0:00

Hey, this is John heads up that today's episode has

0:02

just a little bit of swearing in it Hello

0:07

and welcome my name is John August My

0:10

name is Craig Mason and this is episode

0:12

635 of script notes Hey

0:15

podcast about screenwriting and things that are

0:17

interesting to screenwriters now sometimes on

0:19

this podcast we talk craft Sometimes we talk

0:21

business today on the show It's half and

0:23

half on the business side How do

0:25

you make sure that person you're hiring for your movie

0:27

or casting on your show Craig? Mmm, isn't an absolute

0:30

monster. Oh We'll talk through best

0:32

practices on vetting people and on the

0:34

crap side How do you write for characters whose native language

0:36

is not English? We'll look at it listen

0:38

to examples for how to do it right and some

0:40

pitfalls to avoid We'll also answer some

0:43

more listener questions and Craig for

0:45

a bonus segment something I don't think we've ever talked about

0:47

enough on this podcast cult. Oh god.

0:49

I hate cults. I love cults so

0:51

much Why did it have to be cults?

0:53

Why did it have to be cults now?

0:56

I joined the zoom late, but I think you

0:58

and drew were already talking about this first item

1:00

of business here Yeah, which is you love word

1:02

games? Yes But I was playing the new New

1:05

York Times for beta version word game and I

1:07

suspected this is not gonna be Craig's things I'm

1:09

talking about New York Times to strands. Yeah Strands

1:12

what a nice way for them to

1:14

just rebrand word search the

1:16

dumbest of all puzzles It's

1:20

not a puzzle it's just searching It's

1:23

so it's a word search with a theme that

1:25

you have to discover Unlike

1:27

a classic word search where you are either

1:29

a word can be either Vertical

1:32

or horizontal or diagonal here they can

1:34

sort of go around in various

1:36

permutations because it's all done digitally Yeah

1:39

so one of the things

1:41

that Dave Shucan my Frequent solving partner and

1:43

I often discuss when we are going through

1:46

puzzle suites You will see certain types of puzzles

1:48

emerge over and over because you

1:50

know, oh that's pretty standard Acrostics

1:53

for instance is kind of a slog an acrostic I

1:55

don't know if you've ever done an acrostic the New

1:57

York Times used to run them and just stopped running

2:00

them online for some reason no

2:02

one can fathom. But they're a bit of a slog. Word

2:05

searches are the ultimate slog. And one of

2:07

the things that Dave often remarks is

2:09

he'll say, you know, this is a

2:11

puzzle, but it isn't any fun. And

2:15

I agree with that word

2:17

searches are just simply not fun.

2:19

They're just the busy

2:21

work of puzzles. So

2:24

you just sit there and you isolate a letter and

2:26

then look around and see what other letters connect to

2:28

it and then you just keep going. But

2:31

there's actually nothing to solve. You're

2:34

merely just looking. So I'm

2:36

not a huge fan of this. I'm still playing it every

2:38

day. It's sort of out of inertia. What

2:40

I will say is the fact that you don't know

2:42

quite what this theme is and what the unifying things are

2:44

and then once you actually discover like, oh, this must

2:46

be a pattern, then you actually can start looking for

2:48

words you think might be in there. My

2:51

standards are lower than yours. Listen, if people enjoy

2:53

it, I'm not taking it away from them. And

2:56

I don't want to be a puzzle snob about

2:58

it. I'm not snobby. There are certain versions of

3:01

word searches that can be inventive. So

3:04

Foggy Broom, who makes the Panda Magazine

3:06

puzzle suites, will often do word searches

3:08

where there is some fascinating little gimmick

3:10

inside of it. And

3:13

discovering the gimmick and how it functions is

3:16

kind of the fun part. The word search itself is

3:18

fairly easy. You'll start to see words right away and

3:20

then wonder, what does this have to do with anything?

3:22

And then you realize, oh, I see. So

3:25

if you take the end of this word over here and the

3:27

beginning of this word over here, they spell

3:30

a country name. Aha, what does this mean?

3:32

And so there's solving to do. This

3:35

just looks like find a bunch of words and

3:37

see what they are. So

3:41

strands, I'm out. No, thank you. And

3:43

I think when it comes to a

3:45

bunch of words that are then unified

3:47

by a theme, my prior one

3:49

cool thing, Squeezy, far more fun for

3:51

them. All right. I thought we might start with a question

3:53

here. I'm going to use Boosh because we have two big

3:56

topics, but sometimes a question is going to shunted away to

3:58

the back of the episode. to start

4:00

us off with a question here. MR

4:02

writes, Yesterday I gave notes on

4:04

a script and called out what I've always

4:06

heard is script-shading, which is a piece of

4:08

information that's written but it's unfilmable, like

4:11

an option line saying something like, Kate

4:13

enters, she's the sister of Jess. Or

4:15

Mike sits at a desk, he thinks a lot of

4:17

himself. Kate entering and Mike sitting

4:20

are filmable, but the descriptors are not, and you

4:22

can't tell an actor just act like Jess's sister

4:24

or think a lot of yourself. I

4:27

called out a very similar situation and said script

4:29

and received this email back. Hey,

4:31

MR, I went through some of the notes

4:33

and I just want to let you know that your script is

4:36

supposed to have voice. I don't think

4:38

it's wise for you to give people notes saying script-shading,

4:40

which is not anything I've ever heard of. I

4:42

think you may be hurting other writers with some of

4:44

your feedback. Just be careful with notes like that. Obviously

4:48

every script has a voice, but was I

4:50

wrong to give this script-shading note? Yeah,

4:53

so... Neither

4:55

side here is completely perfect, but I

4:57

think there's some balance

4:59

and subtlety. Everyone's wrong. There's a balance here

5:01

that I think we need to find. And

5:03

so let's start with the second person. I've

5:05

never heard of that, it's called cheating. Well, yeah, I

5:08

think we could talk about this on the podcast, it's

5:10

cheating. There's things you could put on a page that

5:12

if they're genuinely unfilmable and they're not actionable

5:14

in a way, like there's pieces of information you could

5:16

put on the script that there's no way for the

5:19

audience to have that piece of information, that

5:21

is sort of cheating. And there can be an

5:23

issue with that. It also feels

5:25

like MR may have been going overboard in terms of

5:27

what he was considering cheating because as we talked about

5:29

in the podcast before too, there are times

5:32

where you want to give some

5:34

flavor, some texture, some tone on

5:36

the page that lets you know what this

5:38

feels like, even if it's not directly something

5:40

you can aim a camera at. Yeah,

5:43

look, this is why writing

5:45

groups and such are problematic

5:47

at times. We don't know MR, so

5:50

we don't know the tone. We don't know

5:52

if this is the final straw. If this

5:54

is something that happens all the time, we don't know

5:56

if everyone's like, oh my God, MR, why are you

5:58

so mean to everybody? I don't know. We don't

6:00

know the context. All we know is this in

6:02

this isolated bit Script

6:05

cheating is the nice way of saying

6:07

bad writing. Mm-hmm. This is

6:09

already the nice way Because it's

6:12

bad writing to say Kate enters. She

6:14

is the sister of Jess. That's bad

6:17

It's bad because it is short-circuiting

6:19

the writers Obligation to inform the

6:21

audience in a creative way that

6:23

Kate is just a sister Which

6:26

I assume happens in the script at some

6:28

point. It's not the cheating was probably not

6:30

even necessary But yeah

6:32

script cheating is a perfectly fine. It's

6:35

I mean honestly if you can't handle that Yeah,

6:38

I don't even want to tell you about what you're

6:40

facing in your career. Should you have one? John

6:43

and I have sat in rooms and

6:45

been Just

6:49

like obliterated, you know and Especially

6:52

when you're starting out and you don't have

6:54

enough credibility for people to even respect you

6:56

when you walk in the room You

6:59

walk into a room. The knives are out before you even sit

7:01

down and Yeah, you're

7:04

gonna hear some stuff. That's harsh. I

7:06

mean look John you and I are

7:08

old We're of that generation

7:10

and I know the new generation Really

7:13

doesn't like really doesn't like this

7:15

stuff. But As

7:18

far as I'm concerned Script

7:21

cheating is perfectly

7:23

fine way of saying that's just bad and

7:27

What I'm more annoyed by somebody saying

7:29

I don't think it's wise for you

7:32

Well, you could always just say hey, you

7:34

know what? Thank you for that. I have

7:37

to tell you it kind of hurt So

7:39

I know you didn't intend to hurt I'm

7:41

just letting you know it did and that maybe if there

7:43

was a better or a kinder way for you

7:45

to say that next It would just

7:47

make it easier for me to hear and it

7:49

would be more productive for me But thank you

7:51

for the feedback. I appreciate it. There's nothing wrong

7:53

with that Yeah, I'm thinking back to like notes.

