0:02

Hello and welcome. My name is John August and this is

0:04

episode 632 of Scriptnotes, a podcast

0:07

about screenwriting and things that are interesting to

0:09

screenwriters. Today's episode is about

0:12

mystery and suspense. It's also a

0:14

Best of episode. And to explain

0:16

why we're airing material from the vaults, I need to

0:18

tell you a little story. So sit back, get comfortable.

0:22

Now, long-time listeners will recognize that in no

0:24

fewer than three episodes of Scriptnotes, we have

0:26

urged our listeners to get their flu shots.

0:29

In fact, in the opening moments of episode

0:31

five, back in 2011, Craig and I talked

0:33

about it. Drew, let's play a clip

0:35

from that episode right from the very start because this

0:37

is before we even had bloop. So this was boop, boop, boop,

0:39

boop, boop. Back then I used to pick

0:41

different theme music from the shows. Let's play that now. Hello

0:58

and welcome to Scriptnotes, a podcast

1:00

about screenwriting and things interesting to screenwriters. My

1:02

name is John August. My name is Craig

1:04

Mason. Hello, Craig. How are you doing today?

1:07

Doing great, John. How about yourself? I

1:09

am doing pretty well. It's been a day

1:11

of many small errands and things to take

1:14

care of. I got my flu shot today,

1:16

for example. And you

1:18

know, I'm a huge pro-vaccination guy, but I

1:20

always feel like the flu shot is the

1:22

one vaccine that's kind of a waste of

1:24

time just because of the

1:26

whole thing where there's so many different strains and they're kind

1:28

of guessing. They are guessing. They

1:30

have to figure out which flu they think is going to be

1:32

the biggest strain to hit American

1:34

shores at the time. My

1:37

gambler's aspect of it is that

1:40

having the flu completely sucks. Yes.

1:43

And so if I can spend $20 and take 20 minutes to have

1:46

a very good chance of avoiding a terrible flu, I'll

1:49

gladly spend that money and take that time. Absolutely. And that's

1:51

why I'll get a flu shot also. And I always give

1:53

my kids flu shots. I always just feel a little silly

1:55

about it as opposed to proper vaccinations,

1:57

which of course are lifesavers. The other

1:59

thing The thing about the flu is,

2:01

I feel like people misuse the word flu because

2:03

flu is a very specific virus. And

2:06

usually when people say they have the flu, what they mean is they

2:08

have the common cold. You

2:11

really have to be pretty sick for it to be the flu. If

2:14

you're knocked on your back and really, really

2:16

hating life, that could very well be the

2:18

flu. Yeah, you got like

2:20

a serious fever, muscle pains. That's a... Flu's

2:22

bad stuff. Oh my gosh,

2:25

you sound like babies. Yeah, so we were so young,

2:27

so naive. The 10 years of

2:29

cigars had lowered your voice or anything like

2:31

that. The Trump administration, the

2:33

bourbon, the everything that happened. So

2:36

here we have our first clue about what may be going

2:38

on here. So Craig and I are

2:40

talking about the flu. So either

2:42

one of the two of us or someone in our

2:44

orbit must have gotten the flu. And

2:46

in fact, that has already happened on

2:48

the show. So back in episode 434,

2:50

January 2020, Craig talks about

2:53

how he got the flu. He describes going to

2:55

urgent care. And Craig asks me,

2:57

do you know how they test for the flu?

2:59

They put a swab up your nose and swirl

3:01

it around, which is wild. That

3:03

used to be a new thing. This

3:06

is January 2020, he's telling me this. And

3:08

so we were just about to have COVID. We're just

3:10

about to all have our noses swabbed endlessly for the

3:12

rest of our lives. But this is a new thing

3:15

for Craig. No idea what was coming. No,

3:17

no idea. Which brings us to 2024. So

3:20

last week, it's a Saturday evening. I'm feeling

3:22

a little bit achy, but I was just at the

3:24

gym that morning. Nothing too big,

3:27

nothing too pressing. We're having

3:29

friends that are to play board games. So as a

3:31

responsible host, I take a COVID

3:33

test. I swab my nose, just as Craig had

3:35

done back in 434. COVID

3:38

test turns out negative. So hooray. So

3:40

friends come over, we play spyfall. We

3:43

play poetry for Neanderthals. We play celebrity.

3:45

A great time is had by all. So

3:48

the guests leave and suddenly I just

3:50

feel awful. Like everything comes crashing down.

3:52

I'm guessing that what I was experiencing

3:54

during that game night was essentially stage

3:56

health where you can feel good when

3:58

you're actually out on stage, when you're actually forming and

4:01

then it all comes crashing down. Drew, you were

4:03

an actor. You may have seen something like that

4:05

in your orbit. Oh, I've absolutely had that happen

4:07

several times. Usually it's the times when I

4:09

was the lead. I would have full blown

4:12

laryngitis backstage and then get on and be able

4:14

to project out and not know how I did

4:16

it. Yeah, we were doing big fish

4:18

in London and there was this cold that went through

4:20

the entire cast and these people

4:22

were just, they're basically invalids. They

4:24

were just so sick and

4:27

then you just show them out on stage and they could somehow

4:29

do it. They're belting and then they

4:31

can't talk off stage. And so

4:33

I think it was some bit of that. I just

4:35

did not feel how bad I felt while

4:37

people were there. But I

4:39

am now so cold, I am shaking. I have a

4:41

fever of 101. I

4:43

take some Advil, I go to bed. I don't

4:46

sleep too well. I get too hot, too

4:48

cold. I start sweating, I feel gross. I

4:50

take my temperatures throughout the night and it gets up to 105.5. Oh

4:54

my God. At that point, I genuinely don't know what

4:56

to do because if I Google now, I see that

4:58

over 105, I'm not

5:00

sure if you're supposed to go to the emergency room but it's not

5:02

like it's staying over 105 and

5:04

I don't have any of the others for like emergency symptoms

5:06

like that. I'm not pulsing, I'm not

5:09

confused or delirious. So

5:11

anyway, first thing in the morning, my

5:14

kids make sure urgent care. I say, I

5:16

think I have the flu. They're like, they swab my nose.

5:19

They say, you have the flu and they send me home with Tamau

5:21

flu. The doctor says, listen, you're gonna have three

5:23

bad days and

5:25

then you'll be okay. The doctor was accurate

5:28

but not, I don't know.

5:30

It didn't fully describe the experience. It was just

5:32

horrible. I have friends

5:34

who've had much more serious illnesses. I

5:36

don't want to downplay that but

5:39

for whatever reason, good fortune, I've never been

5:41

this sick as an adult and so I

5:43

don't want to downplay just like how awful

5:45

the flu was for me. It

5:48

was just bad. Have you had the flu as a grownup? I

5:50

don't think I've had it as an adult. I'm sure I had

5:52

it as a kid because kids get everything. Yeah,

5:54

I'm sure I had it as a kid, too. I remember things

5:57

that sort of felt like this as a kid but your

5:59

kid body. is just so different. I

6:02

kind of felt like everything was just

6:04

down and broken. So I had fever,

6:06

body aches, chills, a diarrhea, but

6:09

that's it. I had none of the respiratory

6:11

things, but what I had was enough. I

6:13

couldn't eat, I couldn't really sleep. I just

6:16

sort of laid there in this fugue state, envisioning

6:18

boxes being assembled. I couldn't think any

6:21

organized thoughts other than just repetitive,

6:23

simple thoughts. I felt

6:25

like a video game that had crashed and the

6:27

screen was sort of like half pixelated, sort of

6:30

broken. It was bad. So

6:32

I eventually came back online. I had

6:34

these moments where I'd say, oh, this is

6:36

the best I've felt so far. I still felt terrible, but

6:39

it was better than I felt two hours

6:41

before. And then a few hours later, I

6:43

was like, oh no, this is the best I've felt so far. And that

6:45

was the gradual coming out of it. So

6:47

now we're on the fifth day

6:50

flu-wise. I feel like I'm basically through it.

6:52

The last couple of days I've been able to do some

6:54

phone calls for reasons we get into. I've had so many phone

6:56

calls. The flu sucks. That's why I'm

6:58

taking away from the flu. So

7:00

to answer the Mr. and Defense question I proposed at the very

7:02

start of this, the reason why this is

7:04

a best of episode is because we had a bigger

7:06

episode planned. We were going to have a guest

7:09

host on. We had sort of a menu of things we were

7:11

going to go through and that's going to be pushed back a

7:13

week. But we asked a lot of

7:15

other things to talk through. So this is a hybrid of

7:17

old stuff and new stuff in one episode. Takeaways,

7:20

I guess. Flu shot, get your flu shot.

7:23

It didn't protect me this time. It's protected

7:25

me many other years, I'm sure. Chamiflu, sure,

7:27

great. It's not the magic bullet I hoped it would

7:29

be. You see people who get

7:31

the COVID drug and they're like,

7:34

oh my god, I feel great. It

7:36

wasn't like that. It wasn't just like, oh, suddenly the lights came

7:38

on. It is crazy that we

7:40

don't have an at-home test in the US

7:42

for flu because if we had, they exist

7:45

in Europe. In Asia? Yeah,

7:47

they have this test where you can

7:49

swab. It's like one test that swabs

7:51

for flu, RSV and COVID.

7:54

So if I had a test like that, I would

7:56

have swabbed and I would have tested positive

7:58

for flu. had friends

8:00

come over, yeah, I probably could have gotten

8:02

Tamiflu 12 hours earlier. It's

8:04

really frustrating. We don't have those here. That feels

8:07

so obvious that we would have them.

8:09

Yeah. Now I'm very frustrated. So

8:11

apparently, the reason why we don't have them is like

8:13

it was proposed years ago and they said,

8:15

like, oh, Americans aren't ready to

8:18

handle at-home testing of things. But we

8:21

are now. So just get over it. We can do

8:23

it. And of my board game

8:25

party group, no one is sick yet, which is great.

8:27

Some of them took Tamiflu, which is smart and great.

8:30

So hopefully, they'll all stay healthy. Well,

8:32

terrible for you, but it sounds like it worked out okay.

