to prove if you're a writer,Phil Hudson:Interesting. As far as the WGA benefits go for the health plan, I mean, what does that look like? And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but you have to earn a certain number of points or pay a certain amount into the Guild Fund every year to maintain your benefits.Michael Jamin:The health benefits being in the Writer's Guild gets you health insurance as well as pension, but you have to earn a certain number of points every year to continue qualifying for them.Phil Hudson:And if you don't qualify, is that like a Cobra situation where you're paying out of pocket for those benefits or you get youMichael Jamin:Accrue points so you have a certain, the more you work, the more points, and then if you're unemployed for a year, usually you just draw this point bank that you have and that'll deplete itself after pretty quickly depending on how long you've, your history is. And then after that, you can have a COBRA situation where you get to pay out of pocket,Phil Hudson:Which is expensive. Yeah, but prioritize your health. That's something I'm learning the older I get, especially having children now and people who rely on me is your health is the number one thing, because without it, you cannot provide for your family. You cannot do anything. So Right. Make time for that. All right, Peter Cat, this feels very Russian. Peter, p i e t e r k e t e l a a R. I apologize to everybody for my poor phonetics. What kind of stock do you put in a blacklist score of eight for a pilot in hand already?Michael Jamin:I have no idea what an eight means or what, I barely know what the blacklist is, so I'm going to say, what kind of stock do I put in that zero considering I don't even know the question.Phil Hudson:I knew that was going to be the answer to the question, which is why I included it. Because for those of us who are what we call pre WGA people trying to break into the industry, we put a lot of stock in the blacklist and what that means. But I had a volunteer at Sundance that I met years ago. She had a script that one was on the blacklist, and she had meetings about it, and then she rewrote the whole thing and changed it all up and spent two years focusing on that script instead of walking away from it and working on another good piece of material. And a lot of my conversations were pitching things to her because of your course that ultimately she was like, well, that was in my first draft. That was in my first draft. And she's just getting lots of bad feedback. So the points don't matter. The listing can get you meetings with people, but ultimately you still got to be able to put in the work, and you have to have multiple samplesMichael Jamin:Because multiple samplesPhil Hudson:That might get you into a room, but what else do you got?Michael Jamin:You tell me you got an eight or whatever, or 108 on blacklist. I don't really care. Let me just read the script. I'll decide whether I think the script is good or not. I get to decide that and whoever, whoever's reading it gets to decide. So yeah, it's not like, oh, this person's got an eight right this way. No, I don't care whether you got a zero. If it's I read it, I decide.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Another question from Peter, this was from the webinar where you talked about networking should be at your level or beneath you, right? Because yeah, and we talkedMichael Jamin:About this. That's why I feel this episode. It's my opinion.Phil Hudson:What should my beneath me look like?Michael Jamin:Oh, well, I mean, it's anyone, it's, I mean, I don't know. ThisPhil Hudson:Might be two, taking two as too. So lemme just throw the other one out. What is something that is beneath me? What is something I shouldn't spend my time doing?Michael Jamin:Well, right. Nothing's beneath you. So if your neighbor is saying, Hey, I want to shoot a movie in my backyard, sure, I'll do it. I'll help if I'm just above that level. Yeah, not, it's like, because anybody who's showing any kind of ambition, who's just trying a student at a film school, whatever, get involved in them. If they're going to get out of film school, if they want to stay in the industry, they'll stay in the industry and then they'll work their way up and then you'll be right there with them because you're helping them under their projects. And maybe they'll help you on theirs. That's your class, that's your graduating class. So is anything beneath you? No. As long as you have the time to do it, get involved these, because no one, it's so interesting when I talk about stories from my past, I think it's easy to, and I talk about, oh, this person I know this famous person, this or this successful person, that successful person at the time, they weren't successful. They were just people, and most of them didn't mount to anything in the industry, but some of them did. And that's, some of them did. That's it. So you know, get involved in everybody.Phil Hudson:But it goes back to the thing that's a common theme on our podcast, which is serve everybody. Give as much as you can without any expectation of receiving. Because if you're doing it because you, you're betting all your cards on that horse, everything you got on that horse to win the race, and then they fall out. Well, yeah, there's some manipulation and some self-serving that goes there, and intention has a smell, so we, you're going to stink. It's not good.Michael Jamin:I worked in a show called, I was a PA on a show called Hearts of Fire, which was Marky Post in John John Ritter, and also Billy Bob Thornton was on it actually. And it was a Linda Bloodworth Thomason show. And so there was two young staff writers in that show, which I kind of hung out with them a bit because they were closer to my age and they were, because they were staff writers. Maybe they're a story editor, I don't remember, but they're low. They were low and very low in the totem pole. And I hung out with them because they were closer to my level and they were nice to me. Those guys turned out to be David Cohan and Max Muk, who created Will and Grace years later. I didn't know that at the time. They were just a couple guys my age, a couple years older, and that who I didn't have to kiss anybody's butt, they, I was at pa, so they were definitely above my level, but still they weren't setting in the world on fire at thePhil Hudson:Time. Yeah.Michael Jamin:Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You could unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not going to spam you, and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.Phil Hudson:All right. Taylor Cole, I have had a consistent career as a film producer. How can I best transition into television? I'm assuming television writing.Michael Jamin:Oh, yeah. With TV writing, how can you be? Basically, you're where everyone else is. My answer to you is the same as everyone else. Write scripts, show them. If you have a movie that did really well, give a hit movie that you should have no trouble. You should, people fi, if you made a movie that no one saw, you're going to have a problem. If you made a hit movie where there a breakout at Sundance, people are going to find you. People are going to find you. And that's how I've been doing the whole webinar. I don't want to say too much because I, I've, I've coming up, I want to talk about examples of this, about people who breakout people and how they broke out. And I'm going to talk more about it. And so sign up for one of my webinars that michaeljamin.com/webinar. But, cause I'm going to talk about this for about an hour, but how can you, my advice to you is the same as everyone else. I hope you're, you're following me everywhere and just soaking it up because it's no different for you.Phil Hudson:Yeah, there you go. Shane Gamble. I live in New York City. Do you think it is better to move to LA or should I focus on the network I've currently built here?Michael Jamin:Where's Hollywood? And Hollywood is in la? There is some, obviously there's theater, there's probably more theater in New York than it is in LA that interests you. In the end, you're probably going to have to come out to Hollywood. There's not much of a network out there. This is where it is. I'm from New York. I moved out here because this is where Hollywood is, so yeah.Phil Hudson:Yep. Now there's writing there too, but if you don't have the network there in the writing space,Michael Jamin:Some shows are shot there. But the writing, most of the time the writing's done here. 30 Rock was shot and written in New York, but that's only because Tina Fay didn't want to leave New York. Everybody else does it here.Phil Hudson:Yeah.Michael Jamin:So you might get a job. Let's say you've got a job in New York writing on 30 Rock. Great. How are you going to make a career? Because that show is done. It's not on the air anymore.Phil Hudson:Good point, right? Ariba, how do I work through the problem of getting stuck between my script? Any exercises that I could help work through that I'm currently writing a short film and I find myself stuck midway.Michael Jamin:You don't understand story structure. You didn't break your story cro correctly, which is why you're stuck, which is why you don't know what your characters are going to do. You don't know what to do it. So I don't have any quick fixes for you. I could teach you story structure. I could teach you, which is what the course is. No, I don't have a tip. I teach, I teach you how to become a writer. There's no tips. It's not a tip situation.Phil Hudson:And the course is currently closed. Maybe it's not. When this comes up, probably will be. But the course is currently closed and we open it up once a month at this point for people who want to join. So yeah, best way to know about when is to sign up for the webinars because there's some specials in the webinar and you have a chance to win the course. But also, typically I can not going to promise that every time. I don't want to speak for you, Michael, but yeah, that is typically the best way to find out when the course is going to reopen.Michael Jamin:Yeah. Yeah. But yes, unfortunately I don't have any tips. I don't have any exercises. I, I'm going to teach you how to become a writer. I, I'm going to teach you how to write basically if you want, want to take the course.Phil Hudson:One of our really early episodes of the podcast talked about writer's block and about how, sorry, you're a professional and you talked about that recently on another webinar as well. So that's some place to look for some advice on this as well, is work through it, make it happen. But you got to learn the story structure.Michael Jamin:Yeah.Phil Hudson:Cool. K M C, if I'm writing an entire series, are the accumulation of episodes enough or should I spread out to other writings too?Michael Jamin:Why we write an entire series? That's first question.Phil Hudson:That is advice.Michael Jamin:You got to write one scriptPhil Hudson:That is advice people get, Michael, is you should write an entire series.Michael Jamin:No, write one script. Write one episode that just killer. Write one. Just one. A lot of times, and we were talking, we talked about this privately where someone wrote an entire series and you read it and you're go, no, you just basically took the contents of your pilot and script and spaced it off on 10 episodes. So you have structure 10 episodes of they No Structures. They have 10 episodes of garbage, of they have 10 episodes of Boring when they should have just made one episode. That was great.Phil Hudson:Their intuition for what an entire series is was literally a pilot and everything else was just pipe and unnecessary, confusing, meandering and a lot of, I think one of the early critiques I got in writing, and I've heard many times and felt many times for other people, is a lot of things happening, but no one's doing anything.Michael Jamin:Yeah, yeah. You know, don't want your writing to be that. Learn. There's studies, study your screenwriting. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. So study what a story is. Oh,Phil Hudson:So write a good poem becauseMichael Jamin:If you had known what a story is, if that person had known what a story is, they wouldn't have done that. They wouldn't have wasted all that time.Phil Hudson:Well, I gave him the notes and at the end he's like, you, because I'd only read the pilot and I was like, well, this might be this and this is kind of how structure, what your pilot would be. He's like, you just described my full season. I was like, yeah, man. Yeah. SorryMichael Jamin:Dude. Yeah. Sorry. You screwed up. Yeah.Phil Hudson:Aaron Brown. What are your favorite examples of screenplays We should read?Michael Jamin:Anything you should read. Good. You should read bad. You should read if it's good. You got a stack on screen, please?Phil Hudson:Yeah. I've got Ladybird ready, player one, aliens, which is one of the most popular scripts I think people are recommended to read. James Cameron Unforgiven, which is the script that famously sat inside of blanking on his name.Michael Jamin:Was it Clint Eastwood?Phil Hudson:Clint Eastwood, yeah. Sat, he bought it, put it in his desk, and then waited, I think like 20 years till he was old enough to play the part. And one in Oscar one multiple Oscars. I got Drive, which we talked about recently. This is one of my favorite scripts, Armageddon, which was a big block buster, but just a bunch of scripts that I think were stood out. But I think when Oscar season comes out, the studios release their nominated scripts and you can find 'em publicly. So that's a great place to go to find really good stuff. These are what the industry says are the best scripts right now.Michael Jamin:And you can also go to the Writer's Guild in West Hollywood, or actually it's HollywoodPhil Hudson:Fairfax. Yeah, li It's in Hollywood. Fairfax. Yeah.Michael Jamin:They have a public library. You don't have to be a member, you have to make an an appointment. That's it. And you can read for free a bunch of scripts. Read good ones, read bad ones. If you read a bad one, why don't I like this? And don't say it because it's boring. No. What exactly do you not like about this? If you see a good one, why do you want, what do you like about this script? Why do you want to turn the page? What makes you want to and be specific, not because it's compelling, say it. No, because what about it? It makes you want to turn the page and so you can learn from good or bad.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Awesome. We got a few more questions here and then we'll wrap it up. Michael. Yeah. Kaya, Kaya link, again, probably ruining your name. I apologize. How long should these sample scripts be? Wait, how long should a sample sample be?Michael Jamin:If you're writing a half hour or an hour long, it should be match, whatever. If you're a drama writer, it's going to be an hourPhil Hudson:There. There's a note at the back end of this. It says, feature, should I be writing fe? I'm putting this together fe Should I be writing features every time or should I try TV scripts and all those different things.Michael Jamin:I think you should write whatever you want to write, whatever kind of writer you want to be. Personally, I think you'll learn more from being a television writer than you'll. You'll learn more in a year than you would learn in 10 years. Writing features just because of you're learning. You're working alongside other writers who are experienced. It's like, I don't even know why you wouldn't want to be a TV writer first and then move into feature writing if that interests you. But you'll learn so much from working aside alongside professional writers. There's so much to be gained from that. Whereas if you're working in features home alone, good luck. Good luck.Phil Hudson:On that note too, the industry is focused on TV right now, not features, and they're really a handful of people writing features. Yeah. It's not to say you can't be that, and there's always the indie feature side of things that you can do to write, but I mean, effectively, this is the same advice you gave on TikTok recently on that clip you did, right? Starting television and then move, expandMichael Jamin:Out. I think so, yeah.Phil Hudson:And Michael's got a lot of great stuff. We talked about it before, but go check about @MichaelJaminWriter on TikTok and Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and everywhere. Yeah. All right. Gianna Armin trout. How should you study other TV shows to learn story structure, breaking a story, et cetera? What should I be looking for when I'm watching other shows?Michael Jamin:Yeah, I, and that's exactly what the course goes into. I mean, the problem is if you want to just watch, go ahead. Watch as much as you can, but what you're not going to know what to look for, you're not going to know. That's the problem. And the same thing with reading. I think it's, you're just probably not going to know. And so I explained in the course, this is what you need to be looking for. These are the moments, these are the act breaks. These are the middle of two, this is the top of three. This is what you need to be looking for. These are the patterns you're going to see in smartly written indie movies, smartly written blockbusters and smartly written foreign films. And they all have a lot in common. And just because you and television as well, and just because you think, well, I don't want to learn story structure because that's formulaic and it's not formulaic. These are just things that a good story has. These are just things they have in common. SoPhil Hudson:When I was in film school, we were given the task of picking whatever show we were going to write a spec episode of, and then getting a stopwatch out and then timing the scenes. That seems logical, but ultimately what you don't realize is that's what the editing is. That's not necessarily what the script was and what it was written as. Yeah. And yeah, it's not hitting the important points, which is what beat should I be hitting here? How soon do they introduce this information?Michael Jamin:And I don't even get that. What are you going to do? You're going to write with your stopwatch next to you, or you're going to write and you go, oh, this is page three. This better happen. What do you mean? How are you supposed to make that work?Phil Hudson:That's a lot of screenwriting advice. Michael, this page on pageMichael Jamin:Three, this happened, I don'tPhil Hudson:Understand it. By page 10, this needs to happen at the end of a page 25, this moment should happen. And page 45, this should have page 60. This should happen, right? That's traditional, open, most screenwriting books. And IMichael Jamin:Don't get that. If you were to write a story, whether it's for television or just a story, and like I say, this is what happens. You need to have at the bottom of act one, if now, if you're bottom act one is on page 15 or 17, does it really matter? Does it really matter? What difference does it make it? You're off by page and a half. What the, who cares? And you could always cut it a little bit. If I don't, I don't know. I just don't approach writing that way. It's like it's a story. Whether you want to put the story on a television or on a stage or write it in a book is, and you get to decide whether you want it to happen on 19 or 17, what difference does it make? Really? What difference does it make?Phil Hudson:There you go. Hi, waha Henry are pitch decks, the new calling card. I've been asked to submit pitch decks instead of a script.Michael Jamin:Who asking? Who's asking you these? I want to know. I want names. Who's asking?Phil Hudson:My experience in Hollywood is that they are the people who are not actually producers.Michael Jamin:There is the problem. I want to know if you're a good writer first, if I'm going to get into business with you for anything, whether I'm going to finance your movie, and I don't finance movies, but that or staff you on a show, I want to know, can you write, can you tell a good story? That's the first thing. And if you can't, I don't really care what your pitch deck looks like.Phil Hudson:I had done some work for a production company out here, and the producers were like, well, we'd love to read what you have. And I was going to send my script. And they're like, do you have a story bible? This goes back to the earlier question. I said, I don't, do you have an example of what story Bible you want to say? This was years ago before I realized kind of your advice on this. And they sent me, this is one we think is really good, and it was a pitch deck. That was what piqued their interest. And then they read the script and it's like, these people are just trying to make a dime. They're not necessarily trying to put out the best content that they can, and they're intermediaries and they're not the guy with the overall deal at a studio that can just walk in and present what they want to make.Michael Jamin:Yeah, justPhil Hudson:It's aMichael Jamin:Different level. I don't understand. It's all smoke and mirrors, I think, whoa, the picture that looks great. Really. Are you trying to get hired as a writer or not? Yeah, I'm not a graphic artist.Phil Hudson:Generation X. How can you find someone to read your work who has experience and won't steal your idea?Michael Jamin:Well, where do I be doing this?Phil Hudson:Two notes on that one. I know, right? That's why I brought it. Yeah, that's why I put it in here.Michael Jamin:Where do you begin? Well, your agent will submit it and we'll only submit it to reputable places. Then the question is, well, how do you get an agent? And that'll be talking about that on all my webinars I got, I'll talk about it again at some point. How do you worried about They want to steal your idea? Well, who you're giving it to. Don't give it to some clown at Starbucks. What was the other question?Phil Hudson:How do you get someone with experience to read your work? Oh,Michael Jamin:How do you get someone to experience? Well, you have to bring more to the table. Why? Why would they, like I have experience, why would I want to read your work? If I'm staffing for a TV show, I will go out to agents and managers. Give me the, I'm not going to, I don't go to people off the street. Yeah. I don't hire people off the street, so don't give me your work. Cause I'm not going to hire you. I'll get it from an agent. Well, how do you get an agent? That's a different question. Yeah, but it's not, you don't get people like me to read your work. You. No, you don't. I mean,Phil Hudson:I think this fall, I will have known Michael for 10 years. I've asked him to read maybe three things.Michael Jamin:Yeah, it's a big deal. It's a big deal to get somebody to read again. You're telling him to sit down. Somebody said that to me on DM Me. It's like, Hey, would you mind reading my screenplay? Would I mind giving up my Saturday afternoon sitting down, reading your thing, coming up with notes, getting on the phone with you, deliver my notes? What if I said to my dentist, Hey, my two hurts. Would you mind taking a look at it? My dentist say, no, not a problem. Not at all. Go call my office. Make an appointment. Bring your insurance card and your credit card for the deductible. That's what he would say. Yeah, it's business. It's professional that. What do you expect? No.Phil Hudson:Michael kindly offered to read something and I sent him the first script I wrote, and he referred to it as a Frankenstein. And I was like, oh my gosh, I know nothing. And this was five years into studying on my own. And I didn't send you anything else to read until it was a spec I wrote in film school. So that was probably three years later. And then the last thing I sent you to read was just last year. And that was the first good thing. That was the first thing. And your note on the second thing is, I can tell you're a competent writer and you can capture the voice of the show, but all your other notes were about my structure. It still wasn't there.Michael Jamin:And then the third piece was you're like, okay, now you're finally getting it right. Yeah. Now you're finally getting it.Phil Hudson:Yeah. And I consider myself egotistically to be a smart guy, but it really took off when Michael put his course together for me. And I'm your biggest advocate for that thing. All right. Danny Casone again. Have you met Mike Judge and Mark Marinn? They're geniuses, by the way.Michael Jamin:I've worked side by side with both of them. Mark more so than Mike, because I was the showrunner of Mark's Maron show on i c. So we worked side by side for four years. Mike, a little bit less, but I wrote on King of the Hill and Beaver and Butthead and Beaver was in Butthead he would send us, well, we write the scripts, and then he would send us which videos he wanted to make fun of. And so we would watch those. Then we'd go to the booth with him, we'd watch it over his shoulder, we'd pitch jokes, and then he would run into the booth and do the voices and kind of change, do it the way he wanted to do it. But yeah, but they're both great guys. Both of them are great.Phil Hudson:There you go. All right. Final questions. There's two, but one of them is like eight questions because it's the same question we get every single time you do a q and a or anything else. Same question. So I'm going to read two. First one, amalgamation of things. Should I use a script consultant? What are your opinions about people who call themselves professional readers, who give notes? Can you recommend a good script reading service? And how much should I person pay for that service? Do you have any readers or reader services to