7:55

I've given to writers and at times I've been

7:57

overly like they'll send me the script and like

8:00

I didn't ask the question first, like, what do you

8:02

want? Do you want me to tell you how great

8:04

it is or to give you constructive feedback or to

8:06

be really like line by line diligent about sort of

8:08

like things I'm noticing here? There've been times I've over

8:10

pressured on the page and that was a problem. In

8:12

the situation of, let's talk about, she

8:14

is Jess's sister. There may be

8:17

times in a perfectly fantastic script where

8:19

on a first introduction of a character,

8:22

you might say like Tina, Jess's sister comes to

8:24

the site. We were establishing that their sister's and

8:26

we're gonna find that out really quickly anyway, but

8:28

as a service to the reader and sort of

8:30

figuring out like what the context of all this

8:33

is, it's really genuinely helpful. And

8:35

I do find sometimes writers get obsessed with these

8:37

kind of, have to figure out

8:39

everything from first principles. Like you can't put anything on

8:41

the page that wouldn't be immediately visible

8:43

to the audience. That's not doing anybody

8:46

a favor either because it's, again,

8:48

the script is meant to

8:50

approximate the experience of being in that movie theater,

8:52

but in that movie theater, you're gonna say like,

8:54

oh, those two characters look a lot alike. They're

8:56

probably sisters. And sometimes you need to give

8:58

that information on a page that you would not need to

9:00

give in the actual film. That

9:03

is true. And in those instances, sometimes

9:05

what I will say is Kate

9:07

enters, we'll find out shortly that she's the

9:10

sister of Jess. Exactly. So, okay, to help

9:12

the reader there get a few things that

9:14

might be pretty evident on

9:16

screen, but you're also telling

9:18

them, hey, you will find out. This isn't

9:20

the only time that the information will be

9:23

available to you here in an action description

9:25

in a script. Just trust me, you'll find

9:27

out. But for now, FYI, perfectly

9:29

fine thing to do. But I don't

9:31

know, tone policing here. Feels a little tone

9:34

policey to me. Yeah, yeah, that's it. That

9:36

said, if MR is like a total jerk and everyone hates

9:39

MR, then all the people listening to this are like, oh

9:41

my God, why are you enabling MR? I

9:44

hope MR is not a jerk. I really, really do. I

9:47

hope so too. And it's not also clear from this

9:49

context whether the person who was writing back was talking

9:51

about their own script or like maybe they're part of

9:53

a group they were looking at some other third person

9:55

script. We don't know what the whole context of

9:57

this is, but just again, be cool. as

10:01

you're giving notes, make sure you're understanding the context the

10:03

person is asking for the notes and

10:05

think about how you would receive those notes as a writer. Can

10:08

I give a guess? I

10:10

think that the person who wrote MR is not

10:12

the person who wrote the script, but rather that

10:14

person's friend. And

10:16

the person who wrote the script complained

10:18

to their friend about it, was upset.

10:21

And then the friend said, I'm going

10:24

to go tell MR to not do

10:26

that anymore. That's my guess. Yeah.

10:30

And Craig, in our actual real life, there have been times where

10:32

one of us has had to sort of go to a third

10:34

person and sort of say like, hey, this is a thing to

10:36

be aware of. That's a realistic,

10:38

you know, scenario that happens in real

10:40

life. Yeah. Sometimes you need

10:42

to be an intermediary. And when you are, I think

10:45

it's, it always goes

10:47

best if you feel like a neutral intermediary,

10:50

where it's, there aren't judgments

10:52

involved, but rather just facts

10:55

and requests. I

10:57

think the problem with this is I

10:59

don't think it's wise. I think you

11:01

may be hurting people and then an

11:03

imperative, be careful. Not

11:06

in the future, it might be helpful if,

11:09

you know, like for somebody who's concerned

11:11

about hurting people with

11:13

feedback, this person didn't seem to be

11:16

concerned about hurting MR with feedback. Yeah.

11:19

The last point about voice is there are times where you're

11:21

going to put something in the script that is not fumible.

11:23

We're never going to see it, but it just helps give

11:25

the reader a sense of who that person is, what the

11:28

space is like. You can describe how it

11:30

smells. Like, listen, you're not going to actually ever smell

11:32

that, but it gives us a sense of what it's

11:34

also going to feel like and

11:36

sound like. So that, and

11:38

so you said, oh, that's cheating. It's not really

11:40

cheating because you're providing context that is going to

11:43

be helpful for the reader to understand what this

11:45

is also going to look and sound like. And

11:47

for the actors as well. They

11:49

can perform smelling something. They can perform

11:51

having sweaty armpits. We will

11:54

probably won't see it, but they know

11:56

what it feels like. Yeah, yeah, no

11:58

question. So as always. Our

12:00

advice is, you know, follow the rules, but

12:02

don't necessarily follow the rules. The

12:05

only rule we have is write well. Right well.

12:08

Right well. Podcast done. Since

12:11

we started 35 episodes, we've reached our conclusion. We

12:13

got there. We got there. We got there in

12:15

two words. Now, Craig,

12:17

as we've established previously on this podcast here, one

12:19

of my goals for 2024 has

12:22

been to become better at

12:24

understanding and appreciating the difference

12:26

between accents and dialects in

12:28

English. So this is a thing that you have

12:30

a very natural talent for. You're very good at

12:32

performing different accents. And I could hear

12:34

it. And I don't have trouble writing it, but it's

12:36

not in my bones. It's not in

12:38

my brain. It's quite the same degree. And so I've

12:40

been studying. And so I've been working with an instructor

12:43

on that. And we've been working through, first off,

12:45

the IPA, the National Phonetic Alphabet, and

12:47

then really learning different

12:50

native accents in English. So going through the

12:52

British Isles and other places to really figure

12:54

out, like, what are the differences here? What

12:56

is the musicality and changes between these different

12:58

dialects and accents? But one of the things we've been working

13:01

on more recently is folks whom

13:03

English is not their native language. And what

13:05

are the common characteristics we see? What are

13:07

the, not just the mistakes, but just the

13:09

structural changes that they're going to make? What are the

13:12

sound changes you're going to hear throughout that? And

13:14

this is a thing that I think probably most of our

13:17

listeners are going to encounter at some point. If you

13:19

have a character who's this native language is not English,

13:21

how do you write them on the page? Because you're

13:23

not obviously going to go crazy and

13:25

sort of try to approximate their accent. Yeah. But they

13:28

are going to make different choices. And so I want

13:30

to talk about the actual choices that are going to

13:32

be reflected in the written dialogue that

13:34

you were doing to understand how

13:36

a person who's native language is not English

13:39

might be communicating their ideas. Well,

13:41

this is an area

13:44

where I think people used to blithely

13:46

stumble about. Mm-hmm. And

13:49

in their blithe stumbling, they may

13:51

have conveyed intention

13:53

well, But for people

13:55

who were authentic speakers of

13:58

that dialect or that. Accent.

14:01

Or. That language. They. May have

14:03

thought was is just ridiculous. We

14:06

own us I think. just used

14:09

to just do stuff. With.

14:11

Less consideration for other people. Death.

14:14

So if you could look back at

14:16

some of the scripts that's were floating

14:18

around when you and I started, people

14:20

would routinely. Right

14:22

black characters with. A

14:25

black to select. A

14:27

bt African American vernacular house, and

14:29

in doing so on with. It

14:32

just felt kind of weird we insulting if they

14:34

were not black themselves and it just felt a

14:36

bit far and. And. That's

14:38

understandable. So what's happened is there's been

14:41

a correction. But in the correction, I

14:43

think a lot of writers. And

14:46

we are always writing people that we are

14:48

not. Are. Kind of afraid

14:50

to make a mistake and writing

14:52

out of fear is not helpful

14:54

either. And so what

14:56

it wants? How about today is really looking

14:58

for and listen to the changes in the

15:01

musicality and a word choices that are couldn't

15:03

people likely. For. People coming from certain

15:05

other native languages and so we have

15:07

to do examples here. But. For

15:09

even get as they samples. I was once how

15:11

through some things I've observed they're probably health a

15:13

waiver the game a character whose native languages that

15:15

English. Most. Other languages are

15:17

going to have a different city word or

15:20

sound so it unless we do it on

15:22

right arm or some sort of installing word

15:24

every language to learn how to on version.

15:27

People's. Hands you. Revert: To

15:29

their native are taking sound as they're speaking

15:31

English or some approximation of that's a bit

15:33

to him. Out with that sound might be.

15:36

You. And I both you have been in situations

15:38

where in other countries and we are reaching for

15:40

weeks. I know what that word is but we

15:42

can't quite get it. Yourself as a

15:44

be doing the same thing with thinking about the pauses.

15:46

They're taking the approximations of the word that a try

15:49

to get to. If. You're speaking I

15:51

was his tie. Your native language, you're

15:53

probably going to have reduced variation how

15:55

you're forming structures and in in census

15:57

so. Not. Even us because our

16:00

problems. that is simple past rather than

16:02

he had or he did. Because

16:04

we have so many ways to create the past

16:06

in English. Online which is due to

16:08

but the republicans As simple as first that.

16:11

And. They will tend to go back to. Recycle.