8:36

Drew, tell us about the mystery and suspense

8:38

portions you have picked up for us this

8:40

episode. Yeah. So this is an episode about

8:42

mystery and suspense, but it's not just detectives

8:44

and thrillers. So this is how to use

8:47

mystery and suspense techniques in every story, including

8:49

comedies. So really helpful. We're going to start

8:51

with episode 269. That's mystery versus

8:53

confusion. So it's about using mystery to

8:56

capture an audience's curiosity, but making sure

8:58

that doesn't tip over into confusion or

9:00

frustration or just making sure it's all

9:02

very deliberate. And then we'll

9:04

go to episode 332, which is called... It's

9:08

about suspense and the different types of suspense and how

9:10

to craft it on the page. Great.

9:13

And our bonus segment for premium members, you and I are going to

9:15

talk about the Apple Vision Pro, which we had in the office and

9:17

got a chance to test out and play around with. But

9:20

before we get into any of that, we have some news. We

9:22

actually have a sort of busy news week. So

9:24

first we need to start with all the agent stuff that happened

9:26

this week. Agencies are always going through

9:28

changes. Agents move from one firm to another. Sometimes

9:30

they take their clients with them. Sometimes

9:33

they shudder. And that happened this past week

9:35

with one of the smaller agencies. That's right.

9:37

So the first one was A3, which used

9:39

to be Abe or Bizardis Agency. So

9:41

an email went out on Friday, February 9th that

9:43

the agency was shutting down on Monday. It sounds

9:47

like the decision to pull the trigger was

9:49

made completely by the chairman, Adam Bold. Bold

9:52

has that power to make that unilateral move

9:54

because of an operating agreement they signed last

9:56

year, which the CEO, Robert

9:59

Adderman, and President Brian Cho have

10:01

been suing Bold over. Sounds like

10:03

there's quite a lot of drama here. They

10:06

did that reportedly in an attempt to

10:08

block Bold from selling off A3's digital

10:10

and unscripted departments to Gersh, which had

10:12

happened in January, and now

10:14

that agency's completely dissolved. Yeah,

10:16

so. My recollection is that

10:18

A3 represented both, I know

10:20

they represented some writers because back in the WJ

10:23

agency campaign, I remember them being one of the agencies

10:26

that we had to negotiate with, but

10:28

they also represented other talent as well. It's

10:30

frustrating when your agency melts away because then

10:33

you don't know as a piece of

10:35

talent, like what are you supposed to do, like where are you supposed to

10:37

go? And I also feel bad, of course,

10:39

for the agents who are settling without a

10:41

job. Those changes do happen. All

10:44

right, so that is an agency shutting down. What's

10:46

more common to happen in Hollywood is that an

10:49

agent will leave an agency either taking either

10:51

a client to a different firm or

10:53

sort of setting up a new agency, and that's what happened this

10:55

past week. So the big news in

10:58

my friend group this past week has been about

11:00

Verve. So on Tuesday, I was announced

11:02

that Bill Weinstein, who was one of the

11:04

founders, partners, and the CEO of Verve Talent had

11:06

left the firm. And as long

11:08

time listeners will know, I actually moved to

11:10

Verve during the WJA agency

11:13

campaign, and Bill was my primary

11:15

agent. The trades are reporting

11:17

that three other agents are joining on this

11:19

new venture. There could be more. We're

11:21

reporting this on Thursday, so by the time this episode

11:23

comes out on Tuesday, a lot more

11:25

may have developed. But Drew, it's fair

11:28

to say that a ton of phone calls have happened

11:31

in the office here over the last two or three days.

11:34

Yes, I would absolutely say that. So

11:37

it's weird. The phone doesn't bring

11:39

nearly as much of the use to you because

11:41

everything is now emails or text messages, but when

11:43

you need kind of real-time information, you just pick

11:45

up the phone and call a person, especially when

11:47

they want to talk about advice. And the reason

11:49

why people were calling me were

11:51

mostly friends of mine who were at Verve,

11:53

and then just think about, do I stay at Verve?

11:56

Do I go to this new place? Do I

11:58

go to a third place? One

12:00

of the things I try to talk everybody through is that not

12:02

to fall into the false dichotomy of only

12:05

two options. There's a

12:07

sense of either you have to choose A or B. You

12:10

can choose A or B or neither of those

12:12

and go to a different situation,

12:14

different solution. For some

12:16

people, if they have a primary relationship with

12:18

an agent who is staying at birth, it

12:21

probably makes sense to stay at birth. If they have a

12:23

primary relationship with an agent who is moving to this

12:25

new firm, it may make sense to move to the new firm. But

12:28

in other cases, it may make sense to look

12:30

around and see where's the right place to end up.

12:33

That could be at a different agency. It could be with a manager. For

12:35

me personally, as we're recording this, I don't know where I'm going

12:38

to go. I don't know if I'm staying at birth

12:40

or going to the new agency or

12:42

going someplace else. It'll

12:44

be a busy couple of weeks as

12:46

this all sorts itself out. It's mystery and suspense.

12:49

It is mystery and suspense, Drew. The

12:51

second bit of business that we have not covered yet on

12:53

this program is OpenAI announced

12:56

Sora. Sora is

12:58

this new video generation

13:00

tool. We've seen tools before

13:02

that do what Dolly did for

13:05

images that created videos, but they were

13:07

terrible. They were just awful. You

13:09

would not believe them to be real at

13:11

all. Drew, you saw these demos.

13:13

What did you think? I was blown

13:15

away. The physics of it

13:17

is amazing. Seeing things

13:20

underwater videos are incredible. There's

13:22

one I was telling you about that it's

13:24

like a drone shot from like 1850s California

13:26

or something like that. It's

13:28

both incredible and awe-inspiring and

13:31

a little bit terrifying. The

13:33

first text message I got from a friend was, quote,

13:36

how petrified should I be? I

13:39

told him, don't be petrified. It's

13:41

a long way from these little

13:43

demo clips to typing a

13:45

prompt in for like, make me a biopic

13:48

about Janice Joplin in the style of

13:50

Boslerman. There's a reason why writers

13:53

and other film professionals are involved to get

13:55

you from that notion

13:57

to an actual film that people see.

14:01

All of that said, there

14:03

are important things to consider

14:05

with these technologies and the impact

14:07

they could have on our business. First

14:10

off, the demos they showed were

14:12

largely about someone typing something into

14:15

a box and it coming up with

14:17

a little clip. But it

14:19

can also take video as input. So

14:21

you can feed it video of a film

14:23

and say, replace Kevin Spacey,

14:26

because Kevin Spacey is a problematic person right

14:28

now. Because it could probably

14:30

do a very good job of replacing Kevin

14:32

Spacey in a film. So suddenly you don't

14:34

have to reshoot or do anything else. If you are

14:36

a copyright holder on this film, you want

14:39

to make money off this, you might replace Kevin

14:41

Spacey in a film and it can do

14:44

it pretty simply. Likewise,

14:46

if you are the holder of copyright on

14:48

something in your vault and you want to refresh

14:52

it and make

14:54

it more palatable to modern audiences, well, you could

14:56

do certain things like kind of uprising it or

14:58

you could change the aspect ratio

15:00

of it. So if it's sort of shot more square

15:02

and you want it to be more widescreen, you

15:04

could fill in the edges there much better with

15:06

AI so you could really figure out if the

15:08

photoshops are generated still. It will have a good

15:11

sense of what should actually be in the spaces

15:13

that are missing. That is really

15:15

useful for that. Is it transformative

15:17

enough that it is covered by copyright? That's

15:20

an open question and that's the thing that's going

15:22

to be wrestled with. But it raises issues of

15:24

what is a refresh of an existing film versus

15:26

what is a remake? Because

15:29

writers and directors and other folks, we

15:31

get paid for when our

15:33

material is remade. If film wants to remake

15:35

Go, I get paid for that because that's

15:37

what my original thing. But

15:39

if you're just kind of constantly

15:42

rejuvenating an existing property, that gets

15:44

to be a little bit murkier. I guess

15:46

what do we call the stuff that comes out of these

15:48

engines? Some of

15:50

it can look like animation, some of it can look like

15:52

live action. But it's not really either of the above. I

15:55

mean, there were no actors being filmed, so it's not

15:57

live action as we think of. But it's

15:59

also not animation. by any animation

16:02

process. It's just a

16:04

thing that's being generated. And as

16:06

WJ writers, we want to make sure that material

16:09

that comes out of a process like

16:11

this isn't defaulted into animation because the

16:14

WJ does represent animation, but not

16:16

exclusively. And it could be a

16:18

way for studios to do an engine around protections that

16:20

we have put in place for writers. And so we

16:22

want to make sure that there's

16:25

no loophole here where

16:27

using this technology gets them out of

16:29

hiring WJ writers. And

16:31

finally, this is, you talked about the physics of the

16:34

stuff that you saw. Sort of a

16:36

knock on effect of these things that they had is that they

16:38

have kind of become these

16:40

reality engines. They've ingested so

16:42

much material, so much

16:44

video, that they create

16:46

these pretty compelling drone

16:49

shots. They have a sense of

16:51

how things move in space. If

16:53

a character was in front of another character and

16:55

occludes it, there's persistence of

16:57

vision. It has object permanence almost. Yeah,

17:00

object permanence. Baby learns object

17:02

permanence. It's just much more sophisticated than

17:04

things we're used to coming out of this. And because

17:06

of it, it can actually do things like, by

17:08

watching a bunch of Minecraft videos, it

17:11

kind of gets Minecraft. And it can

17:13

simulate Minecraft so well that it becomes

17:15

basically just Minecraft. And if you

17:18

can do that with Minecraft, to what

17:20

degree are you able to simulate off

17:22

of real world video sort of

17:25

what reality is? And that

17:27

has troubling implications for, not troubling,

17:29

but fascinating implications for sort of like

17:32

the nature of reality and sort of how

17:34

it understands the world around it. So

17:37

I think it's just really interesting to watch the space. Obviously,

17:39

we're concerned about it because it looks

17:42

like it could replace the jobs of Hollywood

17:44

workers. But it could actually have broader implications

17:46

if we're beyond that. So I think

17:49

it's not a thing to panic about right now, but something we

17:51

should be mindful of because as

17:54

of this moment in 2024, it's

17:56

just interesting. And it could be much

17:59

more than interesting. interesting in a few years. Do

18:02

you feel like there's a next step from it

18:04

almost? Do you anticipate any of that or

18:06

is it all sort of an unknown? Well,

18:08

right now they're sort of showing the demos

18:10

so they're not releasing the tool for people

18:12

to use. And that's because there

18:15

are obvious applications of this for disinformation,

18:17

for deepfakes, all

18:19

that's really troubling. So figuring out like

18:21

how you would even put this

18:24

in the public's hands is a big concern.