recommend any or to avoid?Michael Jamin:Okay. Woo. I would avoid anything called a service. Anything. If you can find a retired screenwriter or a screenwriter who has time on their hands and go check out their imdp, pay I mdb paid, check out their credits, read their work. If you could find something like that, and there are people that exist, those are the ones you want to pay and pay them. Whatever they ask, the more experience they have, pay them more. I personally, I would rather find someone with more and more experience and pay them more. If they want double because they have, they've been doing for 20 years, I'll pay double because skimping just doesn't help you. I'd pay. Their expertise is worth every penny. That's what I would say with these services, you're finding people, many of them just hiring people, aspiring writers with no more credits or than you do, no more experience than you have. And they're giving you notes and you're paying for it, and they're completely unqualified to tell you anything. They read their training brochure and that's it. And that's not how it works. A man. Now, what a else do you have to say?Phil Hudson:No, I was just going to say, I think one of the things you can think about too, to get a little tell that I just discovered this week, so I mentioned that I was asked to sign on to help a screen, a Sundance project, because of my experience with Sundance. And I think that it helps them think they're going to get a little bit ahead with having a couple other alumni and fellows on that roster. And they were going to put me in as a script consultant. I went to go see what that would look like on imdb. And right there in that same thread, it's like script doctors and script consultants go under miscellaneous crew, not writers.Michael Jamin:And it isPhil Hudson:The bottom. That's the same place where I put my writer's assistant, my writer's PR credit down there, because it's just not a value. It doesn't do anything in those. People may get hired to do work at a studio level, but I wouldn't hire them to do that on my script. You need to doMichael Jamin:That job. I dunno if they get hired a studio level.Phil Hudson:I don't knowMichael Jamin:If that's a thing.Phil Hudson:So supposedly it's a thing, but you need to know how to write. And so find a writer to give you the feedback or find the writing and how to write to give you feedback. And that's again, what your private Facebook group does and what your course does for people.Michael Jamin:Find a screenwriter who has time on their hand. Maybe they're supplementing their income, but they have good credits and they know they've worked. Don't find someone who's a professional consultant reader or whatever. I would stay away from that.Phil Hudson:And last question, which is similar vein, but I think on a high note, BW asked, what does Michael think of submitting scripts to the Academy? Screenwriting contest, which is the fellows, the Nichols Fellowship.Michael Jamin:Oh, okay. Is that, I didn't realize they were the one posted.Phil Hudson:The academy is the Nichols Fellowship.Michael Jamin:Okay. Do that one. That's a prestigious one. If you win, if you come in, if you place, eh, doesn't really help you.Phil Hudson:I've, I've heard of Quarterfinalists and semi-finalists getting some meetings off of that because it's so competitive. And the right, the that's read by actual professionals are donating their time to read and score those. Right. So it's It's definitely has more clout than anything else.Michael Jamin:But yeah, go for it. Also, go for, if you have any fellowships, do those. Sure. If they're industry things, yeah. Sometimes you can get involved in the studios offer various,Phil Hudson:But this goes back, but just this whole thing goes back to just be careful where you're spending your money as a writer. Because you can spend thousands of dollars submitting scripts to festivals thinking that award or that laurel on your website or on your script is going to help you get ahead and it will do nothing for you. And they're all, a lot of them, not all of them are money making machines to fund whatever they're doing at the festival. And I can tell you firsthand that that's the case. I'veMichael Jamin:Spoken about what I would do to break into the industry if I had to do it today. I'm going to do a few a webinar. I'm going to devote a webinar to that topic again probably in a few months. Cause I have other ones I've already planned out. We're going to do first. Get on them. It's free. It's free. That's all I got to say about that. MichaelJamin.com/webinar.Phil Hudson:Perfect. Alright, Michael, I think it's a good place to call it for the today. Anything else you want to add? Time of death,Michael Jamin:Phil.Phil Hudson:Time of death is.Michael Jamin:Time of deathPhil Hudson:Is 50 something minutes. It's a long one. Yeah. Great.Michael Jamin:All right, everyone.Phil Hudson:Yeah. Beyond that, some things you can do to support yourself in writing. So again, you don't have to sign up for Michael's course. Michael's giving a lot of stuff. If you don't have the money, you That's okay, Michael. I will. That's okay. Just make sure people are clear here because they may not know you are offering 0% financing effectively on all these things. If you want to sign up when registration's open, you can do a painful a three month or a six month plan because you said you want to make it as affordable to everyone as possible. There were some partners we had that were adding financing and we removed that option just to make sure. Yeah, it was fair to everybody who wanted to get in,Michael Jamin:And if you can't pay, that's fine. You can go, I got a free lesson. Go to michaeljamin.com/free. If you want to get on my free newsletter where I give out three free tips a week, MichaelJamin.com/watchlist. If you'd like to download some scripts that I've written and read them because they think it'll help you, and they probably will. You can also find those on my website. We got a ton of free stuff. We got this podcast. So yeah, just enjoy. Take it in, take it in. Did youPhil Hudson:Mention the watch list?Michael Jamin:I did. That's our new, yeah, Michael Gemma do com watchPhil Hudson:List. Oh, I was thinking about thinking about all this stuff was blanked for a second. All right. Well, everybody, thank you so much for your time and listening in. Hopefully this was helpful to you and make sure you sign up for the webinar where you do get an opportunity to ask Michael questions live and we dive into more detailed stuff, michael jamen.com/webinar Again for that.Michael Jamin:All right everyone, we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for listening. Bring your questions next time. Awesome.Phil Hudson:Thanks Phil.Michael Jamin:Then keep writing in. Thanks. Keep writing everyone. That's our motto. Phil came up with that. Keep writing. Yeah,Phil Hudson:One good thing. You're welcome guys.Michael Jamin:See ya.Phil Hudson:This has been an episode of Screenwriters. Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin and Phil Hudson. If you'd like to support this podcast, please consider subscribing, leaving your review, and sharing this podcast with someone who needs to hear today's subject. For free daily screenwriting tips, follow Michael on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @MichaelJaminWriter. You can follow me on Instagra

When Mike became obsessed with the series “The Last of Us” on HBO he had questions. And he went straight to the source. This week Mike welcomes the writer/producer/director Craig Mazin, who co-created the" The Last of Us," starring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. Spoiler alert. If you haven't seen "The Last of Us," be warned, there are spoilers in this discussion. There's also a lot of advice and insight about screenwriting and storytelling. Craig is a screenwriting sage— in addition to co-creating "The Last of Us" and "Chernobyl"— he also hosts the podcast ScriptNotes with fellow screenwriter John August, which is Mike's favorite podcast about screenwriting. Also, if you're interested in supporting screenwriters, now is the time. Please support the Writers Guild of America. For more information on the writers strike, visit https://www.wgacontract2023.org/strike-hub.Also, please consider donating to Be The Match

TV and film writers in the US – 11,500 of them – have walked off the job for the first time in 15 years. On May 2, their negotiations with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers broke down. One of the bargaining points: the role of AI in writing a script. The Writers Guild wants to put regulations on artificial intelligence into their contract, and they say the studios have turned them down – leading to the question of how studios envision future writers' rooms. The Take explores the balance of power between writers and studios.  In this episode:  John August (@johnaugust), Screenwriter and member, Writers Guild of America negotiating committee Episode credits: This episode was produced by Negin Owliaei with Sonia Bhagat and our host, Malika Bilal. Khaled Soltan fact-checked this episode. Special thanks to the Scriptnotes podcast and Drew Marquardt. Our sound designer is Alex Roldan. Munera Al Dosari and Adam Abou-Gad are our engagement producers.  Alexandra Locke is The Take's executive producer, and Ney Alvarez is Al Jazeera's head of audio. Connect with us: @AJEPodcasts on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook

Olivier nominee Rachel John is In The Frame for an extra special episode! Rachel is currently starring as August in the UK premiere of The Secret Life of Bees at the Almedia Theatre. Adapted from Sue Monk Kidd's novel, the musical has a book by Lynn Nottage, music by Duncan Sheik and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. Taking us back to the civil rights era of the American South, The Secret Life Of Bees follows an unlikely pair who flee their small town and seek salvation at a remote honey bee farm run by the remarkable Boatwright sisters. Rachel made her professional debut in The Legend of the Lion King at Disnleyland Paris and went on to join the West End productions of The Lion King and Sister Act. After understudying Meat and Killer Queen on the first UK & Ireland tour of We Will Rock You, Rachel transferred to the West End production as Meat, becoming the first black actor to play the role. Rachel went on to play Mimi in Rent (UK Tour) and after a run as the alternate Felicia in the original West End cast of Memphis, she took over the role from Beverley Knight. Next up, Rachel played Nicki and covered Rachel in The Bodyguard (UK & Ireland Tour / West End / Toronto). In 2017, Rachel was cast as the original Angelica Schuyler in the West End premiere of Hamilton, receiving an Olivier nomination and tremendous acclaim for her performance. Most recently, Rachel played Mrs Neilsen in Girl From The North Country (West End / Toronto), The Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol (Old Vic) and Songs for a New World (London Palladium). Last year Rachel released her debut solo album, From My Lips To Gods Ear. In this episode, Rachel delves into The Secret Life of Bee, reflects on why We Will Rock You was a massive turning point in her career and explains her unique path into theatre via the corperate world. Make a cup of tea, grab a biscuit and strap yourself in! The Secret Life of Bees runs at the Almedia Theatre until 27th May 2023. Visit www.almeida.co.uk for info and tickets. Hosted by Andrew Tomlins  @AndrewTomlins32  Thanks for listening! Email: andrew@westendframe.co.uk Visit westendframe.co.uk for more info about our podcasts.  

Join us to learn “what might have been” in PART TWO of this exclusive examination of John August's original, unproduced dramatic screenplay for the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp Dark Shadows film. Madelyn Marks, admin of the Dark Shadows Discord server community, and Patrick McCray, writer of ‘The Dark Shadows Daybook' and ‘The Dark Shadows Daybook Unbound', sit down with Penny Dreadful for an in-depth discussion about the second half of August's elusive script, which has never been seen by the public.

Tim Burton's Dark Shadows would have been a very different film had John August's original screenplay been used instead of Seth Grahame-Smith's attempt at a comedic rewrite. This episode of Terror at Collinwood features the first half of a deep dive discussion about the never-before-seen, non-comedic John August script for the Burton/Depp Dark Shadows. Returning to the podcast to join the conversation are Patrick McCray, writer of The Dark Shadows Daybook and The Dark Shadows Daybook Unbound, and Madelyn Marks, admin of the Dark Shadows Discord server community. Join us for PART ONE of this very rare glimpse into what might have been!