16:13

The same word rather go for synonyms and variety

16:15

the way the we might because they found that

16:17

one word. They're going to be seen that one

16:20

word. Yeah. There is. Always

16:23

a risk that. You're

16:26

going to make your character sound

16:28

dumb. Yeah. And so hard

16:30

to be. Counter action is to

16:32

show the frustration. If somebody

16:34

does not speak English natively and

16:36

they aren't they aren't very good

16:38

as they're still learning that. There

16:40

is a frustration because I felt

16:42

that frustration trying to speak another

16:44

language myself. We're like, okay, I

16:47

know exactly what I want to say, but I'm

16:49

struggling to put it into the words that are

16:51

you have available to me. And there's also. Even

16:54

the recognition and embarrassment that other

16:56

people are looking at you and

16:58

thinking you're not doing very well.

17:01

All that stuff is is good

17:03

suman work to think about when

17:05

this is happening, so it isn't

17:07

just a kind of convenience. immigrants,

17:10

A trois that we have seen many many

17:12

times where people just say me going to

17:14

store and it just becomes and. Sometimes

17:18

when I'm sitting and sense I got crap a

17:20

nice i'm at a third grader here because I

17:23

don't have this is really simple stuff and yet

17:25

I have really complicated vocabulary because I have to

17:27

congress in English. Like the resource I can say

17:29

I could say. Some. Really complicated

17:31

things. Pretty. Easily are

17:34

complicated terms. But. A can't

17:36

stitch together really simple things I can't tell

17:38

you like I can go to a store

17:40

I can't describe. Like the saying it's the

17:42

ice cube tray holder makers saying i don't

17:44

have that. But. I have. I do now. On.

17:47

Lugubrious are like as I can remember

17:49

bigger words. They don't have simple things

17:52

out of my grass and that's are

17:54

a real frustration. kinda like the idea

17:56

of you walking into store saying i

17:58

need object for the. The King of

18:00

Ice. I apologize for the

18:03

look hubris need to her

18:05

own masterclass. The deaths of

18:07

confused with that guess the.

18:10

South. So bewildered people. There's. Another

18:12

common feature would be over generalizing a rule

18:14

as it is a thing that happens As

18:16

a warning I said that we we've been

18:18

a clause by adding as as the things

18:20

except when we don't sell. Them. Have

18:22

my it's rather mouses those things are going

18:24

to happen. Yes if the person's native language

18:27

doesn't use articles the same way like Russia

18:29

disease most articles they will drop them out

18:31

and so you'll hear that in non a

18:33

to speakers were they we would put an

18:36

air as I and it is time through

18:38

without them down happened interesting. We also be

18:40

a I'd knows the opposite I'm so cussing

18:42

as the radar who is. Our

18:45

director of photography heroin Blasphemous is

18:47

a Russian. And. See,

18:49

I've watched as her English

18:51

has. Improved dramatically over

18:53

the years since he started with

18:55

a seat Did she speaks about

18:58

eight languages. So. She's just

19:00

this remarkable polyglot. Her english

19:02

was. Good in the sense that

19:04

she could absolutely communicate. By.

19:07

She had a few phrases she loved

19:09

the phrase such as. As and

19:11

see would struggle at times to

19:13

get things across. Or

19:15

there were those simple mistakes, for instance.

19:18

When she would refer to the character of

19:20

tools you would call him the vigil as

19:22

witches and into and maybe in Russian there

19:24

is something that works that way. Now as

19:26

the I of nine she's as it's ever

19:28

correcting is probably would make a mere on

19:30

the Cfc made and over correcting and so

19:32

they're but they're all these wonderful little things

19:35

and over time seat like when we switch

19:37

a lens i cocaine or on the third

19:39

round the twenty seven and we want to

19:41

go to the thirty five. she would say

19:43

switch on thirty fourth. And

19:45

one day I said i'm regretting things

19:47

to because I love listening to say

19:50

switch on Thursday nights for switching a

19:52

lens. We would say switched to thirty

19:54

five totally and I actually kind of.

19:57

I I do regret said telling her

19:59

that of innocent and which I'm thirty

20:01

five spite it has been amazing watching

20:03

somebody is English improves. So.

20:06

Wildly and so impressively over the course of

20:08

just a couple of years. And

20:11

as advances for as or prepositions my English

20:13

language that there's a talk about one to

20:15

one mass and so anybody who's had to

20:17

suffer through poor and parent and soon as

20:19

it should be clean like how does it

20:21

and I did something says don't work right

20:23

Something some falls roughly the same way. yes,

20:26

Cindy happens with a verb, tenses and play

20:28

in terms as. I'm. Howard

20:30

Abiding Time. Arm. And

20:32

so. Very. Near future of far

20:34

future recent past. further back past we have ways

20:36

to be Do it in English that is don't

20:38

mess up with other languages and at as has

20:41

never been one to one match. Our.

20:43

Present progressive. Their. Equipment

20:45

other languages but their political. If

20:48

they're very quickly as and yes, house speaker

20:50

so you may be stuck in a present,

20:52

rather present, progressive, or the near future because

20:55

it's when you have any for yes, yes,

20:57

Lastly, I would say a thing of

20:59

the author notice is if a character is

21:02

do reports be so like that He said

21:04

to me this is this as really challenging

21:06

to disappear into that because I. Came.

21:09

I and I'm saying in the for in a

21:11

present their importance of that habit of the past

21:13

I have to get prepositions right for how old

21:15

is it's together. Reporters. Beat up and

21:17

have a place where you have noticed. A

21:20

consistency is and as often adversary is her.

21:22

Reflects. The difference and difficulty of.

21:25

Trying. To communicate his ideas us. Native

21:28

native speakers will even struggle with that. So

21:30

it's a that's also part of a recognizing

21:32

it. But there there is this. Others

21:35

saying when we're trying to

21:37

rights people speaking English you

21:39

don't natively speak, it's. What?

21:42

They do speak and where they

21:44

are from. Also sued influence how

21:46

they sound so hundred percent. if

21:48

you listen to for instance comedians

21:50

are are so helpful for this

21:53

because so many comedians who are

21:55

first generation americans will talk about

21:57

the family and talk about their

21:59

parents and do impressions of their parents. And

22:02

listening to that gives you this incredible

22:04

insight into the specificity of the pattern.

22:07

It's different. So Koreans

22:10

who have learned English sound different than French people

22:12

who have learned English because

22:14

the root language is always

22:17

there. And the root patterns,

22:19

the intonations, musicalities, tempo,

22:21

rhythm, all of that stuff

22:23

bleeds across. And so

22:26

here's some really controversial

22:28

advice here, folks. When

22:31

you are writing someone from

22:33

a country who is speaking English as a

22:35

not first language, talk to

22:38

people who know if you are not

22:40

one of them and have

22:42

them look at through, have them advise. They will help

22:44

you. They will make it so much better if you

22:47

do. Absolutely. And last I

22:49

would say always consider when that character started

22:51

learning English because I will not only

22:53

affect the accent down the road, but also

22:56

their facility with the language. And for

22:58

this Madela class, I was going through

23:00

some Japanese speakers of English and there

23:02

were these diplomats whose English was just

23:05

so spectacularly good. And there were also

23:07

folks who'd learned it much more recently.

23:09

And you could really hear

23:11

the differences and sort of how in

23:14

their bones it was. And also which

23:16

English did they learn? And so you

23:18

can definitely hear some of them learn

23:21

British English versus American English. And those

23:23

changes carried through. Absolutely. So

23:25

let's listen to some examples here. So we're gonna start with

23:27

a clip from Anatomy of a Fall, the

23:29

amazing sound of G You

23:49

complain about the life that you chose.

23:51

You're not a victim, not

23:53

at all. Your

23:55

generosity conceals something dirtier and

23:57

meaner. You're

24:00

incapable of facing your ambitions and you resent me

24:02

for it, but I'm not the one who put

24:04

you where you are. I have nothing to do with

24:06

it. You're not sacrificing

24:08

yourself, as you say. You choose to

24:10

sit on the sidelines because you're afraid,

24:13

because your pride makes your head explode before you

24:15

can even come up with this little sum

24:17

of an idea. And now you wake up

24:20

and you're 40 and you need someone to blame, and

24:22

you're the one to blame. You're

24:26

magnified by your own fucking standards and

24:28

your fear of failure. This is the truth. So,

24:33

just so great. And

24:35

so you can listen for her accent and her dialect,

24:38

but really I want to focus on the word

24:40

choices. And a native English speaker probably

24:42

would not have constructed those phrases in that way. I

24:44

think she goes through a phrase and then she repeats

24:47

the end of that phrase in a way

24:49

that feels kind of german to me. But

24:51

Craig, what's your ears telling you on that?

24:54

It's difficult to separate it from

24:56

the accent because the accent does add

24:58

a certain... Well, you just

25:00

start to think this is definitely a German person

25:02

talking. It doesn't have the

25:04

backwards syntax, or I suppose

25:06

what Germans would call the non-backward syntax. Forward

25:11

syntax. German syntax is very Yoda-like to

25:14

us when we learn it. It is the verb

25:16

at the very end. Yeah. And so it

25:18

doesn't have that. What's also of interest here

25:20

is that the person writing this who is now an

25:22

Oscar Award winner for their fine screenplay... Yeah. ...was

25:25

also not a native English speaker. Yeah. So

25:28

there's all sorts of possibilities going on here. But

25:31

there is a certain... The

25:33

delivery is there's a clipped nature

25:36

to the pronunciation of the words

25:38

that is wonderfully German. And

25:42

if you were to remove the

25:45

accent using some horrible AI de-accentifier...