18:27

Some people push back against my blog post on it, blah, blah,

18:29

blah, and they showed us the blog post and put up about

18:31

it. John,

18:33

you ignored the fact that AI material can't be

18:35

copyrighted. And I think that's

18:38

naive. It is a fact

18:40

that right now, you know,

18:42

existing U.S. law suggests that

18:44

a trail journey by AI

18:47

by itself cannot be copyrighted. But

18:49

there's really no clear gradations there. So

18:53

my example of like using AI

18:55

to do some film enhancements,

18:57

like the zone of interest, there

19:00

are these really cool sequences which I originally

19:02

thought were animation, but it turned out they were

19:04

shot with this night vision camera that

19:06

looked really surreal. These cameras

19:08

were not high enough resolution to create a

19:10

good image on screen, but they could take that and

19:12

then use AI to fix the issues in

19:14

it. Well, that's

19:16

still going to be copyrightable. You still

19:19

are starting with something. And so I

19:21

think the degree to which

19:23

you can use AI to do stuff in

19:25

your film does not make

19:28

it un-copyrightable. And so that's all

19:30

going to be figured out. We don't

19:32

know what the line is right now. I think just as

19:34

people who are working in guilds, we need to be thinking

19:36

about how do we make sure that

19:39

we help draw the line and it's not just the

19:41

studios who are drawing the line. Cool.

19:45

Before we get to the new stuff, Drew, some things we

19:47

need from our listeners. First off, we're

19:49

trying to do an episode that includes some counterfactual

19:51

Hollywood history. So I've been reading

19:53

this great book on counterfactual

19:56

military history. So what happens if

19:58

this battle back in ancient... times

20:00

have gone differently and the other side had won,

20:03

would we be speaking in Roman right now? So

20:05

sometimes in history, small changes can

20:07

lead to giant differences of

20:09

outcome. And we'd love to do that for Hollywood if

20:12

we could in a future episode. So

20:14

if you have suggestions for if this one event

20:16

had gone differently, what would the

20:18

impact be? So an example, if the

20:20

movie Titanic had tanked and were a disaster,

20:23

what would be the knock-on impact of that?

20:26

Or if Iron Man had failed,

20:28

would we have the Marvel Cinematic Universe?

20:31

Always love your questions about that. It doesn't just have to be about

20:33

movies, it could be about television, it could

20:35

be about some other impact of

20:37

technology or if another country had sort of gotten

20:39

to a certain thing first. But what

20:42

we'd love is not sort of too

20:44

sci-fi-ish. It's not about sort of like, what

20:46

if aliens admit at this point, it's about

20:48

sort of like a slip of a coin,

20:50

like a thing that could have gone either way if it had gone the other

20:52

way. It's always fun to

20:54

think about that. So if you have suggestions

20:56

for counterfactual Hollywood history, we'd love to

20:58

hear those. Yep, email those to ask

21:01

at johnaugust.com and I'll count them all. Fantastic.

21:04

Drew, let's get it started with our mystery

21:06

at suspense. So which episode are we hearing

21:08

first and which one's number two? It's

21:11

episode 269 first and then episode 332. Right,

21:14

and we'll be back here after that with some

21:16

uncool things and to wrap stuff up. Craig

21:21

get us started. Why should

21:23

we care about mystery? Well

21:25

we should care about it because we care about confusion.

21:27

You and I talk about this all the time. We

21:31

get confused so easily. But

21:33

part of the reason that we

21:35

can get confused easily is because

21:37

clearly as writers, we're trying

21:39

to do something. And

21:41

if we do too much of it, it ends up

21:43

confusing. But why not be

21:46

completely non-confusing? Well, that

21:48

seems like a stupid question, but it's

21:50

worth asking. Why not just be obvious

21:52

about everything? Well because, oh well

21:55

the audience doesn't want that. Well then what is it that

21:57

they want? What they want is

21:59

mystery. They want mystery in all

22:01

things and we get maybe a little distracted

22:04

by the word mystery because it implies a

22:06

genre like Sherlock Holmes or

22:08

Agatha Christie, but in fact,

22:10

mystery is a dramatic concept

22:13

that is in just about every good

22:15

story you ever hear or see. Mystery

22:20

essentially creates curiosity

22:23

and curiosity is what draws

22:27

the audience in. It

22:29

weaves them into the narrative. The

22:31

idea is even though you're not telling

22:34

a detective story, you're

22:36

telling a story in such a

22:38

way that the audience now becomes

22:40

a detective of your story

22:44

because the desire to

22:46

know is essentially the strongest

22:48

non-emotional effect you can create in the

22:50

audience. It actually is I think the

22:53

only non-emotional effect you can create

22:55

in the audience. It's the only

22:57

intellectual thing that you can inspire

22:59

in them, but it's very, very

23:02

powerful when you do. As

23:05

we talk about curiosity, it's that sense of

23:08

asking a question and having a hope

23:10

and an expectation that that question can

23:12

be answered. Obviously, as we're watching a

23:14

story, we're wondering, well, what happens

23:16

next? Mystery comes when we're

23:19

asking questions of like, wait, who is that

23:21

character and why don't I know more information

23:23

about that character? Or why did she say

23:25

that? Or what's inside that box?

23:27

Those are compelling things that get us to

23:29

lean into the screen a little bit more

23:31

because we want to see what's happening. So

23:34

often they can be effective if we are

23:36

at the same general place as

23:38

our lead hero in trying to

23:40

get the answers to these questions. If we see that

23:43

hero attempting to answer these questions, we'll

23:46

be right there with him or her. Yeah.

23:49

And even if we

23:51

create small moments where perhaps the hero

23:53

does no more than we do, what

23:56

we're tweaking is this thing that is very human.

23:59

It's built in. into our DNA, when

24:01

we walk into a situation, we

24:03

are naturally curious. We insist

24:06

upon knowing certain things. If

24:08

you walk down the street and you

24:10

see suddenly 50 people lined

24:12

up in front of a small

24:15

storefront that has blacked out

24:17

windows and a man in the

24:20

front just patiently

24:22

keeping people from entering, you

24:25

want to, there's no decision to want

24:27

to know. Yeah, what's in there?

24:29

Why are there people standing there? Who is

24:31

that man? You begin to do this, right?

24:34

So, let's, as

24:36

screenwriters, let us

24:38

constantly exploit this but

24:40

exploit it in a way that

24:43

doesn't get us into trouble because

24:45

if we're going to go ahead

24:47

and tap them on

24:49

their knee to make that little reflex happen,

24:51

we have to reward them. Absolutely. And we

24:53

also have to figure out when to reward

24:55

them and this is where the craft comes

24:57

in. Let's go back to your

24:59

example of the cloud outside the store and

25:01

it's blacked out windows. If our

25:04

characters walked past that and didn't comment

25:06

on it, didn't acknowledge it, if

25:09

we saw it as an audience but nothing

25:11

was ever done with it, that would be

25:13

frustrating and we would have ascribed a wait

25:15

to whatever that mystery was and

25:17

we'd be waiting for the answer and we might honestly

25:19

miss other crucial things about your story because we keep

25:21

waiting for an answer to that thing, which is part

25:23

of the reason why I think it's an overall cognitive

25:25

load that you can expect an audience to keep and

25:29

if you have too many open loops, too many things that

25:31

are not answered or don't feel like they can be answered,

25:34

the audience grows impatient and sort of frustrated

25:36

and can't focus on new things. They're

25:38

trying to juggle too much and that's a thing

25:40

you have to be very aware of, especially as

25:43

you're going through your story, as you're putting

25:45

all those balls in the air in the first act,

25:47

sometimes you're gonna have to take some of them out

25:49

before you get into the meat of your story, otherwise

25:51

the audience just can't

25:53

follow along with you. That's right. Please

25:55

think of mystery as the intellectual

25:58

version of new to new. in films,

26:01

nudity is distracting, right?

26:03

So in comedies, when there's nudity, you

26:05

can rest assured that the jokes will

26:07

be somewhat diminished in general because

26:10

people are too busy staring at boobs and

26:13

it's hitting a different part of their brain than

26:15

the ha ha funny part. So you

26:17

can do a little bit of boobs, but

26:20

you can't do too much boobs because

26:22

then it's like, oh, I'm confused, I'm

26:24

distracted. So when

26:26

you engage in this very

26:29

powerful technique of

26:31

mini mysteries all the time about things, you

26:34

are creating a contract with the audience

26:36

and you're saying in exchange for this

26:39

distraction. And I know you're distracted. I

26:41

promise that an answer will be given. I

26:43

also hopefully promise that it's

26:46

probably something you could have figured

26:48

out maybe if you'd

26:50

really thought it through. It's not just

26:52

gonna be totally random. Otherwise

26:55

it's not a mystery, it's just random. I

26:58

promise you that the answer will be

27:00

relevant. It'll be logical

27:02

and it will add value to the

27:04

story and value to your experience of

27:06

the story. And

27:09

I also promise that someone

27:13

in the movie knows the answer,

27:16

someone, not no one, right? Because then it's

27:18

not really a mystery. Then it's just an

27:20

absurdity that everyone's finding out

27:22

together. Somebody knows. This

27:24

is all contrasted with what I think sometimes

27:26

happens. And we see this when we do

27:29

our three page challenges with

27:31

confusion. And confusion,

27:34

generally, this is how I experience it and kind

27:36

of interested how you do. I

27:38

experience confusion in the following ways. I feel

27:40

like I'm supposed to know something,

27:43

but I don't. So did

27:45

I miss it? Was I eating popcorn when someone said something?

27:47

Cause I don't know who that is and I don't know

27:49

why they're talking. I

27:51

feel a mounting sense of confusion when things that

27:53

are relying on the thing I'm supposed to know

27:56

keep happening and I don't know why they're happening.

27:58

So now I'm getting really worried. and distracted.