Hollywood Screenwriter Michael Jamin sits down with Phil Hudson to discuss questions asked by fans and future screenwriters. Questions such as, "Is there plagiarism among screenwriters? How do you prepare for a general meeting with a large production company with a development exec as a screenwriter? When you're a writer's assistant, should you ask for an episode, wait until one is offered, or send the showrunner a draft?"Autogenerated TranscriptMichael Jamin (00:00):In terms of stealing ideas, often in a writer's room, someone will say, oh, they, I just saw that episode two weeks ago on whatever show. And then usually the writers will go, Ugh, we won't, we'll kill the idea. So that's not plagiarizing, that's coming up with the idea independently and then killing it because you don't want people to think you plagiarized. You're listening to Screenwriters. Need to Hear This with Michael Jamin. Hey everyone, welcome back. It's Michael Jamin. You're listening to Screenwriters. Need to Hear this. I'm here with Phil a Hudson.Phil Hudson (00:33):What up,Michael Jamin (00:34):What up? And we're doing part two of the ask me anything if Phil has some more questions. These are designed for, what kind of questions are these called?Phil Hudson (00:41):Yeah. So ton of questions came in, so we're moving into professional questions. What I kind of grouped that way, aspirationalMichael Jamin (00:49):Part one, if you missed it, we're, if you missed it, that was questions about CRA or craft. Craft.Phil Hudson (00:54):Right. Craft.Michael Jamin (00:54):Yeah. And these are about questions about professional and what else?Phil Hudson (00:59):Aspirational questions. Aspirational, like breaking in and then some general stuff. So, yeah. All right. You ready for this?Michael Jamin (01:06):I'm ready.Phil Hudson (01:07):All right. Professional.Michael Jamin (01:09):Oh, and by the way, the way these people just, if you're new to the podcast, the way people ask these questions is on my social media profile on Instagram @michaeljaminwriter, every couple months we post a blue tile that says, ask me anything. And so if you have questions that I haven't answered, that's, that's where you do it. Put it up there and we'll talk about it.Phil Hudson (01:26):Yep. Awesome. Professional question number one from Give, give Shrimp a chance, which I think is probably one of the best Instagram ta names I've ever heard. I That's good. I will give them a chance actually, Michael, you're vegan, pescatarian, vegetarian. What are you, technicallyMichael Jamin (01:43):I say I'm a vegan, but I do eat fish from every once in a while for protein PEs, but I don't eat any, somePhil Hudson (01:47):PescatarianMichael Jamin (01:48):Then don't, I guess you could say that, but, cause I don't eat any dairy.Phil Hudson (01:51):Got it. Yeah. So you're vegetarians are vegetarian, pescatarians are vegetarians who eat fish. You're not that cuz you're vegan, but you eat fish. Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Cool. Good question here. I thought, I thought it was interesting. When you are a writer's assistant, can you ask for an episode or wait until one is offered or draft possible story areas and send them to the showrunner just in case asking for a friend? Well,Michael Jamin (02:17):Good question. Well, you definitely wanna put in your time. You wouldn't, if you're, if you got promoted to writer's assistant, you don't want to, in season one start asking for an episode. You gotta earn the right to be there. So you gotta be there for a full year. And then it's, this is how I feel. And then after, once you're there for, you know, full year or two or whatever, then you can approach your boss and say, Hey, I'd love to be considered for a freelance episode. I'd love to be able to pitch you an idea. And you should have all these ideas on the ready. I mean, you're, you're there. So I don't, you can do, you can come up with ideas season one, but I I I kind of, you wanna make it so that they owe you so that the writer showrunner owes you one so that you're, you're loyal and you've put in the time this is the least they can do is to repay you by giving you an episode.Phil Hudson (03:02):There's also a very clear level of trust displayed if you come back for a second season. Right?Michael Jamin (03:07):Yeah. It means they like you. Yeah,Phil Hudson (03:08):Yeah. So that, so it means that they are looking at you for those opportunities are already considering you. I do. And this is, I, I apologize. I want to say we brought this up last year, so forgive me if this is a little redundant, but I do know that in screenwriting Twitter, there was some conversation about how sometimes you get staffed as a writer's assistant and then your show gets canceled and then you move to another show and you're a writer's assistant there, and then that show gets canceled and that's a process. And so there are people who have been writer's assistants for like five seasons and they may not have ever been on a show for two seasons. What about in a situation like that where you'reMichael Jamin (03:45):Sucks people Yeah. Sucks for you. I mean, it's just, what are you gonna do? That's just the, that's just the way it goes. Yeah. That, that requires luck. What are you gonna do?Phil Hudson (03:54):Okay, here, here's a political question in regard to this subject, which is I'm a writer's assistant below me, right? There's a writer's pa and above me there's a script coordinator. And the script coordinator wants to write freelance episodes probably as well.Michael Jamin (04:12):Yeah.Phil Hudson (04:12):How do you navigate that? Cuz you've got someone else, technically, in my opinion, this is just my experience, they have seniority over you cuz they've probably been working with them longer.Michael Jamin (04:23):The same thing. I mean the, but the bottom line is it's, it's very hard. But getting a freelance episode really isn't like, it's not like it's gonna make your life, it's going to make you feel good about yourself. You're gonna, it's gonna be a, a badge of honor. But after that freelance episode, you're, you're kind of back where you started from. You're still a writer's assistant. You still have to break in as a staff writer to get full-time employment. So, and, and often it's not uncommon for a writer's assistant to get their shot and kind of blow it. It's just not, they don't do a good enough job. It's, it's hard. And so you really wanna be ready you know, the pressure is on. I I get it. So, but that freelance episode is probably not gonna make your career. It's just gonna feel good. It's gonna feel good. And that will help. And that might get you by for, that might be enough to, you know, encourage you to keep at it for a couple more years, but it's not gonna set you up for life. So,Phil Hudson (05:23):So don't celebrate too early.Michael Jamin (05:27):I mean, or don't be crushed too early if you don't get one, in other words.Phil Hudson (05:30):Yeah. Gotcha. Alright, cool. Ivan g Garcia, oh, apologize guys, this is old my eyes. I'm getting old. Michael, my eyes. Mm-Hmm. Ivan Garcia 66 22. What are the basic things any screenwriter should know? I know it's a really broad, but I thought it was a really interesting conversation to have.Michael Jamin (05:51):Yeah, well, okay, first of all, do you know what a story is? And most people do not know how, what a, a story is, right? I mean, honestly,Phil Hudson (05:59):Let me interject there too. I had a class in college at a screen at a film school where I was taking a screenwriting class and the teacher asked us to define what a story is. And I knew, cuz you had given me your answer. And I sat around and looked at the room and no one, no one raised their hand. And a couple people said something and the teacher kind of brushed it off. And then I gave your answer to them and he just like had this aha moment. And he literally went and changed his slides to include your answer to this.Michael Jamin (06:26):Yeah. So the teacher that important, no,Phil Hudson (06:27):And you can get that free at michaeljamin.com/free. That's so the first lesson in Michael's course he gives away for free. Go get it. It is absolutely important.Michael Jamin (06:38):I like how, how are you gonna write a story if you can't define it? You know, and you think you know what a story is or, or it's such a weird question like in your gut, you, I must know what a story is, but honestly, if you can't define it, you might get lucky once or twice, but you're not gonna be do it on a consistent basis. You're just not. Yeah. So there's that and don't Yeah. And most people don't know. And including some screenwriting teachers don't, don't knowPhil Hudson (07:02):That .Michael Jamin (07:02):Yeah. So,Phil Hudson (07:03):Yeah, so story stories of us know and the definition of story. And if I recall from conversations with you from years back, you told me that that's something you often, when you get lost in a story, it's because you're missing one of those elements of story and you have to go putMichael Jamin (07:17):It back in. Absolutely. I I, we were, you know, I talked about this before, but when I was running my partner running Maron first season we did a, it was the first day of shooting and we did a rewrite on a scene and we, and, and then Mark was in the middle of the scene and he's like, what am I doing here? What am I supposed to be playing here? What's going on? And he starts yelling at me because the scene wasn't working. And, and he was right. The scene was not working. And it was because in the rewrite I had dropped or we had dropped one of the elements that we needed required. And he was right. The scene did not work. And so I had to go back and rethink and we, I i, we threw another line that fixed everything.(07:53):But yeah, it's like, it's that important. It like, the actors, without it, the actors are gonna be lost. The audience is gonna be lost. You're gonna be lost, you're gonna struggle when you write, you're gonna be like, what, what am I, why am I getting bored with my own piece? Which is so common that people get bored with their own writing, which is why they lose motivation, which is why they don't you know, they feel like the writing's all over the map, which is why like they do too much rewriting cuz they don't, they still don't know what's good. All this comes, I there's really no screenwriting 1 0 2. It's all screenwriting 1 0 1.Phil Hudson (08:26):No learnMichael Jamin (08:26):1 0 1.Phil Hudson (08:27):All right. So you need to know story.Michael Jamin (08:30):Yeah.Phil Hudson (08:31):Formatting comes to mind. But that can be done software, right? Yeah.Michael Jamin (08:35):Right. The least important thing.Phil Hudson (08:37):But that, that's a place people get so bogged down. And I know this was true for me. I probably spent a year reading books on formatting. They're on the shelf back here behind me of just, here's how you format this, here's how you do this, here's how you do that. What I've found now is that I've absorbed and simulated a lot that just from reading scripts, like right up here, that's printed scripts that have just printed off you, you learn how other writers, you like how they do things. But also you can literally just Google this as you go along. If you get stuck in there. Plenty of things that kind of explain it to you. So don't get too bogged down in formatting, but you have to know formatting cuz it is one of the things people are gonna look at and they'll judge right away whether or not you're a professional.Michael Jamin (09:19):Yeah. It should be. You should, you can learn it. And just to be clear, like sometimes my partner will make it up. Like if we're writing something, a scene that kind of, the the formatting is, is is unusual with like, it, it's a phone call within a phone call or something odd. We go, well, let's just write it like this. As long as it's clear for the reader, it's fine. No one's gonna, you know, and if the ad has a problem with it, okay, fine. We'll change it when the at, like, I don't fine if the ad one or the writer system wants to change it. Okay, fine. This is how we're gonna do it though,Phil Hudson (09:45):. Love it. Love it. Okay. So for, is there anything else that comes to mind? Like, is there anything else that a writer and again, basic thing a screenwriter should know?Michael Jamin (09:54):Well, you know you should know that your first sample, everyone writes a script and they wanna sell it. And I always say, you're not gonna sell it. You should just write it, write it as a sample. It's a calling card to get you work. And so look at it that way, which means you're gonna be, it's a, as a writing sample, you're gonna be judged on the quality of your writing. And so don't get so hung up on, on you you know, I wanna