25:47

Yeah. ...you

25:50

would notice. I think you would notice something would be strange. You just

25:52

wouldn't be able to put your finger on it. Absolutely.

25:55

If you look at the words as scripted on the page,

25:57

I haven't gone back to the script to see exactly whether she's

25:59

saying words like that. for words when we're on the page,

26:01

you would not guess that this is an American speaker.

26:03

It doesn't have sort of an American way of putting

26:05

stuff together. You might guess I could hear the same

26:07

thing with an RP British accent. I could feel that

26:09

working kind of more, but it's not an American accent.

26:11

So there's a musicality to it. It's really what I'm

26:13

trying to get to is that the order

26:15

of the words, how it fits together, it's

26:17

all specific to this character and this world.

26:20

And it's not some generic

26:22

American accent. Yeah, there's a formality to

26:24

it. Even the fact that the

26:26

pronunciation is so careful. So

26:28

even though there are words where it's supposed

26:31

to end in a D and it sounds like it ends in

26:33

a T or something like that, which is typically German, or I

26:37

believe she says germ of an

26:39

idea and she pronounced it term. There

26:42

is nonetheless a kind of overpronunciation

26:44

of some words, whereas you're right,

26:46

a Native American speaker would be

26:48

eliding and slurring a bit more

26:50

of the pronunciation there. I

26:52

mean, speaking passionately and very quickly

26:54

and yet every little phoneme is

26:57

coming through and that feels very

26:59

specific. Right. Let's jump through

27:01

it. We don't have the clip for here, but I want to take

27:03

a look. We actually have the pages in this case. So this is

27:05

past lives. And so we had Celine Song on a podcast earlier. And

27:08

here I want to take a look at this

27:10

is a scene happening in the East Village Bar

27:12

with Hye Sung, Nora and Nora's

27:14

husband, Arthur. And just

27:16

Hye Sung's dialogue here, he is not a comfortable

27:18

English speaker at all. And

27:20

so his first line here is, when I was 24 year, I... That's

27:25

right. That's absolutely correct. The idea

27:27

of 24 years old is a complicated

27:29

thing. When I was

27:32

24 year, it's probably the Korean way

27:34

of constructing how old you are. Yeah.

27:37

There's a video I saw floating

27:39

around that a Korean American did.

27:42

Basically, he was having a conversation with himself, like two

27:44

people on a phone. And

27:46

the idea was what a conversation

27:48

would sound like if Koreans

27:50

just spoke English, but in the perfect

27:52

translation of what the Korean was. And

27:56

it's remarkable. It is nothing at all.

27:59

Like what? we would understand the translation to be.

28:02

It is very specific. Way fewer

28:04

words are being used

28:06

than you would use in English. It's

28:10

more compact, it's more efficient, but

28:12

it is very, very different. There's kind

28:15

of a lovely extraction

28:17

of that here. I

28:20

mean, Slean, well, listen, Oscar

28:23

award nominee, Slean. When

28:25

we were, I had her on the show, I agreed to have

28:28

the description in front of us, and so I do like seeing

28:30

how Nora's dialogue here, if she's talking to Hae Sung, the

28:33

Korean comes first and there's a slash, and then what

28:35

the subtitles would be come after

28:37

it, which is a very natural native way

28:39

to do this. It feels really great. But

28:42

it's going back through the Hae Sung's English dialogue,

28:45

but military work, it's

28:47

same. Just as written on the page, you can

28:49

say it's like, okay, he's searching, he's trying to find

28:52

a way to communicate this idea. There's

28:54

overtime pay, stuff like that

28:57

here, right? In

29:00

Korea, you work overtime all the

29:02

time, but there's no overtime pay.

29:05

He's found the words, he's keeping to the

29:08

words he actually has and

29:10

that have worked before, as it's staying

29:12

within simple patterns. Yeah, so phrases like

29:14

all the time are easy to remember.

29:16

But then later down, when

29:19

she asks him, it's hard,

29:21

physically or mentally, he says both, definitely

29:23

physical, hard. And she

29:25

says mentally, and he says mentally,

29:27

I strong. Which

29:30

is probably how I would sort

29:33

of, if I were thinking about that

29:35

in French, I would be like, and then if

29:37

I was just emotional, or I would just go

29:40

for it, or just go for it. Because

29:42

I am je suis, and then

29:45

there's like, yeah,

29:47

it just sort of falls apart there at times.

29:50

And what's fascinating here, and Celine understands,

29:53

when you're talking with somebody who doesn't

29:55

speak English as a first language, you

29:57

will naturally reply back

29:59

with. what they're saying, but in

30:01

the correct format, almost as if you

30:04

are teaching and confirming you're strong mentally,

30:06

she says. And he says, yes,

30:08

right. And there's an appreciation there

30:10

of, oh, okay, good, you understood

30:12

me. Because part of the discussion between a

30:14

person who speaks natively and a person who

30:17

doesn't is a confirmation that one is being

30:19

understood by the other. Yeah,

30:21

absolutely, so crucial. Next up

30:23

is something that Drew found for us. This is from a write-up. And

30:26

so the context here, we have a Hong Kong

30:28

actress shooting a movie in France. And sort of

30:30

like in An you

30:56

have to go there to understand the film, but

30:59

I think it's a movie for the time. The

31:01

first one was bad enough, right? Yes. I

31:03

don't know why they make it through. But

31:06

I think Catwoman was all right. Yes,

31:08

it's true. I like her so much. She's

31:10

not. She's not. She's not. Can

31:13

I be? Can I be? You

31:15

know, I tell you everything, and then you can know

31:17

me a lot. I

31:20

don't like American films. No, yes. Right,

31:22

I know what you mean. Yes? I

31:25

don't think everything is too much decoration, too

31:28

much money. You agree with me? Sure.

31:30

And all this money, big

31:32

money, big, big, and they feel lucky to have

31:34

so much money. Yes, but why, for what? Yes,

31:37

for this. This

31:40

too, nothing. You. So

31:44

again, here, we have two characters who

31:46

are obviously seeing the film that they're looking at each

31:48

other to try to get confirmation. Like, do you actually understand

31:50

what I'm saying? Are we talking about the same things? Levels

31:53

of English are approximately the

31:55

same. My French actress has a

31:58

stronger accent. But again, I think

32:00

it's, you could read it on

32:02

the page and understand that like, okay,

32:04

these are characters communicating at

32:06

100% because they are trying

32:09

to cross this bridge. Yes.

32:11

They're using very simple phrases, a lot of

32:13

questions, a lot of questions to make sure

32:15

that the other person understands what they're saying.

32:17

So this is an inherent

32:19

insecurity of people that do not speak

32:22

English as first language. They're

32:24

making sure that the other person

32:26

gets it. And luckily

32:28

for these two characters, they're discussing something

32:31

that everybody around the world shares, which

32:33

is a ridiculous hatred of

32:35

American movies that they all seem to watch

32:37

over and over and over. Like

32:42

French people hate McDonald's and they're like, get out of

32:44

our country McDonald's. I'm like, well McDonald's would totally get

32:46

out of your country if you stopped eating at McDonald's.

32:49

It's a business. Anyway, so this

32:51

is kind of amusing in that regard that

32:53

there, it almost feels like a French textbook

32:56

discussion. Do you like

32:58

American movies? No, I do not like American movies.

33:00

Do you agree? Yes, I agree. Yes.

33:03

Yeah. And if we

33:05

can get back to like the question, like, do

33:07

you agree? Like do you answer that question with

33:09

an affirmative or negative? And so there's a, yeah,

33:12

no. And there's all these little subtleties that we

33:14

have in English and every other

33:16

language has their own specific subtleties there. When

33:18

it's not native in your bones, you're

33:20

going for the simplest way to make

33:23

sure that the other person understands that

33:25

you hear them and you can

33:27

follow what they're saying. Yes. And

33:30

if these people were speaking their native

33:33

language, that discussion would be even more

33:35

obnoxious. It

33:38

would be full of brilliant examples and wonderful

33:40

moments. And there

33:42

would also probably be much less agreement because

33:45

it's too hard to disagree when

33:47

you're struggling to find the word. So

33:49

I don't like those movies, but I like

33:51

Catwoman. Yes, I also like Catwoman. Do you?

33:54

You know, like, sure. At this point,

33:56

it's sort of like now you're just trying to have

33:59

the conversation. Which is an interesting thing

34:01

in and of itself. Yeah. There

34:03

is a social grace to

34:05

agreement and disagreement

34:07

requires subtlety, care,

34:10

a lot of small

34:12

discrimination between words, some of which will push

34:15

things into a bad place, some of which

34:17

will push things into an interesting discussion place.