28:02

And generally speaking, I am confused

28:04

when I sense that I'm not

28:06

supposed to be confused. If

28:08

I'm watching a David Lynch film and suddenly

28:12

there's a dwarf talking backwards in a dream,

28:14

I understand. I am supposed to

28:16

be confused. This is abstract. Okay, go

28:18

ahead, confuse me. But I only get confused when I

28:20

think I'm not supposed to be confused right now and

28:22

I am so confused. Yeah. So

28:25

if you were in a, I'm listening to

28:27

McCarthy comedy and suddenly there was a dwarf

28:29

talking backwards, that would be

28:31

unsettling. You would start

28:33

to question the rules of the world and

28:35

that movie and your own trust in the

28:38

filmmakers because that's not the contract he signed

28:40

when he sat down to start watching that

28:42

movie. And that can be a real thing.

28:44

It can be a real burden. I

28:47

agree with you on these points of confusion.

28:49

And my frustration honestly is that sometimes

28:52

in the effort to eliminate confusion, we end

28:54

up sort of scraping too hard and getting

28:56

rid of important mysteries that are actually keeping

28:59

the audience involved. And so I remember when

29:01

I was doing my first test readings for

29:03

the, my movie, the nines, I

29:05

asked him on a survey form, what moments were you

29:07

confused in a bad way? Because what I didn't want

29:09

to do is get rid of all the confusions because

29:12

you were supposed to be confused for parts of the

29:14

movie. But when were you confused in a way that

29:16

like pulls you out of the movie? And those were

29:18

important things for me to be able to understand for

29:21

like, this wasn't just,

29:23

this wasn't intriguing. This was annoying. I

29:25

didn't know what was actually happening here.

29:28

That's exactly right. What there is confusion in a

29:30

good way and confusion in a bad way. And

29:32

when we are confused in a good way, we

29:34

have an expectation that that the pain

29:36

will go away and that

29:38

answers will be revealed. And

29:41

that's exciting. That makes us want to

29:43

keep watching. This is the most important

29:45

part of mystery. It makes you want

29:48

to turn the page of the movie.

29:51

That's why mysteries sell

29:53

more copies than any other kind of

29:55

book. Because you

29:57

want to know it's inescapable. Every

30:00

Harry Potter book is a

30:02

mystery, every single one. Well,

30:04

it also stimulates that basic puzzle-solving nature. It's

30:06

like you feel like, OK, I have all

30:08

these facts. They're going to have to add

30:10

up to something useful. And

30:13

what you said before that you feel like

30:15

if I could think about

30:17

this logically and really figure this out, I

30:19

would come to the right conclusion. And also,

30:21

in the case of Harry Potter, you see

30:24

characters talking about the central mystery and trying

30:26

to solve the central mystery. And after

30:28

you've seen one of these movies, you recognize in

30:30

the third act, they will confront the mystery and

30:33

there will be little tiny mysteries, but it will

30:35

get resolved. There's an implicit deal

30:37

you're making when you sign in for

30:39

one of those books or one of those movies that the

30:41

third act will be about resolving what's going on in the

30:43

course of this thing. And not all of the bigger

30:46

issues of Voldemort and everything, but what's

30:49

been set up in this movie will get resolved

30:51

by the end of this movie. Same thing happens

30:53

in a one-hour procedural is that by the end

30:55

of the hour, you're going to know who the

30:58

killer is, that the killer will be brought to

31:00

justice, or the person who set the

31:02

fire will be caught. The

31:04

frustration comes in sometimes the big

31:07

epic long arc stories

31:10

of an alias or a

31:12

lost, where sometimes those mysteries were so big

31:14

and so spiraling that he had a sense

31:16

like, are we ever going to get the

31:18

answer to these mysteries, or

31:20

are there even answers to these mysteries? Are they

31:22

meant to be just philosophical questions? And

31:25

we just aren't as curious about

31:27

philosophical questions. We don't need to know

31:29

the answers to philosophical questions. And it's

31:32

important, I think, to say that even

31:35

though it's easy to talk about mysteries in

31:37

the context of actual mystery movies, that

31:39

non-mystery movies feature little mini mysteries all the

31:42

time. Sometimes a scene is just who is

31:44

that and why are they doing that?

31:47

And then we get the answer. So let's talk about

31:49

the different types of mysteries we've got in counter. Sure.

31:52

Now we're talking about little specific crafty things

31:54

of how we can create

31:56

or impart mystery in any genre,

31:58

any scene, any moment. And so

32:00

very, very kind of broad writerly

32:03

ways of approaching mystery. First, very,

32:05

very simple mystery pronoun.

32:08

So two characters are talking and one

32:10

of them says, well, what

32:12

are we going to do about her? And the other

32:15

one says, uh, I don't

32:17

know. And we go, okay,

32:20

who's her? Yeah. So who's her?

32:23

Why are they worried about her? What is her going to do?

32:26

Very simple, very easy. And,

32:28

you know, then your choice is when

32:30

to reveal who she is. Similarly,

32:34

you can, uh, it, did

32:36

you do it? I did it. And

32:40

it was hard. Yeah. What's it? Oh, I have to

32:43

know. What is it? What is it? Yeah.

32:45

So especially you're admitting one piece of crucial

32:48

information by putting in a generic pronoun and

32:50

we are desperate to fill in that blank

32:52

and what is that accent

32:54

is talking about? And it's, it is absolutely

32:58

the simplest form of magic trick

33:00

that we do. And

33:02

yet it is so powerful. It is our

33:04

pick a card, any card people

33:06

are still talking to this day about what is

33:09

in the briefcase, what is the it in the

33:11

briefcase and pulp fiction. You know

33:13

what? It is nothing. It's a

33:15

flash bulb. It's not even, it's a light bulb.

33:17

Right. And the point is that he literally

33:19

is saying, when the movie's over and you don't find out

33:21

the point is. That's it. It

33:24

was just a mystery that I, that

33:26

I will never solve for you. Just

33:28

like what is scarlet, your handsome whisper

33:30

or bill Murray whispering to scarlet your

33:32

Hanson's ear at the end of,

33:34

of lost in translation. It doesn't matter.

33:37

It doesn't matter because you will never

33:39

know. And yet we will

33:41

talk about that because of our

33:43

insatiable need to resolve the simplest

33:46

kind of mystery. So

33:48

one caveat here is sometimes you can accidentally

33:50

introduce this kind of mystery that you completely

33:52

didn't mean to. And the situations

33:54

where I see it is you enter into the

33:56

two characters having a conversation and it's not just

33:58

in how it's cut or like. how the actors

34:00

actually change some words, but it makes it seem

34:02

like they'll drop out a pronoun, or they'll drop

34:05

out the name of somebody, and so they'll talk

34:07

about her or she, but not actually say who

34:09

that person is. And then we're like,

34:11

wait, are we supposed to be

34:13

confused? Is that a mystery? Should we be looking

34:15

for what that is? So you have to be

34:17

mindful as a writer and as a person who's

34:19

watching cuts to films that you're not accidentally introducing

34:21

this kind of mystery that's actually just gonna be

34:23

confusion because it's not there intentionally. Correct,

34:26

and so there's the treacherous

34:29

navigation between confusion and

34:32

mystery. But if you can

34:34

figure out how to put these little

34:36

ambiguities in that are intentional, that's great.

34:38

If you can figure out how to

34:40

put in a secret between two people,

34:43

we, I mean, when

34:45

you see two people looking at you and whispering,

34:48

you don't have to decide to be curious,

34:51

right? You are now involved,

34:54

and that's exactly what we want our audience

34:56

to be. We want them to be involved.

34:58

There's an interesting subtle way of creating a

35:00

mystery that I'm personally, I love this version

35:02

when I see it, and every now and

35:04

then I'll pull it myself. And

35:07

it's what I call the obvious lie. We

35:10

know what the facts are at any,

35:12

at this point in the movie, we have a bunch of

35:15

facts at our disposal. And then

35:18

someone asks a character something and the character lies.

35:20

And we know they're lying because we've seen the

35:22

truth. But we don't know why. Why

35:25

are they lying? Or we

35:27

don't know the facts, somebody says something, we believe it's

35:30

true, and then we find out that they were lying.

35:32

And now we want to know why did they lie,

35:35

and what is the truth? Those

35:38

tweak us immediately, we begin to light

35:40

up when these things happen. If

35:43

we want to understand the why's behind

35:45

character's actions, and so to see

35:48

a lie or to have them be revealed as a

35:50

lie, it's like, wait, do I not understand that character

35:52

well enough? There's something else happening here, and I'm curious

35:54

what that is. Now, on the page,

35:56

sometimes I think you have to be really careful

35:59

doing this because The first time you're reading

36:01

a script, you're reading it really carefully. You're

36:03

getting it all. You're experiencing just like the movie.

36:05

The 19th time you read through a script, sometimes

36:07

you just look at the lines. And you're like,

36:09

oh, wait, he says this on this page, but

36:11

this on the other page. If you don't somehow

36:14

single out that this is a lie on a

36:16

time where you're putting the lie, that

36:18

can be kind of a trap. I've actually

36:20

encountered this in places where actors

36:22

or directors will forget, oh, no, she's

36:25

not telling the truth there. That's a lie there.

36:27

And it sounds so obvious for me to say

36:30

it, they're just looking at the individual pages or

36:32

looking at the sides and they're about to shoot

36:34

something and they're not remembering. Oh, that's right, this

36:36

is not actually the truth. So this is a

36:38

case where the slightly

36:40

worded parenthetical or the little action

36:43

line that sort of underscores like

36:45

she's a terrific liar, something

36:47

in there to indicate to the reader and

36:49

the filmmakers that like, remember, this is not

36:51

actually the truth here. Yeah, I

36:53

think that's a great idea. I mean, early

36:56

on, that's not necessary. It's

36:58

later on when you wanna think, okay,

37:00

maybe somebody has forgotten or you don't

37:02

have to worry about it so much if the

37:04

lie and the reveal that it's a lie are

37:06

really close together. Absolutely. So if someone says, anyway,

37:08

I gotta go, I got a meeting, I gotta

37:11

jump in my car, I got a meeting in

37:13

like five minutes and someone goes, great, and then

37:15

they walk outside and they don't have a

37:17

car. Yeah, correct. And they just sit

37:19

down on the bench and wait. Then you go, okay,

37:21

you're a liar, why? I

37:23

need to know, right? So this is a good little mini

37:26

mystery. You can

37:28

have, similarly, you can have mysteries that

37:30

don't involve people talking at all. Sometimes

37:32

it's just an object, like

37:34

the briefcase in Pulp Fiction or

37:37

someone is like, you

37:40

got a camera looking, here's a little mystery at

37:43

the end of Inglourious Basterds. You

37:46

have, I mean, it's not much of a mystery because you

37:48

can pretty much see it coming, but he sets it up

37:50

as a little mini mystery. You're looking up at Brad Pitt

37:53

and I think it's BJ Novak actually.