sell it, I wanna make a million dollars. It's, that's like starting at the, the mountain at the top. You gotta start the mountain at the bottom and work your way up.Phil Hudson (10:23):Yeah. Got it. Anything else?Michael Jamin (10:26):I don't think so. Okay.Phil Hudson (10:27):Maybe I, I will say that you cover a lot of this stuff in the course, so again, if anyone's interested in that michael jam.com/courseMichael Jamin (10:34):Go get how fi how to actually sit down and do it. Yeah. That's what we cover.Phil Hudson (10:37):Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did hear someone, because structure is the other thing that comes to mind and you cover that extensively in the course as well as the writing process professionals use. I will say, I did hear someone recently say that what you teach can be found in other places, but the way you teach it and the way you label specific things is just kind of a duh. Like, oh duh. Yeah. It's like, you can't misunderstand that. And I think that's beautiful from like a just getting information across perspective and a teaching perspective. I mean, that's why some of the early, early testimonial you got from the course where that you're not only a great writer but a great teacher. I think it's because it's, it's a no-brainer way You explain these things that are very convoluted and confusing.Michael Jamin (11:20):Lot of times, writer, screenwriting teachers, I think make it harder than it needs to be is like, no, just make it simple. It'sPhil Hudson (11:27):Try to make it smart. I got like 20 screenwriting books on the shelf back there, and it wasn't until I took your course and again, we, you'd been mentoring me for a while, but it wasn't until I took your course that I was like, yeah, that's just a no duh. Like I should just be doing it that way. I should think about it and conceptualize it that way cuz it's not, you know, inciting incidents and it's not convoluted, deeper mythical structure, which I totally am not knocking. I'm just saying it's a, an easy way to think about that process. Yeah. So make it easy. I'm beating the dead horse. I apologize about that, but I do think it's absolutely worth. It's a good, check it out. Yeah. All right. I has a follow up question. Should I always feel confident and proud of my work? How should I take criticism from someone who I don't think knows best?Michael Jamin (12:09):Well, you should be proud of yourself for sitting down and actually writing a script because most people say they want to do it and they don't do it. So good for you for doing it. How should you take criticism from someone, from someone who doesn't know what they're talking about? Is that what he said?Phil Hudson (12:21):Yeah. Someone who I don't think knows bestMichael Jamin (12:24):, and you don't, I mean, you know and that's a lot of people. You know what? There's valid criticism and there's stuff that, that is not valid. So if someone says if someone says, I don't, I think you should focus more on these characters, or I think the story should be about this, that's not valid criticism. That's someone who's just trying to rewrite your work. If someone that's honestly, and if people tell you that, tell 'em to go, you know, pound sand, because that's not, it's not helpful. What they can tell you is, I didn't understand what you were going for here. I didn't understand what this character, what their relationship was. I didn't understand why the ending was meaningful. That is irrefutable. That comment is because they're just saying, you can't even argue with that. You're saying, they're saying they don't understand it, and you can, you can't argue with that.(13:09):They didn't understand it. So if you wanna make that more clear, you could work on that in your piece. Or if you want to ignore it, it altogether, you could say, well, I don't want you to understand it. I don't know why you'd ever do that. I I think that'd be, I don't, I don't think confusing your audience is ever a good idea, but, but those are the kind of notes that someone can give you that are helpful and irrefutable and you can ha give it to your mom. And if your mom reads your script and, and you know, takes her a month to read it because it wasn't any good, you know, you, you ask her, listen, did you wanna turn the page? Did you wanna find out what happens next? Or did it feel like a homework assignment? And that's, anyone can, anyone can give you that note. Yeah. It felt a little bit like a homework assignment then. You know, your script is not ready. If it feels like a gift and they wanna read what they wanna read your next work, you might be onto something.Phil Hudson (13:58):Yeah. No, I told you, this is when I turned that corner, when I finally got that thing, I opened a beer, my friend said, I opened a beer to read your script. And at the end I realized I hadn't even taken a sip of my beer.Michael Jamin (14:09):That's good.Phil Hudson (14:09):Right? And I was like, that was huge. Like, that was hugely, I mean, never received any type of compliment like that before.Michael Jamin (14:15):Yeah, that's good writing, right?Phil Hudson (14:16):Yep. So, awesome. Moving on, McLean 5 55. I thought this was a really, really smart question. Is plagiarism a problem amongst screenwriters? Which I think is the typical question, but mm-hmm. then he, he or she, how can a writer avoid doing it themselves?Michael Jamin (14:36):Oh, plagiarizing.Phil Hudson (14:38):Try I avoid plagiarizing.Michael Jamin (14:39):Yeah. I don't know how big of a problem. It's, I mean, when you're writing in a writer's room, none of the writers are gonna steal for you. And, and the idea is, is is specific to the characters you have on the show. And so, I mean, no, we, I'm not gonna steal your idea cause we're gonna put it on next week's episode. I mean, you're, you're gonna shoot it. In terms of stealing ideas, often in a writer's room, someone will say, oh, they, I just saw that episode two weeks ago on whatever show. And then usually the writers will go, Ugh, we won't, will kill the idea. So that's not plagiarizing that's coming up with the idea independently and then killing it because you don't want people to think you plagiarized. And often there are similar often there're just similar things in the zeitgeist that come out at the same time. And, but I I, I don't, it's not really an issue that we really concern ourselves with plagiarizing. You know, I, I, at least I don't, I've never talked about plagiarizing.Phil Hudson (15:31):I think there's a level of homage too that's being mm-hmm. , like people are playing homage. So, did you ever watch this show? White Collar?Michael Jamin (15:39):No.Phil Hudson (15:40):White Collar loved this show. And then there's like this big moment at the end of a season where the guy gets in a limo and he takes a drink of a cocktail and he wakes up and he's at this place. And I was like, why have I seen that before? And then a couple months later I pop in mission to Possible three, and that's literally a thing that happens in that. And I was like, oh, okay. That feels a little lazy to me. But there are plenty of other times where people are doing things like workaholics, for example, they will totally base the premise of an episode off of a famous comedy, and you kind of get what's going on there. Like mm-hmm. , they're paying homage to that. Yeah. And it's like, it doesn't, doesn't feel, it doesn't feel icky at all.Michael Jamin (16:18):Yeah. Right.Phil Hudson (16:20):So yeah, it's it's like porn, right? You know it when you see it,Michael Jamin (16:24):You know it when you see it.Phil Hudson (16:26):There you go. Alright. San Sandy, T 63. What aspects of being a professional screenwriter do you wish people gave you a heads up about? And what are the struggles that nobody really talksMichael Jamin (16:38):About? Well, I don't know what, I mean, did someone gimme a heads up about like, I knew it was gonna be hard. I wasn't naive. I knew it was gonna be hard. It's gotten harder as I've, as the industry's changed, and no one who, who's gonna, who could have predicted that, who could have told, given me a heads up that these seasons orders would've gotten shorter. You know, when I broke in, we were doing 22 episodes of season. Now you're, you might be doing 10, and so you get paid per episode. And so it's a little harder. You have to string a, it's harder to string across you string a career together now than it was back then. But who could have told me that there was, you know, the writer strike was 2008, 2007, 2008. And back then we were striking over something called streaming.(17:24):And everyone was like, what's streaming? What's video on demand? What is vod? What does that even mean? No one knew what it was except for the Writer's Guild, and they knew this was something that we needed to get coverage on. And so that's why you have a good kilt. And so that was the strike to make sure that writers would get the same benefits if their show aired on a streaming network as opposed to a traditional network. And by the way, who ca I don't who cares how people are consuming it? It's the same amount of work, it's the same amount of creativity. I don't care if you're putting it with a, you have a my show I implanted in your tooth and you're watching it in your brain. It's the same amount of work for me. So how do I, why would I care if it's streamed on a through the internet or if it comes through on, you know, a satellite dish? Who cares? And so luckily there are smart people at the Guild who, who saw that coming. Yeah.Phil Hudson (18:11):Anything else come to mind? Any other struggles you deal with as a professional writer?Michael Jamin (18:16):Well, I don't know. Do you have something in mind, Phil?Phil Hudson (18:18):Well, it was just that there was a John August written a ton of stuff. He had a blog post years ago talking about how to budget your money from your first sale. And that was one of the things that I was like, that's really smart. I don't think people are talking about you've sold something now what do you do? And he broke it down and he did finances and there's a spreadsheet and you can go check it out johnaugust.com. But that, that has some pretty interesting information about it. So I just wasn't sure if there was anything else like you stumbled upon as a writer later in your career?Michael Jamin (18:48):Well I kind of knew that as a, just growing up, like you, you know, don't live beneath your means. Always, always. And I remember someone when I was first buying a house, I remember I got advice from someone, I won't say who it was, but other at the time, I was like, this is terrible advice. And he was a very successful showrunner and he was like whatever house you can buy, buy more, push yourself. Cuz there's, you know, you're gonna make a lot of money and so push yourself to buy a bigger house so you can, and I'm like, that sounds like a terrible idea. , no, my, my father always told me to live beneath my means and thank God I listened to my dad and not him because you're gonna go through, it's feast your famine. So I'll go months, months without making money and then I'll have a job and I'll make money again and then, but I never know how long the famine's gonna last. I just don't know. No one we, none of us do. Yeah.Phil Hudson (19:33):And you know, there's talking of a recession coming up, so that's mm-hmm. now's the time to be thinking about that stuff as well. I think we very quickly forget how bad things are when things are good and we've been as bad as things have been, we've been pretty good for a while. Yeah. So, you know, we had this conversation cuz I just moved recently in August, I moved to a much bigger house and I just remember laying awake for like weeks saying, how am I gonna afford this? Mm-Hmm. . And I could totally afford it. I would've never even moved if it didn't make sense from a percentage of my income. Cuz I too was taught to live below my means, but I still stressed about it because it's the most amount of money I've ever put into a home, right? Mm-Hmm. , same thing. You gotta, you gotta think about those things and where the next check's gonna come and how you're going to eat and how, you know, you have a family, how you're gonna feed your family.Michael Jamin (20:17):So mm-hmm. . Yeah.Phil Hudson (20:19):All right. Enough about my house. Sorry guys. I know you're here to listen to Michael, not me, but I appreciate you I appreciate you energyMichael Jamin (20:27):Real estate, wos.Phil Hudson (20:28):That's right. Holden underscore levy underscore. When writing a spec script, something that you did not create yourself for a studio, what is the most important thing to include in the script? Asking as I'm applying for an internship where they're asking us to