34:20

And if you don't have

34:22

the like instantly accessible toolkit

34:24

for that, you may just

34:27

default to agreeing. Yeah. I

34:29

would say even though they're both ESL speakers, I

34:31

could imagine on a page that their

34:34

voices still can read differently. So Zoe, the

34:36

French speaker here, the choices that she's making

34:39

and sort of the small mistakes she makes

34:41

feel French to me. I

34:43

could hear her musicality feels specific to

34:45

it. And Maggie Suits

34:47

from Hong Kong, who has a more

34:49

British background, also feels specific.

34:52

So I think, even on the page, you can

34:54

really read them as two very different voices, even

34:56

though they're still non-native English

34:58

speakers. One of the most difficult

35:00

exercises I had to do for my dialect class

35:02

was take a scene that I'd already written that

35:04

was supposed to be to have two American speakers and

35:06

have one be Irish and one be Scottish. And

35:10

really tough for my brain to switch between the two

35:12

of those. And because they're

35:14

distinct sounds, but they're in my

35:16

brain, they're hard to hold apart. You

35:18

know, it's interesting, John. One of the things I admire

35:20

about you is that you find these areas that are

35:23

challenging for you and you just

35:25

steer your boat right into them. Now,

35:27

there are other things like for me, you're

35:29

right, like accents are fun for me. I enjoy them.

35:32

And I guess things like that exercise you just described,

35:34

I would actually look forward to and I don't think

35:36

it would be too much of a challenge for me.

35:39

But there are things in my life

35:41

that are incredibly challenging, like for instance,

35:43

drawing. I'm so bad.

35:45

I have such

35:48

a zero ability to naturally

35:50

create realistic looking things, perspective,

35:53

any of these like the fundamentals. And

35:56

The thought of taking a class to try and get better

35:58

just makes me pee my pants. That's and fear,

36:00

I just. Enter into the

36:03

in mighty nights and I'm this is an

36:05

honest question for you With my concern is

36:07

I would put a lot of time and

36:09

effort in to be com as good as

36:11

somebody who had talent was when they were

36:13

in kindergarten. Yeah, because you

36:15

either do or you don't have

36:17

that saying right. Select? What? What

36:19

is your goal here? So.

36:23

Withdrawn for several. That was when my earlier areas of

36:25

interest I spent a year and as I learned how

36:27

to draw a learn how to see how to draw

36:29

a like I'm much better than I was at the

36:31

Nigeria my profs everyday or anything like that but I

36:33

I got much better at it. But.

36:36

He also prior realized that as you said, I.

36:38

I'm. Only getting a that's a level of a person who

36:41

was. A. Sixth grader who is

36:43

pretty good at drawing right when I started

36:45

with this this and acids and says it's.

36:47

Useful for me to be better and better

36:49

than I could hear. His voice is distinctly

36:51

in my head are clearly the i'd have

36:53

to be easier for me to write those

36:55

characters and really. Hear their voices

36:57

in my head clearly before I'm putting

37:00

them down the pace of that. This

37:02

is generally so for me I feel

37:04

young again at recognizing your with this

37:06

is our and stream and to improve

37:08

them is is on to do. That

37:11

picked up running and so I guess I can run

37:13

really Florida which is surprising to me. But.

37:15

I. Again it just that to

37:17

practice and recognized in are you Give us

37:19

Mother Thinks Order to Summertime. Ah,

37:22

Running or you know there's a topic for us

37:24

to discuss. Maybe into our future podcast If we

37:26

continue to do the podcast, what would have sent

37:28

a real know. Six Thirty Five.

37:30

That seems to run number, but in

37:32

any case, explicit were to keep going

37:35

and that is about help. The concept

37:37

of help. And recognizing

37:39

as you move through

37:42

your career. Where

37:44

you're going to need help and even

37:46

if you're trying to sure those areas

37:48

up there are places that you identify.

37:50

I'm giving example right now for me.

37:54

as i go through production as i'm

37:56

directing one of the areas i know

37:58

i need help with is

38:01

because, again, I have a

38:04

very good sense of composition.

38:07

But what I struggle with is

38:09

just the very simple notion as

38:11

we're shooting of eye

38:13

lines and which side

38:15

of the shoulder you should be on. And

38:18

I need help with that. I have a

38:20

fantastic sense of how things edit together. So

38:22

I understand where one

38:25

shot should die and where another shot should pick

38:27

up. And I understand what kind of coverage I'm

38:29

going to need. But

38:31

oftentimes, I really do need help trying

38:34

to figure out, wait, so in this shot, should

38:36

that person be, when they're looking across the room from this one to

38:38

that one, should the camera be over on this side or that side?

38:41

And I have help. I have camera operators,

38:43

I have a script supervisor, and I'm a DP.

38:47

And there are all sorts of areas where at

38:49

some point you just have to say, no

38:51

matter how hard I'm trying,

38:53

here are the following areas where I need help. But

38:56

that's a topic for another time. Absolutely.

38:58

I guess the last point about sort of why

39:00

learn new things is that I enjoy

39:03

being bad at things

39:06

and sort of like struggling and being

39:09

a newcomer at things because it also just makes me

39:11

feel young because I remember when I was young, things

39:13

were hard. And it's like, oh, I can't figure this

39:15

out. And then you get better at it. It's like,

39:17

oh, I feel young. And so it's nice being a

39:19

beginner at things sometimes. I do enjoy

39:21

the horror and excitement

39:23

of being a level one character in

39:26

D&D or starting a new video

39:28

game that's level based where you're level one

39:30

and you're basically one punch takes you out

39:33

and you have no idea what the hell you're doing

39:35

and where you should go. You've barely mastered anything. It

39:38

is like growing up all over again.

39:40

All right. So let's segue to

39:42

our next topic, which can rely a bit on our

39:45

experience of not being the complete newcomers to things. We're

39:47

just on vetting. So this past

39:49

week, Craig, you and I were talking about a

39:52

producer who had done terrible things and we were

39:54

both surprised to learn about this and shocked. But

39:57

I also was reading this article in Fleet talking.

39:59

about what they called mean to know like sort

40:01

of the extension of the me to movement is

40:04

just like oh this these people are assholes and

40:06

now we actually are going to identify

40:08

these famous people as being assholes but only the

40:10

show after that yeah but a point they made

40:12

in this article is that once you've

40:14

hired a star once they're in wardrobe fittings that

40:17

star has a lot of power and control

40:19

and that you see that some of the power and control

40:21

is a person who may not be a great

40:24

person and I texted you Craig because you

40:26

know as we were talking about producer you

40:28

are a person who's hiring a ton of

40:30

people you're hiring actors and crew and everybody

40:32

else so I wanted to ask you like

40:34

how concerned are you

40:36

about not just can this person do the job

40:39

but are they going to be a monster either

40:41

on set or do something offset that's going to

40:43

reflect badly on the show. So there's some

40:45

more is concerned the tricky part when you're dealing

40:48

with actors there is a

40:50

lot of information floating around out there

40:52

a lot yeah now there are actors

40:55

that people just say well it's

40:57

going to be worth it there are actors and

41:00

it could be the same actor where somebody else

41:02

says life's too short right so I have a

41:04

little bit more of a life's too short vibe

41:07

there are certain people that have been proposed and I

41:09

would think to myself they would be perfect but

41:11

life is too short but when you're

41:13

talking about all these other people that you

41:15

can be hiring heads of departments and things

41:17

like that the danger is that there

41:20

is an interaction gap so

41:23

I typically will call fellow

41:25

showrunners to inquire about potential

41:28

heads of departments and it's always a joy when I

41:30

can report back to them I

41:32

texted Albert Kim just the other day to

41:34

say you know that the prop master that

41:37

I checked in with him about and hired

41:39

has been doing such a wonderful job and

41:41

that's great but we who are running

41:45

things have a certain kind of interaction with

41:47

those people because we're their boss well

41:50

what's happening though when we're not there

41:52

and they're the boss in

41:54

their fiefdom how does that go on

41:57

and one of the very

42:01

interesting aspects of show running

42:03

that I hadn't even anticipated

42:06

was that if there is any kind

42:08

of serious HR complaint, that

42:12

the executive producers are filled in, we're

42:14

told. And thank

42:16

God it does not happen frequently at all. But

42:19

it is sort of an eye opener

42:21

to go, oh, that, okay, that's surprising

42:23

because my interactions with that person

42:25

were of this kind. Apparently.

42:28

And once the cats were

42:30

away, the mouse was mean.

42:33

And that's a little nerve wracking.

42:35

And it's harder to get a read

42:37

on that by checking around. Yeah.

42:40

And so let's talk about vetting because when you

42:42

are considering hiring a person, be it an actor,

42:45

be it a crew person, you're going to look

42:47

at the references, but hopefully you're

42:49

going to find somebody who can go to just to

42:51

say like, Hey, can you tell me honestly, what was

42:53

like working with this person? Because

42:56

I when I get those incoming emails, I will

42:58

say, yes, let me call you about them. Unless

43:00

that person is just so spectacular that I will just

43:03

email the past like, this is the best person in

43:05

the world, you should absolutely hire them. The

43:08

phone call is your friend here because

43:10

people will be honest and direct in a

43:12

phone call in ways they will for other reasonable

43:14

reasons, won't want to put down in an email.