37:56

A podcast friend of the podcast, BJ Novak. Looking

37:58

up at them, looking down at what they've. done

38:00

to Hans Landa and

38:02

they're talking about it and we are

38:04

the perspective so we don't know what

38:06

it is but they're talking about it

38:08

and then we reveal the answer to

38:10

the mystery. Which is just, listen, it

38:12

may seem inevitable to you because that's

38:14

how you saw the movie, it was

38:16

not. It didn't have to be done that

38:18

way at all. It was a good choice. There's

38:22

also another kind of simple

38:24

mystery to do and

38:28

it's the what I'll call

38:30

not so innocuous information. So

38:33

in this idea someone asks

38:36

someone a question and they get an

38:38

answer and it's very meaningful

38:40

to them. It's just not

38:42

meaningful to us and that

38:44

disparity between what the character thinks of it

38:47

and what we think of it creates a

38:49

mystery. So someone

38:51

says, hey, did George come in

38:53

today? And the person goes, yeah.

38:57

And the person asks him the question, says thank

38:59

you, walks outside and starts crying.

39:02

Why? Why? Why

39:05

are they crying that George came in? Nobody else seems to care

39:07

that George came in. Why did George, who was George? Mystery.

39:11

Mystery, again, we're trying to figure out a character's

39:13

motivations and they're not matching up with their expectations

39:15

and therefore we are leaning in and we are

39:17

curious. And so as long as you're going to

39:20

be able to pay that off at some point,

39:22

that could be a terrific thing. It's

39:24

when we don't see that payoff that things

39:26

get really strange. Again, on the page, if

39:28

that reaction is happening in the moment, like

39:31

it's just a subtle reaction in the moment

39:33

like a concerned stare or like

39:35

a look of sudden panic, you're

39:37

going to have to script that because the lines of

39:39

dialogue aren't matching our expectations. So you've got

39:41

to script in what that

39:43

reaction is. And sometimes people feel like, oh,

39:45

you're directing to the page. Like, no,

39:47

you're saying what's actually happening in the movie.

39:49

You're giving the experience of watching the movie

39:52

on the page. This whole directing on the

39:54

page thing doesn't even exist. My

39:56

new thing now is forget not

39:59

doing it. It isn't

40:01

a thing. There is no such thing as directing on the

40:03

page. I don't even know what that means. We're

40:06

creating a movie with text. So

40:08

we will do, we should do and

40:10

must do everything we can to

40:13

create that movie. And if that means

40:15

that we are directing on the page,

40:17

in fact, that's the only job

40:19

we have. We should only

40:21

be directing on the page. Does that mean, I

40:24

think people think that, you know, directing

40:26

on the page means camera moves this way. Camera

40:28

pushes in, switch to this lens, do the

40:31

angle, angle, angle, angle. No. Directing

40:33

on the page means you are

40:35

creating a movie in someone's mind. Use

40:37

every tool you can. Craig,

40:40

is there an elephant outside your window? It's a bus.

40:43

It's a very loud bus. With an elephant on it.

40:46

Fantastic. All right, let's talk about

40:48

some resolutions because there's different scales at which

40:51

a mystery can happen. So the

40:53

short-term mystery. So there's those little things that happen

40:55

within a scene. It keeps us wondering about like,

40:57

oh, what are they talking about? And then the

40:59

camera finally reveals like, oh, he's married the whole

41:01

time. Or why do they have that

41:03

object in their hand? Those are great ways to just

41:06

provide a little tension and conflict within

41:08

a scene. They provide a little extra spark of

41:10

energy and give us to pay attention to things

41:12

we might not otherwise pay attention to. Yeah,

41:15

this is a great way, for instance, to pull

41:17

people through exposition. So

41:20

you can have a character explaining a bunch

41:24

of information to another person, which

41:26

is okay. Or have

41:29

the character explaining that same information to another

41:31

person. But while they're explaining it, they

41:34

are, for some reason, slowly pouring

41:36

gasoline around the room that they're

41:38

in. Well,

41:40

okay. Why are they doing that?

41:42

And obviously they're going to light it up. But why

41:44

are they going to light it up fire? And what

41:46

does that have to do with what he's saying? I

41:48

am now interested in the exposition. Short-term mysteries are a

41:50

great way to make something

41:53

out of nothing. Then

41:56

we have our kind of mid-length mysteries. I

42:00

kind of think of those as like middle

42:02

of the movie reveals you

42:04

have people that you're meeting early on and There

42:08

are some characters with relationships who seem to

42:10

know something about the circumstances of the movie

42:12

that you don't They

42:15

know secret motivations. They know secret pasts

42:17

of each other Someone

42:19

isn't telling us something. It's clearly

42:21

important to them. We will need

42:23

it This is the kind of

42:25

thing we'll need by the middle of the

42:27

movie to appreciate it and then understand how

42:30

that impacts the character Moving forward It's

42:32

not so much fun when two people have a little secret

42:34

in the beginning the movie and then at the very end

42:36

of the We were like oh and by the way that

42:38

secret is this because the movies resolved itself by then Yeah,

42:41

so these are good little middle of the movie things

42:43

the bad versions of these are I Lost

42:46

my brother and a skating

42:49

accident, you know, but uh, yeah,

42:52

but Typically they are

42:54

slightly more interesting than that and

42:58

They help people engage with the character

43:00

on an emotional level separate and apart

43:02

from the details of the plot Yeah,

43:05

these are the things where Jane Estepson uses this

43:07

term hang a last-ord on things and I've seen

43:09

other people use it as well It's like it's

43:12

an important of detail that when you first introduce it

43:14

You want to sort of call it out and make

43:16

sure that the audience is really going to notice like

43:19

I'm doing something here So yes, you're right to

43:21

be noticing it. I am doing something here I'm

43:23

going to be doing something with it later on

43:25

like you are like you're marking this for follow-up

43:28

And so it's going to show up not at

43:30

the end of the movie But at some key

43:32

point during the movie at an important time and

43:34

you'll be rewarded for having remembered it from before

43:36

So sometimes it's that character who got introduced who

43:38

don't never really knew his name But then he

43:40

shows up and he's actually hit man midway through

43:42

the movie great like you've done the right

43:45

job there because you have Established

43:47

somebody and you're using them in the

43:49

course of the story for an important

43:51

reason that feels Useful

43:53

and that's a great way of like the mystery of who

43:55

that person is is paying off within

43:57

the scope of the movie right

44:00

at the time we want the seasons to pay off. Yeah,

44:03

exactly. Or your main character

44:05

has a scar. And

44:08

someone says, where'd you get that? And he says, uh.

44:10

And then maybe somebody else asks, where'd you get that?

44:13

If I'm going to answer the scar question, it's going to have to

44:15

happen by the middle of the movie. I

44:17

will not give a damn by the end of the movie

44:19

how he got his scar. It won't matter anymore. If

44:22

the scar is important to who he is, then

44:25

I need to know who he is by the

44:27

middle. Because here's the thing. If I have a

44:29

character, she's gone through half a movie with

44:32

some big secret that is relevant to who she

44:34

is. I must know it by the middle.

44:37

This is our protagonist now. I must know

44:39

it in order to appreciate how she changes

44:41

from that point forward. So

44:43

these are mysteries that actually

44:45

can't survive much more

44:47

than half a movie. But there are

44:49

mysteries that must survive the entire

44:51

movie. But these, I

44:53

think, usually come down to what is the

44:56

big central mystery of the story. It's harder

44:58

to pull off the kind

45:00

of character-based mystery that lasts the whole

45:02

time. So you're

45:04

saying that these long-term mysteries are really the mystery

45:07

genre. They are classically sort

45:09

of like Agatha Christie. We're going to

45:11

wait till the very end for all

45:13

the reveals. That's what you're talking about.

45:15

Because if you have a long-term mystery

45:17

that isn't about a plot

45:20

mystery, and you only get

45:22

the answer at the end or right

45:24

before the end, it's a little bit of a cheat.

45:26

It's like, well, I'll solve

45:28

a mystery right in time to save the

45:31

day. That just feels a

45:33

little, nah. Yeah. So

45:35

this last week, I saw a movie that actually I think

45:37

does have that long-term mystery. It worked really

45:39

well for having a long-term mystery. It's Hell or

45:41

High Water, which in France is

45:43

Camacho Ria. So it's a Chris Pine Ben

45:45

Foster movie with Jeff Daniels. And I really

45:47

quite liked it. But there's a long-term mystery

45:50

in it, which I'm not spoiling anything to

45:52

tell you. You're watching Chris Pine and his

45:54

brother rob these banks. And you're really not

45:56

quite sure why they're doing it. Yes,

45:58

they're doing it to get money, but there's a lot of money. There clearly is a

46:00

specific reason and it's a plan, but you're not quite sure

46:03

what the plan is. And they withhold

46:05

that information for the audience for a really

46:07

long time, much longer than you think would

46:09

be possible. And I think it works in

46:11

that movie because the movie is otherwise really

46:13

simple. It's like it's a very straightforward

46:16

Texas pickup truck

46:19

Western genre movie. And

46:22

because it's so simple, holding off all

46:24

the reveal on what their actual plan

46:26

is is very

46:28

rewarding. It felt like it

46:30

was finally revealed at just the right moment.

46:33

So it's definitely possible, but I agree

46:35

with you that it's really rare to

46:38

see movies that hold off all

46:40

that stuff for so long out of the

46:42

course of a story. Yeah, it's

46:44

tricky to do, very tricky to

46:46

do unless it's your mystery mystery.

46:48

So anyway, hopefully this is helpful

46:50

to people. Just examples, practical examples

46:52

of how to tweak

46:54

this and exploit this natural instinct in the

46:57

audience. This is the thing that makes them

46:59

want to lean in. So if you can

47:01

make them want to lean in, why not?