write a spec scene for an existing show. So you want me to rephrase that?Michael Jamin (20:48):Yeah. What did he, yeah,Phil Hudson (20:50):Yeah. So Holden says, Hey, I'm applying for this internship and they're asking me to write a spec script from this spec scene from this episode, this existing show. Is there anything in particular I should be including there? Because it's not something I made I spec,Michael Jamin (21:03):Right? I it's easier to write a spec script than it is an original piece. Far easier, I think. I mean, you have to know how to tell a compelling story. I mean, this is, honestly, this is what we teach in the writing course that we, that we have at my screenwriting course. But is there anything you should put in Yeah, a good story and a good a story with, with high stakes and a compelling B story. And you should be able to have, the characters should be doing things that seem consistent with the characters. You shouldn't be having guest stars that drive the story. You shouldn't be. Ha And all this I teach you shouldn't have guest stars that have more lines than the regular characters. I mean, it should be about the characters in the show. I don't know why. I don't know what kind of internship it it is that requires you to submit aPhil Hudson (21:48):Spec. It's a spec. It's a spec scene. So to keep that, it's literally, theyMichael Jamin (21:51):Just, it'sPhil Hudson (21:52):A scene. It's a scene.Michael Jamin (21:55):Yeah. I, I, I can't, I don't even understand why, why, why they would want, aren't you just gonna be making coffee ? I mean, what are they gonna give you? But that, yeah, I mean, if it's just a scene sa same thing with what I, I just said, but on a smaller scale, you know, make sure the characters are consistent and doing make,Phil Hudson (22:11):Make sure they pop, make sure that there's something, express your voice. There's,Michael Jamin (22:14):There's conflicts. Yeah. Yeah. Make sure you're, your, the tone is right of the show. The consistent with the show. Don't do something totally off balance at the show would never have done, but you're like, woo. You know, oh, this is a horror episode of this show. But they don't do horror episodes on this show. Yeah, but what if they did? No. Do you should be con consistent of what they actually did. Sure. Represented it.Phil Hudson (22:37):Awesome. All right. I apologize. I'm gonna mispronounce this na underscore type life. It could also be Na cuz it's, it's a Jay. You're your're poly. You speak more than one language. You speak three Italian, Spanish English.Michael Jamin (22:51):Yeah, a little bit of English. Conversational English.Phil Hudson (22:53):Nice. Good for you. Mm-Hmm. , do you ever get, get your pronunciation super screwed up when you read words. , N A J oMichael Jamin (23:01):Between Spanish and Italian, orPhil Hudson (23:03):Yeah, anything? So for me, I speak English. Oh yeah. Spanish fluently. But whenever I talk to anyone, you could be Korean. You come up and talk to me. My brain wants to speak Spanish to you. Just out of the box.Michael Jamin (23:12):Oh yeah. I was talking to a comedian Frank Callo, right? Callo is Italian. He's Italian in, but he goes, that's not how he pronounces it, it's Callo. And I'm like, mm, you saying your name though?Phil Hudson (23:22):, you know, ira.Michael Jamin (23:24):Same thing with Mike Burbiglia. You know, I'm like, no, Mike, that's not how you say your last name.Phil Hudson (23:28):The, how do you say his last name?Michael Jamin (23:31):[Inaudible] That's, that's how you'd say an Italian. But that's not how he says it. IPhil Hudson (23:34):Like the handshake. I like the handshake too,Michael Jamin (23:36):While you're, they all talk with the hands.Phil Hudson (23:38):It's beautiful. [inaudible] Digress. Back to the, back to the question a hand. How do I prepare for a general meeting with a large full caps production company with a development exec as a screenwriter?Michael Jamin (23:50):Good question. So a general meeting, they're just, they wanna make sure you're not a, a drooling idiot. I would go in there ha with some knowledge of what they do. So do get on I M D B, do do a Google search of what kind of movies or TV shows they've made in the past. So you can have educated conversations. So you could say, Hey, what I love this project that you made. Everyone likes being told that you like their, you're a fan of their work. So that's easy. A Google search, talk about what they've done, compliment them, and then be prepared to talk about yourself and what you co what kind of projects you wanna do. And it's gonna be very tempting to go in and say, I can do everything. And that's not the truth. Find out, you know, if you're a drama writer, what kind of drama do you do?(24:29):If you're a comedy writer, what kind of comedy do you do? And, and tell them what you wanna do and what you excel at. And that way you're making, you're making their job easier. If you tell 'em exactly what you do, which is I do high-concept thrillers or whatever then when they have a project in mind or a need, they're gonna think of you. If you tell 'em I can do everything, they're not gonna think of you. You, you know, put yourself in a box to make it easy for them to employ you. So tho that's your preparation. And you could talk about, you should also be prepared to talk about what shows you. Like, they're gonna say, Hey, what shows are you watching? So you're gonna say, oh, I watched white Lotus. It's and then be prepared to talk about what you liked about it, you know?Phil Hudson (25:10):Yeah, no, that's great. That's great. Cool. Jeremy M. Rice, how much of show running is budgeting and managing a staff?Michael Jamin (25:18):All of it, but it's not really it is managing a staff. You, you're in charge of those staff, the writing staff. And, you know, most people don't become comedy writers especially to, to become, you know, management like that. We, we become writers because we don't want to go into management. And so suddenly you're the boss of the show and now you have to manage these other writers. And it's kinda like, I don't really know how to, it's a skill that you have to kinda acquire real fast. And so it's about motivating people, keeping people encouraging them so that they can give you their best. I feel it's important not to waste their time. If people feel like they're hostages, they're not gonna give you their best work, they're gonna feel beaten down. I like to empower people cuz that's how you get their best work out of them.(26:00):In terms of budgeting, you know, the budget is set and I don't even look at those numbers when I'm running the show. I'll just say, I'll ask the producer, can we do this? The line producer and the line producer doesn't even always know. Often they'll come back to you, they'll say, I think we can do this if we steal from this episode. So, you know, I think we can shoot an amusement park if we steal at this episode and you make this real, we don't spend a lot of money here. Can you do that? And so, okay. Yeah. I can have fewer sets and fewer actors and fewer everything to make this happen. So it's a lot, it's a conversation. That's why it's very collaborative. And you work closely with the department heads as a showrunner to get hopefully your your what your vision made. But I, I always try to stay on budget. Cuz the last thing you want to do is give the studio a reason to fire you.Phil Hudson (26:45):Sure. this goes back to like one of our early, early episodes. When you're staffing a show, are you considering budgets at all? Are you just saying, these are the people I want to hire. And then you hear back and say, well, we can't or we canMichael Jamin (26:56):No, they tell you they're, they'll come right out and they tell you, okay, you have enough money to hire one showrunner. Usually they'll say this we want you to have a big staff, so we want you to hire 10 staff writers. And then I'll come back and say, I don't want 10 staff writers. I would rather have one really good co-executive producer. And then, and then if there's money left over, we'll hire some staff writers. A lot of voices to me are not good in the room. I'd rather have qualified people who know what you're talking about then, then I don't need a million ideas. I just need someone who can write a really damn good script.Phil Hudson (27:26):Got it. You know, so you'd, you'd rather put the money towards talent and capability overMichael Jamin (27:31):Yeah. I always prefer comedy show, meaning experiencedPhil Hudson (27:35):Writers. I think that's general. That's generally true. I would say from my, what I've seen at least, and I'm,Michael Jamin (27:40):Yeah. But often they want the people, often the people with the purses, they tell you the op they want the opposite because they don't know. And so they're like, no, no, we want you to have a lot of different voices. I don't want a lot of different voices. That's the last thing I want. I want people who can do the job. Hey, it's Michael Jamin. If you like my videos and you want me to email them to you for free, join my watch list. Every Friday I send out my top three videos. These are for writers, actors, creative types. You can unsubscribe whenever you want. I'm not gonna spam you and it's absolutely free. Just go to michaeljamin.com/watchlist.Phil Hudson (28:21):Ivan Garcia 66 22 is back. If I wish to become a professional writer, doesn't mean I should drop everything and just write all day every day.Michael Jamin (28:29):Well, I dunno how you're gonna do that without paying. You gotta pay the bills. But you can certainly drop all your pastimes and become a writer. Like you have to go to work and, you know, and, and, but after work, yeah. What you should be writing, you should be writing every day regardless. And and I I heard a great quote who I think, who was it? I think it was Stephen King said this. I was like, oh, that makes, yeah, that I like the way he said it. You know, when you're inspired, you're right. When you're, when you exhausted and you just don't have it in you in the can, then you should be reading. But writing comes first.Phil Hudson (28:58):I think it was Terrence Winter, and I apologize if I'm miss Mrs. Operating this quote. But he was on a podcast I listened to years ago, and he said that when he moved to LA I believe he was an attorney first, and then he moved to LA mm-hmm. . And when he moved here, and he's the creator of Boardwalk Empire and he worked on the Sopranos, really well-known, talented writer. Writer. But he said he moved here and his friends would be like, Hey, let's go to a Dodgers game. And he'd say, no, I haven't earned it yet. And he would not allow himself to go have fun until he had done the work he had assigned himself to do. Yeah. And that's a level of dedication, discipline and professionalism that I think you have to have to make it. And it obviously works, look at him. But yeah, you gotta pay your bills, you gotta eat, right. Yeah. So for him, it's, you know, it's sacrificing where other people are not willing to sacrifice because heMichael Jamin (29:47):Right. Yeah. How bad do you want it? So you, you can't, you gotta have to make choices.Phil Hudson (29:52):And we talked about this before. It's you know, sacrifice is a, it basically needs to make hauling, right? It's, you're making something sacred so you're turning, you're exchanging something for something else to get something better, which I think is a podcast that's coming up is, yeah. Long-Term focus over short term gratification.Michael Jamin (30:07):I guess that makes sense. Sacrament.Phil Hudson (30:09):Yeah. Alright. grizzly, hanif, gri, grizzly, heif. He, I don't know, I apologize. Grizzly, how do you balance writing multiple scripts?Michael Jamin (30:22):Like, I wonder if they're talking about me or you. IPhil Hudson (30:25):Think it's a que it's a question for you. And, and I think that they might speak to one, right? But how do you, as someone who is writing multiple projects, you know, you've sold two or three projects recently with your writing partner Yeah. And your writing your own books, your your own essays. Yeah. How do you balance that?Michael Jamin (30:43):Well, it depends what we're doing. But I, I, I don't have too many projects at any one time. It's only a couple. So it's not that hard. If we're running a show, then we have a bunch of scripts out and we have to keep 'em all in mind. And you know, and yeah, you look at the outlines, you look at the notes that's, that's the hard part of the job. But in terms of projects, I don't have, I think a lot of people, one, if we're talking about an aspiring writer or an emergency writer, I think they'll often have multiple scripts because they get bored by their own work. And, well, I'll just do this