John and Craig take a look at the many For Your Consideration scripts suddenly available to read to see what lessons can be learned from movies that were actually made. They find best practices for establishing setting, using “we see” and “we hear,” complicated setups, directing on the page, and how to get right into your story.

We also look at the possible sale of Paramount, the International Phonetic Alphabet and setting 2024 goals, before answering listener questions on UK credits and our writing routines.

In our bonus segment for premium members, John and Craig chew on a difficult question — would we eat lab-grown human meat?

Links:

• The Vultures Are Circling: Who Will Walk Away With Paramount? by Alex Weprin for The Hollywood Reporter
• The Holdovers by David Hemingson
• All of Us Strangers by Andrew Haigh
• May December by Samy Burch, story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik
• Saltburn by Emerald Fennell
• Killers of the Flower Moon by Eric Roth & Martin Scorsese
• Barbie by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach
• Across the Spider-Verse by Phil Lord & Christopher Miller & Dave Callaham
• Oppenheimer by Christopher Nolan
• American Fiction by Cord Jefferson
• Weekend Read 2
• Gartic Phone
• Dungeons & Dragons – Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage
• Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
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• Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
• John August on Threads, Instagram and Twitter
• John on Mastodon
• Outro by Zach Lo (send us yours!)
• Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

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You can download the episode here.