47:04

All right, let's get to

47:06

our feature marquee topic of this first episode of 2018,

47:09

which is suspense. Oh,

47:12

wait for it. Wait for it. So

47:14

suspense, actually the word itself is

47:16

fascinating. So it's from a French word, it's

47:18

just pon de l'eau, which is pon de

47:20

l'eau, which is to hang and soos above.

47:22

So to hang above. What a great image

47:24

that is. It's something that's dangling above you

47:26

and you're waiting for it to fall. That

47:28

is suspense. And that's mostly what we're talking

47:30

about when we talk about suspense as an

47:32

inherited device. It is that sense of

47:35

there is something that's going to happen. You see

47:37

it's going to happen and you

47:39

are waiting for it. And attention builds

47:41

because of that. I would define it in a

47:43

very general sense. Suspense is any technique

47:46

that involves prolonged anticipation. There

47:48

is a thing that is going to happen, you

47:50

see it, and you are waiting for

47:52

it to happen. But waiting. Waiting for it.

47:55

You usually think about suspense in a bad way,

47:57

like there's a bomb taking you to the table. But it's a

47:59

suspense. It must be a good thing. If

48:05

you are waiting for a surprise party, there's a good suspense too.

48:10

It's not just thrillers, it's not just

48:12

the action movies that have suspense. It's

48:15

a technique that we can use in all of our scripts. I

48:20

thought we'd dig into that today. I

48:25

think a lot of times when we go through three-page

48:27

challenges, we're looking for

48:29

truth. We're looking for verisimilitude. We're

48:31

talking about how as

48:33

writers we can create these moments,

48:36

these people, their

48:38

words and their actions that ring true

48:40

to us. This is not that.

48:44

In general, life does not have suspense

48:46

at all. This is a very artificial

48:48

thing. It's as artificial in my mind

48:50

as a montage, which simply does not

48:52

exist in life. And yet

48:54

we find it incredibly gratifying when we

48:56

experience it. Because

48:59

it is this technique, a craft, it's good for

49:01

us to talk about how the nuts and bolts

49:03

of it actually work because it's one of the

49:05

few times as writers we get to

49:07

be mathematicians. I like that. I

49:12

think it's also important to focus on this as a writing

49:14

technique because so often you see like Hitchcock as

49:16

a master of suspense. It's a

49:18

way of being a director's tool. It's

49:23

absolutely true that the way a director is choosing

49:25

to frame shots, to edit a sequence, to build

49:27

out the world of the film or the TV

49:29

show, there's a lot of craft

49:31

and technique that is a director's focus

49:34

in building suspense. But

49:36

none of it would be there unless the

49:38

writer had planned for that sequence to be

49:40

suspenseful and really laid out the structure that's

49:43

going to create a sequence that is suspenseful.

49:47

There is generally a sequence kind of technique.

49:51

Within a scene maybe there will be some suspense, but generally

49:53

it's a course of a couple of scenes together that build

49:55

a rising sense of suspense. And so that's

49:58

going to happen on the page. Let's

50:00

dig into how you might do it. Great. Well,

50:02

I guess to start with, I

50:05

divide suspense roughly into two categories,

50:07

suspense of the unknown and suspense

50:10

of the known, because

50:12

they're very different kinds of suspense. When

50:15

I think about suspense of the unknown, I

50:17

think about information that

50:20

is being withheld either from

50:22

the audience or from a

50:24

character. Do you know what I mean by

50:26

those distinctions? I

50:28

think I do. The unknown is like

50:30

we are curious. We're leaning in to see

50:32

what is going to happen. Or in some

50:34

cases, we have more information than the character

50:36

who we're watching has. So we know there's

50:38

something dangerous in that room. And so we're

50:40

yelling at the screen, don't go in that

50:43

room. But the other broad

50:45

category out there is suspense of

50:47

the known. Because of the

50:49

nature of the genre, because the nature of

50:52

the kind of story that you're setting up, we

50:54

kind of know where it's going to go. We just know how we're going to

50:56

get there, we just don't know what the actual

50:58

mechanics are. And that is what has us

51:00

leaning in, has us curious. It's the question

51:02

we want answered. I think almost all cases

51:05

of suspense, there is that question that we

51:07

want to see answered. Exactly. And

51:09

I think suspense of the known is far

51:11

more common. And it's also applicable

51:14

across every genre, comedy,

51:16

romance, everything. But

51:18

we tend to think, when we hear suspense, at

51:20

least initially, we think of that Hitchcockian mode, which

51:22

is more the suspense of the unknown. Or

51:25

it's a kind of a whodunit suspense. The

51:27

key for me, when you look inside,

51:29

OK, for instance, there's

51:32

information that you the writer, and I, by the

51:34

way, let me just take a step

51:36

back for a second. You're so right in saying that

51:38

this is something that is important for writers to understand.

51:41

We think suspense, like we think

51:43

all technical aspects of cinema, like,

51:45

for instance, montage, is from

51:48

the director. And I argue, as

51:50

I often do, that that is not true. It's not

51:52

that it's not from them. It's that it's from us.

51:56

The writer must lay out the montage

51:58

so that it has a purpose. that

52:01

it has a beginning and an end, that it

52:03

makes sense for the characters. It's there for a

52:05

reason. You don't just haphazardly decide one day on

52:07

set, I think you know what, let's have a

52:09

montage. It doesn't work that way. It is intentional

52:11

and it is from the script. Similarly,

52:13

we must plan our suspense. Otherwise,

52:16

there's no opportunity for it. How the

52:19

director creates it visually, we can even

52:21

put some clues ourselves into the script.

52:24

But, yes, certainly, directors have an enormous

52:26

role to play in that. So

52:29

let's talk a little bit about that situation

52:31

where there's information that you the writer have,

52:33

the director have, but the

52:36

audience doesn't have. And

52:38

also the characters don't have. Absolutely.

52:41

So the most classic example of this is the who done

52:43

it, where the character is trying to figure out who

52:46

killed the person, who is the villain

52:48

in this situation. There's a fundamental thing

52:50

which you as the writer know and

52:52

the audience and the lead character does

52:55

not know. And so in order to

52:57

build that suspense, you're probably laying out

52:59

some clues that will help that person

53:01

get closer. You'll have some misdirects. You'll

53:03

have some sort of near misses. You

53:05

are trying to lead the character and

53:08

the audience on a path that will take

53:10

them towards it, but a really fascinating

53:12

path that will take them towards the

53:14

answer with a lot of frustrations and

53:16

delays that are ultimately gratifying. I mean,

53:19

the best kind of suspense is our kind

53:21

of a beautiful agony. It's that moment of

53:24

delayed gratification. And so when you finally

53:26

get there, aha, it's there. Other

53:29

cases, you know, the suspense might be you're trying

53:31

to get away from that thing. Will

53:33

you get away from that villain? In

53:36

those situations, you as the audience might have more

53:38

information about how close the other person is than

53:40

the character is. Yeah. There's

53:42

also another classic kind of suspense of

53:45

the unknown is what I'll call, for

53:48

lack of a better phrase, mystery of circumstance. For

53:50

instance, lost. Or I don't

53:52

know if you ever saw that old show from the 60s, the

53:56

prisoner. Absolutely. Which lost is

53:58

basically resting on. So what

54:00

is the nature of this world? What the hell

54:02

is going on? What is going on? You're waiting

54:04

for that. Exactly, and so now everyone's confused, and

54:06

you're confused, and you're confused with them, but

54:09

they're making discoveries, and

54:13

episodic television has this wonderful tool of suspense,

54:15

which is shows over what

54:17

will happen next week, that's the cliffhanger,

54:19

right? That is literal, when we talk

54:22

about cliffhangers, that is literal suspense. I

54:24

am suspended over a chasm. But

54:26

figuratively, these sorts of moments of suspense

54:29

are happening all the time, and

54:31

all of it is creating this ache

54:33

to understand, because what

54:35

suspense is playing on is a

54:38

human fact, and the

54:40

human fact is that we naturally

54:43

seek to make sense of and order the

54:45

world around us. So suspense

54:47

is playing with that natural desire

54:49

that every human, babies have it. So

54:52

this is something that's going right to this primal

54:55

need that the audience has. Then

54:57

on the other hand, we have the other kind

54:59

of suspense, which I think is more common and

55:01

very useful, even if it's not always thought of

55:03

as suspense, which is suspense of the known. So

55:06

these are situations where, because of the nature of

55:08

the genre, because of the kind of story that

55:10

you're telling, we have a sense of

55:12

where things are going, we just don't know how, we

55:14

don't know what the path is, that it's going to

55:16

lead them there, and we are looking for clues that

55:19

will get us to that conclusion. I

55:22

don't know if you've seen Call Me By Your Name yet, but you

55:24

start watching Call Me By Name, you have a good sense of

55:26

some of the things that are going to happen, but you just

55:28

have no idea how you're gonna get

55:31

those things to connect. And that is the

55:33

thrill of the movie, is watching those things

55:35

happen. Yeah, it's a bit of

55:37

a paradox, isn't it? I mean, you'd think that

55:39

the point of suspense is not knowing. And yet

55:41

when we sit down and someone says, oh, here's

55:43

a movie from 1998, it

55:46

stars Matthew McConaughey and Jennifer Lopez.

55:49

And they bump into each other in

55:51

the street, and he's getting married, and she's the wedding

55:53

planner for the marriage. And you're like, well, I know

55:55

how that ends. And you do, you

55:57

know exactly how it ends. In fact, you know roughly how it

55:59

ends. how the whole movie is going to go, don't you? Yes.

56:03

And yet, if you sit down and

56:05

watch it, you will begin to feel

56:07

great suspense. And

56:09

this kind of suspense to me is really

56:12

anticipation more than suspense. It's a

56:14

slightly different feeling. It's

56:17

the feeling from the old ketchup commercials. Well,

56:19

the ketchup is going to come out of the bottle. Don't

56:22

know when. Don't know how. Is it going

56:24

to come out in a big block? Duh! Right?