now because I'm stuck here. I'll just do this now. And so the problem with that is they're struggling. They don't know what they're doing and so they're just, they're just putting it off by starting a new project, never finishing anything. And so that's not good that, that's why education can help. Where if you understand story structure, you shouldn't be struggling as much. You, you shouldn't be getting bored by your own workPhil Hudson (31:31):Right? Now, that doesn't mean you're not gonna finish. You get to, to a point when we talked about that and in previous podcast, how do you know when you're done this this project done? You set it aside, you go write something else, you're gonna come back, you're probably gonna rewrite some stuff. It's probably gonna see a bunch of holes, some things you can fix, things you can improve. But that's just because you got better because you wouldn't put in time on another project. So Yeah. But I think that's a great point. Like when you're running a show, you are running a show and you're doing a lot of, a lot of episodes, a lot of storylines going at the same time. Yeah.Michael Jamin (31:59):So, and often I'll say to the writer, what's going on? What's the story about? Again, refresh my memory because I, cause I can't remember, you know, 10 episodes at the same time.Phil Hudson (32:07):Alright. Johnny JK zero one. How does your workday look as a feature writer versus a TV writer?Michael Jamin (32:13):Well, I don't really work much in film. Film. I, we've, my partner, we've sold two. But we've since stayed in television. I, you know, I don't really know. I mean, your future writer, you know, you're working from your house probably more. And it's like, it's not collaborative. You're alone and you, you're dealing with your producer, producer's giving you notes and you're going back and you're, you're banging your head against the wall. But on TV show, it's collaborative, a writing staff. So if you have, if you get stuck on a scene, you, you bring it in front of the staff and you say, Hey, let's talk about this some more.Phil Hudson (32:41):Yeah. Great. Alright. colors by sec. C e k, does it really matter where you go to college or university to study screenwriting? How much of an impact does it make on your career? Are the prestigious schools really what they make themselves out to be?Michael Jamin (32:57):I don't think, no, I don't think so. I think what you can get from, it's important to learn, you know, screenwriting and study it somewhere. But the degree itself is worthless. No one's gonna ask to see your degree. They're gonna wanna know if you can write. And if you, and if that te that school teaches you how to be a good writer, then it's worth something. But the degree itself will not open any doors. No one cares. I've never hired anybody. I've never asked to see their degree. I never wanna see their gpa. It means nothing to me. So the education is worth something, but the degree is worthless, I think. But and also if you go to a school, you may, if it's a prestigious school, your, your fellow students may grow up to be successful directors and, and people that you can work with in the future. So it's good to network with those people because they'll, you know, they'll arising tide raises all boats. But but you can get the, the knowledge without having the degreePhil Hudson (33:53):Yeah. As someone with a degree. I concur.Michael Jamin (33:57):Yeah.Phil Hudson (33:59):Ryan Danowski, how many credits does a writer need to have if they want to become a creator or a showrunner?Michael Jamin (34:06):Yeah. How many credits? It's like it doesn't really work like that. I mean, we were writers for 10 years before someone decided we were ready to be showrunners. And even then we weren't sure if we were ready. It's, it's a big leap. There was talk earlier, like I, I know some people who become showrunners, you know, maybe after four or five. And it's, it's a little scary because there's so much to learn and so much to know. So it's not even about credit. So they, I know everyone wants to be a showrunner. I, I would just don't like, just worry about being him a writer first. It's, it's, it's so freaking hard. There's so much you have to know. And that's why they get paid so much money is because, you know, you gotta know how to do it. I, it's, I I wouldn't just learn how to write first one step at a time.Phil Hudson (34:55):Yeah. I yeah, I think it, the, that question kind of speaks to a lack of understanding of how the process works. And it's not like you apply for that job, right? Right. Like, that's a job that you are given or assigned because you have enough clout and credit and respect for the accomplishments you have. Or you've sold something and you have enough clout credits. Right. And and respect for what you've done. So, because we, I asked that question early on. Go ahead.Michael Jamin (35:27):Well, the first time we were hired as showrunner, it's like, I'm sure that was Michael. Hi Michael Eisner hired us for Glenn Martin. I'm sure he was nervous cuz we had never run a show before. And he had a right to be nervous. We had a lot of experience, but he was like, can you do this? And my partner like, yeah, we could do it Very unconvincingly. So he had a right to be nervous and we were nervous. It's like, it's a big, it's a big deal to give someone that break.Phil Hudson (35:49):Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, I asked that question early on too. Like, if I sold a show, am I automatically the showrun? And you're like, Nope. I knew you may not even be an executive producer,Michael Jamin (35:58):Right? Oh, probably not. You'll probably be, yeah. But you'll probably be a low level or mid-level writer. You're not gonna, they're not gonna, it's, it's such a big deal that they're not gonna trust their investment to someone who's has no idea how to do it.Phil Hudson (36:10):Sure, sure. Awesome. That's the end of our professional. We got a couple aspirational and one general, I think we can get these done in a couple minutes here and, and wrap this up. Don't need to split into a third episode on the Ask Me Anything episode of Michael Jam's screenwriting podcast. Yeah. Nate, the Nate Gillen or Gillen, I'm so horrible with these pronunciations. I apologize everybody. As the medium for television seems to shift from networks to streaming platforms, whose staff should I try to join as a PA and eventually a writer to pitch a show to after years of experience in course Netflix, Disney, a studio like fx andMichael Jamin (36:47):I think whoever will hire you, that's Yeah. Is that what youPhil Hudson (36:50):Yeah, that's definitely,Michael Jamin (36:51):There's no wrong answer. Whoever will hire you and those writers will bo if they're on a network show next year, they'll be on a streaming show. Like they'll bounce around. There's, we don't, we don't care, I don't think. Yeah, for the most part we're like, Hey, who's hiring? We'll take the job.Phil Hudson (37:05):Yeah. I think I can speak to this as someone who has been a PA for the last several years in multiple aspects whatever job you can get, like finding a job is the hard part. Like yeah, it is so hard to find APA job where you can get brought on that you can then have to build a reputation. And it's not like you stick with a studio or, or production company. Mean you're typically moving with that crew of people. You're production office coordinator likes you, so as an office pa they hire you on the next show. You're a set pa the first ad likes you or the second ad likes you. The second, second likes you. So they bring you on to the next one. You move with the people, not necessarily the people making the show. There are some circumstances, you know, I've, I've been working with 8 24 for a couple seasons now on Tacoma fd and I did have some conversations with them where they said, Hey, we would like to continue to work with you.(37:57):And so I've built that relationship of trust over several seasons with them. And I could probably go to them and say, Hey, I'm looking for a job and they'd recommend me to stuff, but I also have plenty of other relationships that I could probably just move to the next project or the next project with the groups of people I've worked with. So it's just networking and you've gotta get the job first. So don't, don't don't feel like you're plotting out an entire career based on what job we get as a pa. That's just not gonna happen.Michael Jamin (38:23):Right,Phil Hudson (38:24):Right.Michael Jamin (38:25):Cool. Exactly.Phil Hudson (38:26):We're gonna get into some questions that are very similar here. Right. And so I, I just want to give the, these people, cause I asked the question some, some clout, but they are very similar and I, things you've already answered many times as an aspiring screenwriter, what is one of the best ways to gain exposure? Where is a good outlet to present your work to gain potential opportunity? That's nine. Nine Jack. And then I'm gonna do Kimmy, Naomi, what are the best ways to get your writing out there and known to attract bigger opportunities these days? And she talks about how it used to be blogging. Is it festivals? Is it shorts? Kind of smashing 'em together, right?Michael Jamin (39:03):Yeah. But it's, it's anything. It's like, sure, you can apply it to some of the bigger screenwriting festivals. The big ones, not the little ones. The ones who've heard of are, you know, they might be worth something, you know, Sundance or Nickels orPhil Hudson (39:16):Austin Television.Michael Jamin (39:18):Austin, yeah. Yeah. Those are good ones. But the smaller ones are, you know, they're just money making operations. So that's what you could do that. But also just put your wor anywhere you put your work out there short. Sure. Make a TikTok channel and put your work up there, you know, in three minute. Make a name for yourself learn every time you create something you know, is, is a good experience, you'll learn from it. You know, a lot of people think it's about networking with people like me. And it's not, you don't have to network with people like me. You can network with people like you. And so you could find fellow filmmakers just outta college or people in college or you know, students or whatever, and just start making stuff together. Get a group of actors. Writers may build a community because those people are gonna rise up.(40:05):If they're serious about it, they're gonna rise up. They're gonna have little opportunities. Hey, I just booked an actor's gonna say, I just booked a commercial. Or a writer's gonna say, oh, I just got, I just, you know, a tiny little thing for somebody. I wrote the, and whatever it is, it's gonna look. Whoa. That's interesting. That, and you're going to surround yourself with these people and all these little opportunities. You're gonna learn about their opportunities and maybe they're gonna bring you in on stuff or maybe you're be inspired. Oh, I could, I could write something like that. I can stage a play and you're building your community of people and someone's gonna pop and you're gonna pop. You know, and that's how you rise up. You don't have to start at the top. You don't have to get your hands in Steven Spielberg's lap to make it in Hollywood. You, all you gotta do is get, build yourself a little community and that's whoever you wanna be with. And that's, that's why I encourage people to move to LA because a lot of those people happen to be in la. Right. If you, you people come to LA to make that dream happen, can you do it and stay where you are, I guess. But you're gonna find more people out here trying to do it.Phil Hudson (41:04):Yeah. LA is also a great sift. It's a sifter of people. A lot of people are gonna move here. A lot of people are gonna fall out. There's a lot of attrition. People are gonna leave and they're, they're not gonna make it. You know, I moved here with a bunch of people from film school. Most of them have left the business or have moved back home cuz just didn't, they didn't have what it took or they didn't feel like they could devote the time or just,Michael Jamin (41:27):Or how serious did they take it? Did they make it, did those stu film students, did they ever actually try to makePhil Hudson (41:32):Anything? No, theMichael Jamin (41:33):Answer's no. No. Right. The answer's no.Phil Hudson (41:35):Right. Because it's, it's easier to dream about something. It's zero risk to think it or dream it or say you're doing it. It is a lot of risk personally and financially and professionally to go out and try to do something. But I don't know anyone who's ever knocked someone for trying. I hear a lot of people, it, it's people want to save face with family and friends or relationships they have back at home or