43:17

Your point about like, yes, ask showrunners, but if you could

43:19

find somebody else to ask, that's also going

43:21

to help a lot too, because you get a sense of who

43:23

are they like to assistance. So there have

43:25

been cases where I've called up folks

43:27

who are assistance people say like, tell me

43:30

about them like what was life to work

43:32

with them? Because if I'm just asking the

43:34

people who hired them, they could be

43:36

really good at managing up and managing their bosses,

43:38

but absolute monster when it comes to the people

43:40

working for them. And I don't

43:43

want that in my life. No, you don't.

43:45

But there's only so much you can do

43:47

that said, do all the things you can

43:49

do as best you can. There

43:51

are going to be errors. So

43:54

as you try and figure out

43:56

who should be joining your crew, whether

43:59

it's as an as an actor or as

44:01

a crafts person, do

44:03

your best, ask your questions, just understand, some

44:05

people will be lovely and yet not a good fit

44:08

for the show, in which case a change

44:10

is made. And sometimes some

44:12

people will be very talented, but

44:14

nightmares for various reasons, in which case there

44:16

must be a change. But

44:19

you're hoping for that beautiful thing

44:21

where what you expected is what

44:23

you get. We

44:26

don't tolerate what we used to. I

44:29

myself have become way more

44:31

aware of

44:33

my own anger levels. So

44:36

I'm angry all the time, I'm like the Hulk. I

44:40

wake up angry, I go a bit angry, but my

44:42

anger is not at people. My

44:44

anger is not this kind of

44:47

irrational whatever. My anger is entirely

44:49

about trying to

44:51

figure out how to get the

44:53

stuff that's in front of me and be like

44:55

the stuff that I want to be in front

44:57

of me. And there are

44:59

times where I get frustrated because

45:02

let's say they make me go

45:04

to meetings, John, go to a lot of meetings. I

45:06

don't wanna go to the meetings, but I go to the meetings because

45:09

they tell me it's really important because I have to answer the question

45:11

so people know what to do. And I will go to a meeting

45:13

and I will get asked a question and I will answer. Then

45:15

there's like three more meetings that feel very duplicative to

45:18

me and the questions get asked again

45:20

and I answer them again and again. And then I show

45:22

up on the day and the answer I

45:24

gave 12 times in meetings has

45:26

not occurred. Now this is enormously

45:29

frustrating. I have gotten, I think,

45:32

I'm just very aware that the

45:34

frustration can be expressed. I

45:36

can express it firmly, but

45:40

volume is kind of a thing. And

45:43

I'm also, I've become aware,

45:45

and this is something like if

45:47

I taught a show running school, this would probably be

45:49

like lesson of day one. You

45:53

as a show runner may think of yourself as

45:56

you may have a low

45:58

sense self-esteem. esteem. You may

46:01

have a lot of core shame. You may

46:03

think of yourself as a schlub.

46:05

You may have imposter syndrome. It doesn't matter. When

46:08

you interact with all these other people, they are

46:10

looking at you as the person

46:13

who can fire them. You

46:16

have this enormous influence

46:18

on their lives. If

46:20

you loathe them, not

46:23

only will they get fired, but people

46:25

are going to call me and then they're worried

46:27

that I'm going to tell them that they're no

46:29

good. There's a lot of just built in fear

46:31

and you have to remember what it was like

46:33

talking to the big boss. You have to remember

46:35

how intimidating that was before that person even opened

46:37

their mouth before they did anything. That

46:40

lesson in awareness of your own

46:42

power is really important because I

46:45

think a lot of

46:47

people in Hollywood with power don't

46:50

feel like they have it. And

46:52

so they don't act like they have it. And

46:55

you have to just remind

46:57

yourself that you have no

46:59

one's perfect. There are moments. But

47:02

we are hearing quite a bit about some

47:05

people for whom it

47:07

seems the moment of awareness will

47:10

either never come or has yet

47:13

to come. And no matter how many

47:15

times people have officially complained, they don't seem to care. Yeah.

47:19

We talked about Scott Rudin on the podcast before and there

47:21

was a person who it was like

47:23

this weird badge of honor to have

47:25

survived working in his office. And that

47:27

was incredibly screwed up. We should never

47:29

have completely misunderstood

47:32

the assignment in terms of how

47:35

to think about how it survived in

47:37

a difficult office. I think and hope we've

47:40

moved on a bit from that and that we come

47:43

to understand both as employers and

47:45

as employees, the contract that we've

47:47

made there, the social contract we made there cannot

47:50

be about subjugation

47:52

and control. That's right.

47:54

We will always be a strange business

47:56

in that we are

47:58

empowering artists. with

48:01

a lot of money and a lot of control and

48:04

that means writers directors actors

48:07

as well as other artists like cinematographers and

48:09

production designers and artists

48:11

aren't necessarily the most

48:14

rational calm headed people in the

48:16

world. It's kind

48:18

of one of those things there's brains that

48:20

work a certain way and

48:23

everybody kind of accepts a certain

48:25

amount of that there are things

48:27

that i think. Show runners directors or actors

48:30

do that if you did in a

48:32

in a escrow office you probably be shown the door

48:35

almost immediately. Oh my god that the number

48:37

of conversations i had with my where it's

48:39

like i cannot believe that this is permissible

48:41

in your industry because he's coming from like

48:43

you know a more corporate setting

48:45

i was like how is that even possible.

48:50

It is possible because you

48:52

are dealing with very specific brains

48:54

you've gathered a lot of people

48:56

together who are. Artists

48:58

and there is a case to

49:00

be made that extreme artistic talent

49:03

and mental illness are very hard to distinguish

49:05

from each other there's probably

49:07

quite a bit of overlap so people

49:09

understand a little bit of it. There's

49:11

also specifically with actors.

49:14

There is this understanding that no

49:17

matter what we are all doing there are the

49:19

ones on screen which

49:22

means if they're having a day. You

49:24

gotta figure it out because we

49:27

can't have the scene

49:29

which will exist forever in fixed

49:31

form. Be bad because they

49:33

were having a day and everyone else said well

49:35

that's unacceptable. But

49:37

then of course you don't want to

49:40

necessarily be encourage them to

49:42

have their day so you have to figure out how

49:44

to make it all work. And

49:46

we generally do yeah and

49:48

that's very familiar to anybody who's a parent is

49:50

like how do you get through this tough situation

49:52

without creating a pattern which is how you're gonna

49:55

deal with the situation all the time show running.

49:58

And parenthood. I've been. remarkably

50:00

someone. Remarkably.

50:02

And like as a parent, you know how

50:04

like when you

50:06

were raising Amy I'm sure you and

50:09

Mike at some point turned to each other and said

50:11

well She's gonna be complaining about

50:13

us in therapy what in about 10 years

50:15

because you can't help it You

50:17

can't help it. It's gonna happen. It's

50:20

just gonna happen I know that there are probably people

50:22

that have complained about me that they're therapists because I'm

50:24

in charge Like do you remember when

50:26

you were starting out the people that were in charge? It didn't

50:28

matter who they were One

50:30

thing that everybody could bond over is sort

50:32

of either making fun of or complaining about

50:34

the boss You hope that you can be

50:37

as close to you know what he's a

50:39

great guy just has his weirdnesses That's

50:41

like the best Yeah,

50:43

for sure. Yeah, I'm sorry as you wrap

50:45

up this topic. It's easy to think

50:47

about red flags Let's talk about some green flags like oh,

50:50

this is that this is that something if you're seeing these

50:52

patterns like that's a good sign One

50:54

thing I always look for the green flag is like they

50:56

repeatedly work through the same people again They've

50:58

worked with that director that producer may time

51:00

and time over there's something there That's working

51:02

and they're willing to work together

51:04

again. That's generally green flag for me

51:07

agreed Also, what

51:09

is their personal life sort

51:11

of like? It's

51:13

not anything that's Determinative but if

51:15

somebody is clearly going through a phase

51:18

in their life where they have a

51:20

relationship that's falling apart They are being

51:22

sued. They are having they're getting to

51:25

bar fights. They've become unreliable

51:28

That's a problem. So best practice

51:30

is green flag somebody whose life appears

51:32

to be rather stable. They've got good

51:34

people around them It doesn't necessarily mean they've been married

51:36

for for 30 years to the same person It just

51:39

means that there's a certain stability in terms of their

51:42

Management their friendships

51:44

their living situation the way that they comport themselves.

51:47

That's always a green flag to me Yeah,

51:50

what people say spontaneously. I love them

51:52

you just get a sense like,

51:54

you know Oh people love them

51:56

and they don't they didn't have to say that it's not just

51:58

that it's love their work I actually love being

52:01

around that person. Green flag. Huge

52:03

green flag. And the

52:05

thing is we want to love people. So

52:07

when you hear that, you're like, what a relief. I

52:09

mean, that's the best information

52:12

is exactly that. I love them.