56:27

It's like watching somebody continually pulling a slingshot

56:30

back. You know they're going to let it

56:32

go, but when? When? And

56:35

you start to need it. You start to need it. So

56:38

even though we know inside

56:40

of these movies, like for instance, friend

56:42

of the podcast, Tess Morris is man

56:44

up. Is she

56:46

going to get him in time? Is he going to get to

56:48

her in time? Is she going to believe him? Is he going

56:50

to believe her? Of course! Of course! But

56:53

how? And will they? And is it going to

56:55

go the way that we think this

56:57

all creates this enormous suspense

56:59

and all of it really, I

57:02

think you hit upon it earlier in a beautiful

57:04

way, is kind of

57:06

sweetly torturing the audience. That's the

57:08

point. Yes. And so I'll

57:10

say that even in the examples of the rom-coms

57:12

where we at the audience know, okay, they're going

57:14

to eventually connect at the end. Like we sort

57:16

of, we can see what the template basically is

57:18

that's going to take us to that place. Within

57:21

those beats, there'll be moments in which we at

57:23

the audience have more information than the characters do.

57:25

And that is part of the joy. It's like

57:27

within sequences, we might know something about the other

57:29

guy that she doesn't know yet, and that is

57:32

important. So or we know that there's a secret

57:34

that's going to come out and we were wondering

57:36

when will that secret come out? And

57:38

so it's not just one kind of suspense.

57:40

There's going to be little moments of suspense during

57:43

the whole time. And even in

57:45

action sequences, you know, will he get

57:47

past that part of the cliff before

57:49

the boulder falls? There's always be little

57:51

small moments of suspense within the bigger

57:53

moments of suspense. Correct. And

57:56

this kind of suspense fuels genres that we

57:58

don't necessarily think of as suspense. but

58:00

definitely are and in fact require

58:02

suspense. For instance, comedies of error.

58:05

A comedy of errors is entirely based

58:08

on suspense. Someone overhears

58:10

something, misinterprets it, and

58:12

then what ensues is

58:14

a comedy that really is about

58:17

us going, oh my God,

58:20

would you just ask him the right question? Would you just say what

58:22

you want to say? And then he goes, oh, do it, do it,

58:24

do it. And then they finally do it. Every

58:27

episode of Three's Company was a suspenseful

58:29

episode in its own way. Absolutely.

58:31

So let's take a look at some of the techniques a writer

58:33

uses in order to build suspense, both on

58:36

a scene or a sequence level, but also on a

58:38

more macro level for the entire course of the story.

58:42

The thing I think we're talking about sort

58:44

of fundamentally is delay. And in most of

58:46

the cases, the ball could drop immediately. The

58:48

ball could, the bomb at the table could

58:50

just go off. But suspense is the ticking.

58:52

Suspense is delaying the bomb going off or

58:55

having some other obstacle get in the way that is

58:57

keeping the thing from happening, which you

59:00

know is going to have to happen next. So

59:02

those two characters finally meeting. The explosion

59:04

is finally happening. The asteroid blowing up.

59:06

There's going to be something that has

59:08

to happen, and you're delaying that, and

59:10

you're finding good reasons to delay that

59:12

that are reasonable for the

59:14

course of the story that you're telling,

59:17

but also provide a

59:19

jolt of energy for the narrative

59:21

and for the audience. That's right.

59:23

And in order to create delay,

59:25

we have to do things purposefully.

59:28

We have to use our

59:30

story and find circumstances to

59:33

frustrate the characters, and

59:35

we have to use our craft

59:38

to obstruct. And

59:40

there are different ways of doing this. The

59:42

most common way and perhaps the

59:45

easiest way, but oftentimes the least

59:47

satisfying way, is coincidence. Coincidence is

59:49

used all the time to frustrate and obstruct people.

59:54

Instead of walking into the room and seeing

59:56

somebody do something, they do it all the

59:58

time. walk out just as you're walking in

1:00:00

and you just miss seeing them do it.

1:00:02

And the audience goes, oh, well,

1:00:05

that's coincidence. There's a classic axiom.

1:00:09

You're allowed to use coincidence to get your characters into trouble or

1:00:11

make things harder for them. You're not allowed to use it

1:00:13

to make things easier for them. And that's true. But

1:00:16

when we're creating suspense and we're

1:00:18

trying to delay things, the less

1:00:20

you can use coincidence, the

1:00:22

better, because no matter how

1:00:24

you employ coincidence, the audience

1:00:26

will always subconsciously understand you

1:00:29

moved pieces on the chessboard

1:00:31

in order to achieve an effect. It

1:00:33

didn't happen sort of naturally or for

1:00:36

reasons that were human or understandable. And

1:00:38

therefore we're just a little less excited

1:00:40

by the outcome. Absolutely. If we're

1:00:42

talking about two events, if it's A and

1:00:45

then B, if A causes B,

1:00:47

we're generally going to be happier. If we

1:00:49

could see that there is a causal relationship

1:00:51

between those two things, we're going to be

1:00:53

happier. But coincidence, I agree, can be really,

1:00:55

really helpful. And the coincidence is that get

1:00:57

in the way of your character

1:00:59

achieving the thing he wants. That's great. And

1:01:01

it's always nice when the bad guy catches

1:01:03

a lucky break because that's just,

1:01:06

it's just great. And so we're used to

1:01:08

having our hero suddenly have this big stroke

1:01:11

of luck. So having the hero not get

1:01:13

that stroke or like having the villain who

1:01:15

despised just really be lucky or like start

1:01:18

to tumble, but then save himself. That's

1:01:20

great. It's surprising. And so it's not

1:01:22

what we expect. And it's going to

1:01:24

be a helpful kind of way to

1:01:26

keep that suspense going, to keep the

1:01:28

sequence running along. Yeah. And if you

1:01:30

can subvert your coincidences all the better,

1:01:32

for instance, there's a famous

1:01:34

and wonderful moment in Die Hard where

1:01:37

our hero coincidentally catches the bad guy. He

1:01:39

just catches him. He doesn't know he's the

1:01:41

bad guy, but he catches him. And

1:01:44

we're like, Oh my God, the coincidence of

1:01:46

that just made life so much easier for

1:01:48

our hero. And then the bad guy pretends

1:01:51

in a way that is very surprising and shocking to us

1:01:53

to not be the bad guy at all, but to be

1:01:55

a hostage. And our hero believes him

1:01:58

and now a terrible suspense is. created

1:02:00

because now we don't know what will happen.

1:02:03

We know he's going to use the bad guy who's

1:02:05

going to use this to his benefit

1:02:07

and we know that our hero is now in terrible

1:02:09

danger. We know it. The hero doesn't

1:02:12

know it. Ooh, suspense would be unknown. Wonderful.

1:02:14

So in that case, you're actually taking coincidence

1:02:16

and using it in your favor

1:02:18

in a way that isn't even coincidental. So

1:02:20

I love that sort of thing. Over

1:02:22

the course of Die Hard, which is a suspenseful movie from

1:02:25

the core, you have this moment of

1:02:27

intense micro suspense because we know at

1:02:29

some point that Gates is going to be up

1:02:31

and first of all, he's going to recognize what's

1:02:33

really going on. But will it be in time?

1:02:36

There can even be moments within just really

1:02:38

small second by second suspense like does

1:02:40

he still have a bullet left and

1:02:42

it's gone. That is a question

1:02:44

that you don't know. He doesn't know what

1:02:47

is the choice going to be. And as

1:02:49

long as you can sort of juggle all those

1:02:51

things, you are going to make a much tighter,

1:02:53

stronger sequence. As a writer, you

1:02:56

are looking for opportunities. You're looking for targets

1:02:59

in which to create suspense all

1:03:01

the time in every genre. Again,

1:03:03

every single genre. Don't

1:03:05

think of suspense only as when will the

1:03:07

bomb go off or who shot Mrs.

1:03:10

McGillicuddy. And when

1:03:12

you find those opportunities, it's really important

1:03:14

for you to use them,

1:03:16

exploit them because they're little gifts.

1:03:19

When you have a moment of suspense,

1:03:21

for instance, the hero doesn't know

1:03:24

that he's even caught the villain.

1:03:26

He thinks the villain is a victim. Wonderful.

1:03:28

Use it. And inside of

1:03:30

that, now you have free reign to just

1:03:33

torture the audience. Do not

1:03:35

be afraid to torture the audience. Be afraid of

1:03:37

not torturing them. This is where you want

1:03:39

to tease them. You want to tantalize them. You want to

1:03:42

almost have the hero figure it out and then

1:03:44

take it away from the hero. You want to

1:03:46

drive them crazy. This

1:03:48

is sort of the closest thing writers

1:03:50

have to sexual interaction with an audience.

1:03:52

Sorry, sexy Craig. I'm going to be

1:03:54

unsexy about this. But it

1:03:56

is a bizarre, flirtatious, sweet kind

1:03:59

of thing. of torture, all

1:04:01

of which is designed to delay

1:04:04

release. It is a bit

1:04:06

like saying, I'm going to give you an itch

1:04:09

and I am not going to scratch

1:04:11

it. I almost scratched it. Almost did.

1:04:13

Oh, you thought I scratched it, but I

1:04:15

didn't. Until you

1:04:17

finally do it. And in this

1:04:20

way, something that is expected an

1:04:22

outcome as itch is scratched becomes

1:04:24

remarkably satisfying. It is a release

1:04:26

and in that sense, it

1:04:29

is a catharsis. It is

1:04:31

a catharsis. And so I think it's also important to

1:04:33

keep in mind, we talk about the victory lap

1:04:36

and we talk about sort of the success at

1:04:38

the end of that. When you finally do let

1:04:40

that person have the success, make sure you give

1:04:42

them enough of a scene to celebrate that success

1:04:44

because there's nothing more frustrating to me when I

1:04:46

see a movie with a character finally does it

1:04:49

and it really cuts away to the next thing.