wherever it is who said you're never gonna make it. And so that it's easier to say you don't wanna do it. Like I have a friend really tell a writer puts in more effort than anyone I know writing, he writes all the time, but he never finishes anything and he never submits anything. He never sends anything out. He, he's turned down pa jobs. I've tried to give him, he's done all these things because, and this is like super deep. He's afraid of failing his father. Like his father told him he's not gonna make it. And so any tertiary job related to film that is not film counts because there's zero stake in it.Michael Jamin (42:31):Yeah. But I, you know, it's sad, but you have to start like success doesn't look like what you think it looks like. Success doesn't look like a giant check from a studio to make your movie. It looks like some opportunity that's beneath you. It looks like you making a student film shooting and on your iPhone and posting into YouTube and what's the budget? $30. I mean, that's what it look, I mean, there's no reason why you can't do that. You know, you need better sound, maybe more than $30, but you don't need $50,000 to make your movie. No, you could do it on your phone. You need good sound and you need pay people and pizza. That's how you do it.Phil Hudson (43:05):And people will happily do it from pizza. People are starving in LA man, it's expensive. It's actually cheaper right now by the way, to eat out than it is to buy groceries. So just keep that in mind. That's the inflation world. Yeah. All right. Last question here and then one in general is writing and directing the best way to get your name out there.Michael Jamin (43:22):Well, a any way to get like whatever you're doing. What, whatever, like making afil film with your neighbor already. You, you're exposing yourself to more people than just staying in your basement and doing nothing.Phil Hudson (43:34):Yeah. And the short answer, the reason I separated this one, the short answer is what do you want to do? Do that, do that as much as you can. Do it every chance you can put it out there as many times as much as you can no matter what. And embrace the fact that you're gonna suck at it. Like that's new. It's not meant to be easy for you. Suck it up. And there's zero stakes right now. Cause nobody knows who you are. And that's great.Michael Jamin (43:57):You know what though? I, I've told this story before, but like a couple months ago, a a stu I know this girl, girl I went to high school with, her son is now a student at a film school. And he lives in LA and they were ca they needed people to be in her student film. And they asked if I wanted to do it and they're like, I'm not an actor, so I didn't want to do it, but, but if I was an actor, cause they needed a guy my age, if I was an actor, I would've done it. Why? Because those kids, that crew of five people, you know Sure. They're just dumb students at us film school. No, they're going to, someone is gonna rise up and become, make a name for themselves. And so why wouldn't I not want to, you know, get to know that person? And so it may feel like, well, but yeah, but that's an op that's an opportunity for five years or 10 years from now. You know, get into, get built a circle for yourself. There's no reason like, I didn't wanna do it cause I don't wanna be an actor, but there's no reason. If I wanted to, I would've done it.Phil Hudson (44:52):Yeah. speaking of that, and we haven't talked about this much, I just let you know this last week, but I actually have a couple producers who've hired me to write a spec feature that's just in any feature. It's not anything guild related. It's my first paid work. It's amazing that opportunity. Yeah, it's huge. And that opportunity comes from, they needed help producing a sizzle reel in New Mexico in 2015. And I showed up and I devoted all my time for a weekend to them. I spent tons of time, I spent some of my own money taking care of people, getting things done and impressive enough that, that, and with the help of your course and your mentorship, and the time I put into being here in Hollywood and working in mm-hmm. as a piano, these things I finally have writing samples that impress them enough. This is, yeah, you can hit a budget. It's producible and it's good enough writing. Right. They're gonna send it off, you know, so they're gonna take it and they're gonna submit it to production companies to try to get made as an Indy film.Michael Jamin (45:48):And that's fantastic. Right. And that's because you put yourself out there and you didn't, and you know, nothing was beneath you and you didn't think you had to start at the topPhil Hudson (45:58):Because you don't, you can't. Yeah. So you can't, and I apologize, I missed one question here. It's from Hershey Bar, v a r r. How do you know when you're, you're ready to sell your script? Another one, you,Michael Jamin (46:11):When someone offers to, when someone offers you money for it. But it's kind of, I think we kind of hit on it a little bit already. It's like, if you give your script to somebody and people enjoy, they want to turn the page, you might have something. If it's, if it's a not, you know, if you can't get even your best friend to say it's good, then it's not ready. And again, your goal is not to sell it. Your goal is to impress someone with your writing so that you have other opportunities. So don't even think about, it's not about selling your script. Everyone wants to make money. How about you just learn how to become a good someone that people that you, you know, that you're in demand. If you're a good writer, you will be in demand. Learn how to write first and then doors will open. But if it's all, if it's only about lining your pockets, you know, what do you think's gonna happen?Phil Hudson (46:53):Yep. So, all right. That wraps that up for the aspirational section. One question in general, it's from Christopher Rings. Do you have a favorite meta description of screenwriters in media? I think of the, I love Lucy Writer's Room and being the regards, oh, this is a more personal question for you. It's not about your own.Michael Jamin (47:10):Yeah. I, I, yeah. I watched that and I enjoyed that. That's funny. I mean, Aaron Sorkin is a fantastic writer. I was a little surprised when I watched that. And Aaron Sorkin knows what a writer's room is. I mean, you know, he's run writer's rooms. He's been in writer's rooms. I was a little surprised about when I watched that. It was the Char, I don't remember the character but sh she's a female writer on, on Lyla Lucy. And she was given it to Lucille Ball in the, in the movie. She was given it to her. And I'm like, whoa. I've never been on a writing staff where a staff writer talked to the star that way. . Now that's not to say it didn't happen, because maybe it did, you know, may you know, I don't know about the past, but I was surprised when I saw that.(47:49):I was like, whoa. In, in, in general, we don't, we don't talk to actors that way. We don't yeah, we don't yell at them. We, especially the star, we don't call 'em out. Cause they'll fight you. They'll get you fired . So no one wants to get fired, . So I'm not sure if that's a, an accurate, although I totally enjoyed that movie and I, and I watching it and I was like, oh, I wonder if that's how it was. I, you know, I don't know. I wasn't there. So is there an accurate depiction? I thought it's reallyPhil Hudson (48:17):More your favorite. I think the question is favorite, not necessarily accurate. Oh, okay. It could be, could be accurate. It could be both.Michael Jamin (48:23):I always liked on the la and I haven't seen it in 20 years, but on the Larry Sanders show, I always like the way the accurate Jeremy PN was pur portrayed on the la as the writers, because those guys were never happy . They were joke writers and they were never happy. And they always aspired to do more, sell the screenplay or whatever. And I, that felt real to me. Or it felt funny to me. I, and I haven't worked in late night television, so I don't know if it's accurate, but I thought that was hilarious.Phil Hudson (48:49):That's awesome. I really love, was it Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which I brought it before to mm-hmm. , I think it's Aaron Sorkin as well. And it's like a Saturday Night Live type show behind the scenes really moving, really moving one of the most beautiful Christmas episodes of anything I've ever seen really touching. SoMichael Jamin (49:04):And then there's 30 rock portrayed actor writer, the writing stuff, but not really they quickly ditched that because they're, the gold was not in the writing stuff, isn't it? Watching people write is not interesting. Watching actors become idiots. That's more interesting than watching writers at a table, so.Phil Hudson (49:21):Awesome. Well, that's the end of your ask me anything, Michael. Two, two parter. Done. any other thoughts, questions, anything you want to put out to the, to your audience?Michael Jamin (49:31):Just the normal stuff. We got lots of free resources for people who want to go get it. We got free downloads of sample script.Phil Hudson (49:38):We have, we should, you know, one thing we don't talk about is you have your you have a bunch of free samples that you have available of your writing. I'll pull up the URL here if you want to start talking about the other one. They probably don't have thatMichael Jamin (49:51):Ready. Yeah. That we have that we have a free lesson on, on screenwriting at michaeljamin.com/free. Definitely get that. We have a, our watch list, which is our weekly newsletter with tips. You should be on that michaeljamin.com/watchlist. I post daily on Instagram and TikTok and Facebook at @MichaelJaminWriter. This is all free guys. And then of course, there's some downloads for scripts that I've written. If you wanna, you know, study those or look at the formatting I know it's on our, I know it's available on the website, michaeljamin.com. I know you can. Phil's gonna give you the rightPhil Hudson (50:25):Url. Yeah, I'll get it. And you know what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna put a link in the show notes here, so just go check that out. Mm-Hmm. . Cuz it's gonna be a, it's gonna take me a second to pull this up. I've done a poor job of making it really accessible, so I will get that fixed today. Yeah, we'll you can always go to michaeljamin.com/ there's a free stuff tab at the top mm-hmm. . And you can just hit that and it'll be in there. So yeah, that's it. Cool.Michael Jamin (50:48):All right everyone, thank you so much, Phil, thank you for join

This episode was recorded in December of 2022Hear Megana's fantastic work on the Scriptnotes podcast Power of the Pen- Ohio's Original Interscholastic Creative Writing Program for Middle Schools Glee (2009-2015) TV series based in Lima, Ohio Heathers (1988), a dark comedy set in fictional Sherwood, Ohio written by Ohioan Daniel WatersBad Sisters- Written by Sharon Horgan Follow Megana Rao on Twitter : @meganaraoFollow Heart of it All on Twitter and Instagram: @heartofitallpodThis episode was edited and engineered by Adam Rich and produced by Liz Pahl and Assistant Producer Rory Ball. Support provided by WOUB Public Media.

Season 4 Premiere: In order to bring you more quality episodes about what's happening in Texas veterinary medicine, we're offering you a sneak peak into TVMA members' exclusive benefit, Texas Veterinarian magazine. Each month, we'll select an article from the magazine to share with you as a reading on the podcast. Starting with this article from Dr. John August, the Carl B. King Dean of the Texas A&M University School of Veterinary Medicine, entitled “Veterinary Research in the Texas Panhandle”.Support the show

John and Craig revisit their analysis of the iconic 1995 comedy Clueless. A contemporary adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma set in Beverly Hills, Clueless follows protagonist Cher as she tries to do ‘good' through make-over montages and match-making attempts. We discuss how the movie sets up the characters in the first ten minutes, why Cher's voiceover works so well, and how Clueless ushered in a new era of teen movies. In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig share their own experiences learning to drive and how they're preparing to teach their teenage daughters driving. Links: Clueless Clueless Script 8D sound example Creme Mains hand creme O'Keefe's Working Hands cream Sign up for Scriptnotes Premium here. John August on Twitter Craig Mazin on Twitter John on Instagram Outro by Ryan Dunn (send us yours!) Scriptnotes is produced by Megana Rao and edited by Matthew Chilelli. Email us at ask@johnaugust.com You can download the episode here. UPDATE 4-11-20 The transcript can be found here.