52:14

I've said to people about, you know, they've asked me

52:16

about an actor, or they've asked me about a crew

52:18

person. I'm like, I would take a bullet for this

52:20

person. That's the best recommendation you

52:22

can get. The best green flag is I absolutely

52:25

love this person. You may not

52:28

hire them when I need them. That's

52:31

the best green flag there. That's

52:34

my green flag combo here. If you're

52:36

looking at their social media and they seem like

52:38

a not stable person on social media, they're not

52:41

going to be a stable person in your actual

52:43

life. So the green flag version of

52:45

this is like, you look at their social media, it's like, oh

52:47

yeah, I get this person. I get what they're into. They're

52:50

posting some dog photos. They are also talking

52:52

about things that in

52:54

a rational way, that's a green flag for me.

52:57

Yes. And when it comes to actors, I have

52:59

to say, I'm old school in the

53:01

sense that I believe that backstage

53:04

is backstage. And

53:06

we keep what we want

53:08

people to see are the characters that

53:10

the actors play. That's what we want.

53:12

Now, obviously, there's enormous interest in actors'

53:14

personal lives, and people are always going

53:16

to be asking questions. But if social

53:18

media feels a little bit like, hey,

53:20

once the cameras are off, my reality

53:23

show begins, that's a red flag for

53:25

me. Green flag, like you said, once

53:27

the cameras are off, the

53:29

things that I put on social media are not that different

53:31

from what anyone puts on social media. That

53:33

implies a certain stability and maybe

53:36

possibly the

53:38

absence of extraordinary narcissism,

53:40

which is always a red flag. And

53:43

probably, this is the thing I should

53:45

test debate. One of the best handers

53:47

out of red flags and green flags

53:49

is your casting director. Because casting directors,

53:51

they know all the actors. And they

53:53

know the actors who they've

53:55

seen over the last 20 years and

53:58

the interpersonal relations between those two. actors,

54:00

they get a sense of that. So

54:02

these casting directors, I said like other

54:04

actors, those are folks who know what

54:06

these people are acting like.

54:08

Yes. And if I had a choice between

54:10

asking an actor or a casting director, and

54:13

I can only pick one, I would

54:15

pick the casting director, because actors can have

54:17

remarkable on-screen relationships with actors who are the

54:19

nightmares everywhere else. But

54:21

casting directors hear back from everybody. They hear

54:24

back from the directors and the producers. So

54:26

they get the feedback. And they have been

54:28

tracking people over the course of years. And

54:30

they also saw those people when they were

54:32

starting out often. So they can

54:34

also say, oh, yeah, so this person's become

54:36

the monster, as opposed to this person

54:38

has been just a solid human being from the

54:40

very, very jump, and they continue to be. And

54:43

so that was, I mean, our casting director, this

54:45

year is Mary Verneu, and she was so helpful

54:48

in that regard for a lot of the people

54:50

that we're bringing on. And I have to

54:53

say, it's been fantastic. Every

54:55

choice, we've been rewarded. So

54:57

green flags everywhere, very, very excited.

55:00

All right. Let's answer one more

55:02

question. I see one here from Steve about Dungeons

55:04

and Dragons. So of course, we have to answer

55:06

that. Yeah, obviously. Steve writes,

55:08

my son, Elliot is big into the

55:10

Dungeons and Dragons world. He watches the

55:12

movies, loves the 1980s cartoon, read the

55:14

monster manuals from the library. Now

55:17

he wants to play the actual game. However,

55:19

it's recommended for 12 and older, and

55:21

he's only six. This hasn't

55:23

stopped him from designing dungeons. He has

55:25

a little image attached here, and using

55:28

Monopoly dice to create characters. I've

55:30

looked for junior versions, but haven't found any.

55:32

Do you have any recommendations for six year old

55:34

who desperately wants to be 12? Oh, God,

55:36

I'm so happy for Elliot.

55:39

I'm so happy for Elliot's

55:42

dad, Steve, who's going to contribute

55:44

to his love of Dungeons and

55:46

Dragons. Googling around, I found a

55:49

link I'm going to put in the show notes

55:51

here on Everharthan about how

55:53

to play Dungeons and Dragons for kids. And

55:55

it gives some suggestions for here's

55:57

how you scale down. the

56:00

experience that actually it's appropriate for younger kids. And so

56:03

it goes down to like six. So it goes down

56:05

to Elliot's age in terms of how you do that

56:07

and how you get the sense of like, okay, I

56:09

am playing this character who's doing this thing. So

56:11

some simplified rules. So it's very

56:14

straightforward, but also fun for a

56:16

kid that age. Yeah,

56:18

it's a tough one because I

56:20

think Steve probably Elliot is special.

56:23

A six-year-old who is reading the

56:26

monster manual and is designing dungeons

56:28

and using monopoly dice to create

56:30

characters is pretty advanced. So

56:33

the issue is who's he going to play

56:35

with? And you know

56:37

your son better than than we do Steve. If

56:39

you feel like your son is particularly advanced and

56:41

can do this, then my

56:43

suggestion is perhaps there's

56:46

a world where if

56:48

you play Steve, I hope you do that

56:51

maybe you can build a

56:54

little one-shot for you

56:56

and maybe a couple of your friends who

56:59

play and also Elliot.

57:03

And then maybe if Elliot

57:05

has a friend that really really wants to

57:08

play then now there are two kids who

57:10

want to play, but six is very young.

57:12

Yeah, it's exciting for

57:14

I think for Elliot, but I

57:16

would I think he's probably a

57:20

rarity. Yeah, so

57:22

my friend Quinn had a kid who

57:24

also loves to play D&D and started really young

57:26

and Quinn's frustration with that it's hard to find

57:28

other kids his age who have to do stuff.

57:30

So they got a little school group together and

57:32

they eventually started doing it, but it's a challenge.

57:35

I think Craig's instincts where you Steve are

57:37

going to be the DM and Elliot and

57:40

hopefully some other friends or some other adults are going

57:42

to play through a little bit with him feels

57:45

right and you'll find ways

57:47

to make how that makes sense. I

57:49

love that it's really into the actual Dungeons and

57:51

Dragons game. So I don't want to send

57:53

them into a video space, but there are some

57:56

video game versions of D&D or things that

57:58

are like that that could scratch that. for

58:00

a while before he has the ability to

58:02

down a role play with others.

58:05

I'm just nervous about it because I don't want him to

58:08

lose this ability to imagine worlds in

58:10

his mind and sort of the reading

58:12

of it all to be

58:14

looking at a screen. Yeah, and the

58:16

video games unfortunately will probably not be

58:19

content wise appropriate for him at six.

58:21

We certainly would not steer him towards. Oh, not a

58:23

bullet escape. That would be bad. Oh boy, I love

58:25

the game. But

58:28

yeah, no, he's six. He's so young. He's

58:30

so young. So it really is

58:32

about providing a fun environment for him.

58:34

And also, no matter how special he is, making

58:37

sure that the adventure or the nature of

58:39

it is short. Anything

58:41

beyond an hour is going to seem like a thousand

58:43

years to him. Or he might want

58:46

to play it for six hours. But you have

58:48

to be the parent who is the structure

58:50

in this. I want to talk about Elliot's

58:52

dungeon here because look at how great this

58:54

is. So it has a gibbering mouser in

58:56

it. A mimic surprise. Some

58:59

flame skulls. I would say gibbering by the

59:01

way. Oh, gibbering? Oh, gibbering. I

59:03

like gibbering. Yeah, like gibbering. I

59:05

don't actually know how that is pronounced. We'll look it

59:07

up. Oh, it's gibbering. Yep. It's

59:09

gibbering. Okay. But

59:11

it's great. And so the fact that

59:14

he's into this, that his handwriting is

59:16

actually pretty good. Very outstanding. It's so much

59:18

better than mine was. And again, to reiterate

59:20

how bad I am at drawing, this right

59:23

now is about what a map I would

59:25

draw would look like. But

59:28

I love that he understands some basic concepts.

59:30

Like for instance, it looks like

59:32

there's some sort of water in the beginning. And

59:35

then there's an arrow, which I love that says

59:37

turn to the right. And then there's a huge

59:39

room with a gibbering mouser. Obviously

59:42

that's not an easy kind of

59:44

two words to have as a

59:46

kid. And then mimic surprise. He

59:48

corrected his spelling of surprise, which a

59:50

lot of adults fail to do. And

59:54

I love that he understood what the

59:56

point of the mimic was. Looks

59:59

like he might have drawn. on a team for a trap

1:00:01

there. I think it's a trap, yeah, but it's got its

1:00:03

door symbols in there just right too. Yeah, and he's got

1:00:05

flame skulls. Who doesn't want the flame

1:00:07

skull? Well, the beefy. Well, adventure is

1:00:10

down, I do that. But I just

1:00:12

think, and it also says the end

1:00:14

dungeon, so I suspect that there's more

1:00:16

planned. There's more. But yeah,

1:00:18

no, Elliot is terrific, and I will

1:00:20

say this, Steve, your son

1:00:23

will be a DM. He

1:00:25

has DM, he has big DM energy. He

1:00:27

has DM energy. Yeah, that's true. It's also

1:00:29

very lucky to have you as a dad

1:00:31

because you're trying to figure out how to

1:00:33

help you. Yeah, thank you for not being

1:00:35

a total monster. Yeah. It

1:00:38

is time for One Cool Thing. My One Cool Thing

1:00:41

is an article by Rodan Farrow, ran

1:00:43

the New Yorker this last week, or maybe it was a week before, on

1:00:45

RuPaul. The article title is RuPaul Doesn't See How

1:00:47

That's Any of Your Business, which I think is

1:00:49

just great. If you ask RuPaul, how are

1:00:51

you doing? RuPaul says, I don't see how that's any of your

1:00:54

business, which I think is just the best answer. Oh

1:00:56

my gosh, that's great. I watched

1:00:58

Drag Race, I've known RuPaul

1:01:01

for forever, never met them in person. I

1:01:04

thought the article was great and really

1:01:06

dug into the weird contradiction of a

1:01:09

very public face who is incredibly private

1:01:11

and is always trying to draw

1:01:13

out, you got to reveal the real you

1:01:15

from the drag queens who are competing on

1:01:17

the show and does not want to reveal

1:01:19

the real him very much at all.