1:04:51

Let them actually enjoy it for a moment because

1:04:54

we as the audience need that moment of release as

1:04:56

well. We need that moment of celebration. Like, okay, we

1:04:58

finally got to that thing. Throughout

1:05:01

this whole sequence, maybe like we've seen that door in the

1:05:03

distance or we're running into it and we get there and it just

1:05:05

shuts and then the thing we've been

1:05:07

going through that whole time is now longer an

1:05:09

option. Aliens is a movie of

1:05:12

tremendous success where there's always a plan and

1:05:14

the plan is always getting frustrated and

1:05:16

it finally gives us those

1:05:18

moments at the very, very end where like, okay, we're

1:05:21

safe, everything's down and we can sort of go off,

1:05:24

you know, quote unquote safely into the

1:05:26

distance. So make sure that in

1:05:28

those teases and all the misdirects, the red

1:05:30

herrings, everything you're doing to set that up,

1:05:32

make sure that by the time you get

1:05:34

them through that sequence, we do get that

1:05:36

moment of release. And

1:05:38

to guide you on

1:05:40

this journey, dear writer, is your

1:05:43

best tool,

1:05:45

your empathy with the audience. Suspense really

1:05:47

needs to be a function of

1:05:50

your empathy with an audience. You already know

1:05:52

the movie, you've seen it, you know everything.

1:05:55

Now put yourself in their shoes, do it

1:05:57

over and over and over. Weirdly, they're the

1:05:59

most important character in your movie, even

1:06:02

though they're not in the movie. You're thinking

1:06:04

about them all the time and

1:06:06

it is especially important to think about

1:06:08

the audience when we are talking about

1:06:10

these, let's call them, artifices because

1:06:13

that's what these kinds of

1:06:15

craft works are. If

1:06:18

you do, then you'll know, okay, in the

1:06:20

moment where you finally do the

1:06:23

reveal and you release the tension and the

1:06:25

catch-up comes out of the bottle, well,

1:06:28

again, put yourself in their shoes and ask, what do

1:06:30

I want here? And of course what you want to

1:06:32

do is just wallow in the

1:06:34

joy of it. Just let

1:06:36

them wallow. So let's wrap this

1:06:39

up by talking about, what does this actually look like

1:06:41

on the page? Because we say, like, okay, it's not,

1:06:43

you know, obviously film and TV

1:06:46

directors are responsible for a lot of the visuals

1:06:48

we're seeing on screen, but the choice of what

1:06:50

we're overall going to be seeing there is the

1:06:52

writer's choice. And so let's look what those techniques

1:06:54

look like on the page because so much of

1:06:56

successful suspense really is the scene description. Like those

1:06:58

are the words that are going to give you

1:07:00

the feeling of what it's going to feel like

1:07:02

when you see it visually. And so it's

1:07:04

cross-cutting. It's like, you know, we're with this

1:07:06

character that we cross-cut to the other person

1:07:08

who's getting close. It's finding honestly the the

1:07:10

adverbs and the short clip sentences that give

1:07:12

us a sense of like how close they

1:07:15

are to each other or like he's almost

1:07:17

at the door, but then no, it's slam

1:07:19

shut. These are the cases where you may want

1:07:21

to break out that sort of heavy

1:07:23

artillery of the underlines, the bold-faced words, the

1:07:25

exclamation points, maybe even double exclamation points, when it

1:07:27

really is a stopper so that we as the

1:07:30

reader get a real sense of what it's

1:07:32

going to feel like to be the audience in

1:07:34

the seat washing that up on the screen.

1:07:37

And it's also why I'm so conservative

1:07:39

with using those big guns when

1:07:42

I don't need them in action and writing because

1:07:44

when you really do need them, they need to

1:07:47

be fresh. You can't, you know, have some dry

1:07:49

powder for when you really need to sell those

1:07:51

big moments like, hey, pay attention to this thing

1:07:53

because this is what it's going to feel like.

1:07:55

A hundred percent. And I also think the great

1:07:58

weapon in our when we

1:08:00

are creating suspense on the page and you're absolutely right, it has

1:08:03

to be done with action. Well,

1:08:05

if suspense is delay and suspense is

1:08:07

waiting, delay in waiting

1:08:09

for us in terms of text and

1:08:12

page is white space. When

1:08:15

I am about to, when I want people to

1:08:17

feel as if it's agonizing weight, I use a

1:08:19

lot of white space. Burn

1:08:22

it up because that's what it tells you.

1:08:24

Sometimes I'll do three, four, five things in

1:08:26

a row. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait,

1:08:29

boom. It's

1:08:31

amazing how cinematic that can be when 99%

1:08:34

of the script is just line, line, line,

1:08:36

line, line, you

1:08:39

know, double space, line, line, line, line, line. So

1:08:41

white space becomes essentially your

1:08:43

timeline. It's your way of

1:08:45

expanding that moment to agony.

1:08:48

And it's not something that you can get away

1:08:50

with more than I think once in a script, and

1:08:52

you may not need to do it at all.

1:08:56

But if you do have that moment where it's the

1:08:58

big reveal, burn up

1:09:00

some space and let people feel it on

1:09:02

the page. All

1:09:06

right. That was nice. Travel back in time

1:09:08

for a moment. We're here

1:09:10

in 2024 with some recommendations.

1:09:13

Earlier, I was talking about Sora,

1:09:16

the new OpenAI thing, and

1:09:18

potential negative implications of that. My one cool thing

1:09:21

is goody too. I will not

1:09:23

do anything bad for the world. I

1:09:25

drew it. I know you like goody too. Goody too.

1:09:28

It is the world's most responsible Shopbot. And

1:09:30

if you haven't played with it, it's really fun. It

1:09:33

looks like Tachibite or any other ones. You

1:09:35

can ask the question. It understands what you're

1:09:37

asking, and it will not help you out

1:09:39

at all. And it will find a way

1:09:41

to avoid answering it. And it will

1:09:43

give you detailed reasons for why it is not answering

1:09:45

it. I think what impresses me is that

1:09:47

you could sort of think that would just be like,

1:09:50

it would have a canned list of responses. But

1:09:52

no, it's clearly doing a lot of AI work to

1:09:54

really parse what the meaning of the question is

1:09:57

and sort of why it's not going to

1:09:59

answer you. And I just thought it was really,

1:10:01

really smart. Yeah, I'm dying to know how they built that model

1:10:03

because it's really adapted to anything

1:10:05

you can throw at it. So that's really fun.

1:10:07

Yeah. My guess is that they did

1:10:09

not have to train a whole new thing. I think that it's

1:10:11

real to find the right parameters.

1:10:14

So peeling on the hood here a little bit because we've had to

1:10:16

do some of this work in our

1:10:18

own experiments. When you send in a query to

1:10:20

open AI or any of the open source models,

1:10:23

you get the string that the user types, but

1:10:25

you can of course change that string to be

1:10:27

whatever you want to get to the model to

1:10:29

say back. So they may be wrapping whatever you're

1:10:31

saying in a bunch of

1:10:33

stuff around it that says, but make

1:10:35

sure that you are not actually giving

1:10:38

them anything useful or dangerous and pat it

1:10:40

in a lot of really protective

1:10:42

language. So they may have found a way

1:10:44

to do that without having to actually train

1:10:46

their own new model. But it's just really similarly done.

1:10:49

We'll put a link in the show notes to a wire

1:10:51

article about the chatbot and sort of the

1:10:54

reason why they made it because they're trying to point out

1:10:56

the importance of safeties on

1:10:58

chatbots but also how difficult it is to do

1:11:00

this and how you think it's

1:11:02

like, well, locking this down would be the way to solve it. And

1:11:05

if you overlock these things down, they become, you know,

1:11:07

parries in the cells, which is what this is. There's

1:11:10

also something lovely about sort of a different, at

1:11:12

least feels like a different type of large language model. So

1:11:14

the way you're interacting with it, it

1:11:16

feels like it expands the possibilities of what these

1:11:18

can be. You're

1:11:21

saying you and Heather were playing around with it trying to get us to

1:11:23

do something. Heather's like, how do I,

1:11:25

you know, what's five steps towards world peace? And

1:11:27

it won't give you any of that. It'll tell

1:11:29

you why you're in the wrong for even trying,

1:11:32

basically. Good stuff. What

1:11:34

do you have for one cool thing? I have a

1:11:36

much more old school, one cool thing. I have books.

1:11:38

I have an author that I love. Her

1:11:41

name is Claire Keegan. And

1:11:43

in the last probably six to eight months,

1:11:45

I have just devoured everything she's ever written.

1:11:47

She writes mostly novellas, really

1:11:50

quick books. They're

1:11:52

small. You can read them in an afternoon. She's

1:11:54

got Foster and small things like these are both

1:11:56

incredible. And she's got lots of short

1:11:58

stories. I just love her.

1:12:01

They're very, she's an Irish author. A lot

1:12:03

of it has to do with sort of rural Ireland, but

1:12:05

it sounds like it could be like a little too quaint

1:12:07

or a little too maudlin, but they're not. They're just like,

1:12:09

they're perfect. So, Clara Keegan is my

1:12:12

one cool thing. Excellent, wonderful.

1:12:15

That's our show for this week. Descriptions is produced by

1:12:17

Drew Markwardt and edited by Matthew Cholony.

1:12:19

Our outro this week is by Eric Pearson. If

1:12:22

you have an outro, you can send us

1:12:24

a link to ask at johnautos.com. That's also

1:12:26

the place where you can send questions. Drew

1:12:28

looks through all those questions, so please send

1:12:30

them through and send through your counterfactual Hollywood

1:12:32

history scenarios. And we'd love both your,

1:12:34

like, what if this happened and sort of some

1:12:36

things you think might be the outcomes of that.

1:12:38

Mm-hmm. You can find the show

1:12:40

notes for this episode and all episodes at johnautos.com. And

1:12:42

it's also where you find the transcripts and sign up

1:12:45

for our weekly-ish newsletter called Interesting, which has lots

1:12:47

of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts

1:12:49

and hoodies. They're great. You'll find them at Cotton

1:12:51

Bureau. And you can sign up to become

1:12:53

a premium member at scriptnotes.net, where you

1:12:55

get all the back episodes and bonus segments, like

1:12:58

the one we're about to record on the Apple Edition Pro.

1:13:01

Drew, thank you so much for chatting through this with me. Absolutely.

1:13:03

John, I hope you feel better. Thank you very much. And, Matthew,

1:13:05

Julie, God bless you for giving

1:13:08

us time to make an interview. Someone come here.

1:13:11

All right. All right. All right. All

1:13:13

right. All right. All right. All

1:13:16

right. All right. All right. All

1:13:18

right. All right. All right. All

1:13:21

right. All right. All right. All right. All

1:13:24

right. All right.