1:01:21

And of course, this is all in service of a

1:01:23

memoir that's coming out. So it's just really good writing

1:01:26

by Rodan Farrow, it's a really

1:01:28

good profile of an important media

1:01:31

figure, RuPaul. Well, this

1:01:33

goes exactly to my

1:01:35

earlier comment about in

1:01:39

front of the curtain and behind the curtain and

1:01:42

how, especially when you think about

1:01:44

somebody who has specialized in bringing

1:01:46

drag to the forefront, how presentational

1:01:48

and performative that is, not performative,

1:01:50

like the fake performative, but performance

1:01:52

oriented and how there is a

1:01:54

backstage and even on Drag Race,

1:01:56

which shows you the backstage, that

1:01:58

backstage is on stage. There's

1:02:00

a real backstage that you never get to, which is

1:02:02

correct. And he says something in this

1:02:05

article that is so, I mean, I don't know

1:02:07

if he's been to therapy but sure sounds like

1:02:10

it. Feelings are

1:02:12

indicators, they're not facts. That's

1:02:15

a fascinating way of doing it. That's a very

1:02:17

therapy, yeah. A very therapy and a wonderful,

1:02:19

wonderful thing. Also

1:02:22

the thing about RuPaul that's always been evident is

1:02:24

how smart he is. And

1:02:26

so reading this, it just sounds like

1:02:29

we do profiles of people

1:02:31

that do these things that seem

1:02:34

overtly funny and frivolous and

1:02:36

silly. And then when you meet them,

1:02:38

you realize how smart they are because again, or words

1:02:41

should only be won by people that

1:02:43

do comedy and drag race is

1:02:45

comedy. Oh yeah, I mean, the degree to which

1:02:48

like, and also you recognize that

1:02:50

what RuPaul wants contestants to be able to

1:02:52

do are not that things that RuPaul himself

1:02:55

could have done coming up. Like

1:02:57

the expectations, the levels have gotten so high

1:02:59

that you have to be able to be an

1:03:01

amazing designer, an amazing performer, an amazing dancer, amazing

1:03:04

everything. And that's just the

1:03:06

table space to start playing. Yeah. And

1:03:10

I also love how much

1:03:12

of a business person he is, but

1:03:14

you can't make a show like that

1:03:17

without being a very rigorous,

1:03:19

serious person. Like comedy

1:03:22

is serious. Yeah, I'm

1:03:24

going to read this. I'm fascinated by him.

1:03:26

I really am. I just think he's such

1:03:29

a force, you know, like, and

1:03:31

I'm so tired of us taking people

1:03:33

who pretend to be serious seriously. I

1:03:36

like taking people who pretend to be not serious,

1:03:39

seriously. I think that's far more

1:03:41

interesting. In our last episode, we talked

1:03:43

about counterfactuals and it's a counterfactual where like we didn't

1:03:45

have RuPaul, like where RuPaul wasn't born or did new

1:03:47

drag or did some other thing. Like we

1:03:50

would be at a different place. There would be drag, 100%.

1:03:53

But like, would we have the

1:03:55

popularization, the mass platform

1:03:57

of drag that we have now? I don't think we

1:03:59

do. I don't think we do. I

1:04:01

think he's an incredibly important person in that regard.

1:04:03

There's just an entire vocabulary we wouldn't have. And

1:04:06

I think we know this for a fact because until RuPaul

1:04:08

came along, that culture

1:04:10

existed. But mainstream wasn't

1:04:12

looking at it. Just wasn't even

1:04:15

when it sort of popped through a little bit.

1:04:18

Like, what was the documentary,

1:04:20

Paris is Burning? Yeah, Paris is Burning.

1:04:23

It popped out and then it

1:04:25

popped back down again. You know what I mean? It's

1:04:29

not the same. We always had drag

1:04:31

performers. We always had, we had the

1:04:33

Paulins. We had that gay camp sensibility.

1:04:35

But it wasn't all put together in

1:04:37

a way like this. No, and it

1:04:39

wasn't also unapologetic. When

1:04:42

I was growing up, when you were growing up, it

1:04:44

always seemed like we were laughing at

1:04:47

the drag performance. And

1:04:50

now we laugh with the drag

1:04:52

performance. It's very different. I'm

1:04:55

not a religious watcher of drag

1:04:57

race or any television show, but

1:05:00

when I see it, it's incredibly entertaining and so

1:05:02

funny, but it also feels very authentic. Even though

1:05:04

I know it's reality television and a lot of

1:05:06

it's drummed up and not, you

1:05:09

do feel like you are seeing

1:05:11

the authentic culture happening in front of you. And

1:05:14

the people that they pull from are real.

1:05:16

They're not finding people and saying, if

1:05:18

you would be willing to start dressing up in drag, it

1:05:20

would be great. They are who they

1:05:22

are. Well, also, having been

1:05:24

on the air for so many years, the

1:05:27

queens who are competing now grew up with RuPaul's

1:05:29

drag race existing. And so it's been

1:05:31

swimming in this water the entire time,

1:05:33

not just expectations of performance, but also

1:05:36

the culture has changed too. In early

1:05:38

seasons, contestants who were trans were

1:05:40

hiding it because it felt like that's cheating

1:05:42

to be trans and be on drag race.

1:05:44

Right. That seems absurd now, but things move

1:05:47

pretty quickly. Things move pretty quickly. And I

1:05:49

think RuPaul is at the center of it

1:05:51

all. And also, he's 9,000 feet tall. Yes.

1:05:56

I mean, so I wanted to go up to him

1:05:58

and say something at the Emmys. Because he's

1:06:00

at the Emmys every year because he wins every year. So

1:06:03

I show up every four years I guess maybe I'll

1:06:05

never show up again But

1:06:07

when I do show up there's RuPaul and

1:06:09

I and I'll tell you why I didn't

1:06:11

got him Can you guess why I didn't

1:06:14

got him the intimidation? Yes, like terrified terrified

1:06:16

and and in looking at this sort of

1:06:19

The the run and fair article here. I feel vindicated.

1:06:21

I think that he would be like

1:06:23

get the f away from me I

1:06:25

don't know you But

1:06:28

I won't I but I would love to I'm so

1:06:30

I'm such an admirer of of of

1:06:33

him as a as a Creative

1:06:35

force. Yeah, okay. What do you

1:06:37

have for one cool thing? Well, my one cool thing is a game

1:06:40

So there's a company called glitch games.

1:06:43

I've definitely promoted them before on the

1:06:45

show they make kind of escape room

1:06:47

puzzle II type point-and-click games for iOS

1:06:50

typically, I think it comes out maybe on

1:06:52

Android, but who cares and This

1:06:55

latest one I can't tell if I like it

1:06:57

or if I loathe it So I'm sort of

1:06:59

I'm putting it out there for people to see

1:07:01

what they think it is. It's a four dollar

1:07:03

game So it's not a huge four dollar game,

1:07:05

right? So it's worth it's worth the four dollar

1:07:08

bet The gimmick of this one is

1:07:10

that it's just like there are other games and that you're

1:07:12

in a facility and you have to figure out how to

1:07:14

get out and there are a lot a lot of puzzles

1:07:16

but the gimmick is that this facility was working on some

1:07:18

sort of time loop thing and Every

1:07:21

and and it's an increment of time that you

1:07:23

can set I think between three minutes and ten

1:07:25

minutes It sends you back

1:07:27

to the beginning and undoes most of what you've

1:07:29

done So you solve

1:07:31

puzzles you figure out how to proceed and then

1:07:34

it goes up Shoop, you're back to the beginning

1:07:36

which means you have to resolve a bunch of

1:07:38

puzzles not hard to do to get further I'd

1:07:40

be honest I found it incredibly frustrating and I

1:07:43

quit but but the puzzles are quite good

1:07:45

and I do love the their game

1:07:47

in general People who have a little

1:07:49

bit more patience than I do may actually really really appreciate

1:07:51

it. So Yeah

1:07:55

Give that a give it a shot incursion by give

1:07:57

it a shot glitch games And

1:08:01

that's our show for this week. It's from Prince of speaking

1:08:57

hotel.