The original post for this episode can be found here.
John August: Hello and welcome, my name is John August.
Craig Mazin: My name is Craig Mazin.
John: You’re listening to episode 660 of Scriptnotes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.
Now one thing I love about our podcast is that we actively solicit suggestions on topics from our listeners. Today’s episode exists entirely because of one email we got. Craig, would you mind reading this email?
Craig: I would not. It says:
“Could you do an entire episode on why Moneyball works? A strange disease I have is watching the same movie over and over again when it affects me, and lately, it’s Moneyball. My older son has been doing this too lately, which I’m either proud of or worried about, and he was the one who landed on Moneyball, a movie I don’t even think I saw in theaters. I would very much welcome an expert understanding of why that movie, which contains so few of the traditional elements of a movie, a B-plot love story, for example, is so effective.” Side note, I challenge the premise.
John, I think we should do this.
John: I think we should. I think this is a great suggestion from any listener, but when it comes from an accomplished journalist, a best-selling novelist, she wrote Fleishman is in Trouble. She also wrote the acclaimed adaptation, the limited series adaptations of Fleishman is in Trouble, who we had her on the show to talk about that, and this summer’s new bestseller, Long Island Compromise. We had to get her on the show. Welcome back to the program, Taffy Brodesser-Akner.
Taffy Brodesser-Akner: It’s so great to be here. Thank you for having me again.
Craig: I love this. We have a genius on. This is great. I get to argue with her about Moneyball, which is one of my favorite movies of all time, and–
Taffy: Is it?
Craig: Extra thank you, Taffy, because we get to talk about baseball on a podcast where 50% of the people on this podcast don’t talk– They don’t even discriminate between various blank balls, basketball, football, baseball, it’s just sports ball to John, and I’m a baseball fanatic. I love Moneyball. I, too, have watched it over and over and over. I think it’s brilliant for so many reasons, and I do think it has all of the traditional elements of a movie, so, huh.
John: Wow.
Taffy: On the surface, the traditional–
Craig: We’ll get into it.
Taffy: Let’s go for it, let’s go for it.
Craig: We’ll discuss.
John: I agree with both of you. I think we’ll try to find the happy middle, the dialectic between these two polar opposites here. This joins your tradition of deep dives. We’ve done it on movies before, so we’ve talked about The Little Mermaid, we’ve talked about Frozen, we’ve talked about Die Hard.
Taffy: Clueless was one of my favorite deep dives.
John: Oh my God, Clueless, incredible. We’re going to do this. Also in our bonus segment for premium members, I would like to talk about money, because, Taffy, your book, Long Island Compromise, is about the intersection of trauma and money. Moneyball is literally about calculating how much a person is worth, so I thought we would dig into our feelings about money and value and how we value ourselves as writers. Money for our bonus segment, premium members.
Taffy: So good.
Craig: Amazing.
John: All right, Craig, you and I have a little bit of housekeeping to do before we can get on with Taffy here.
Craig: All right.
John: About two weeks from now, we are going to be in Austin for the Austin Film Festival. You and I are doing a live Scriptnotes show. I’m doing a 25th-anniversary screening of Go.
Craig: Oh, nice.
John: Yeah. I see that you are on at least one or two other panels. You’re doing the– I can’t believe they drafted you into doing the Pitch Finale. I don’t know how they–
Craig: You know what, I’m there. What else? It’s either I’m drinking while judging the Pitch Finale party, or I’m drinking and not judging the Pitch Finale party. I will say the thing about the– listen, I don’t care about pitches. I don’t think they make any sense. This is like, I don’t know why they keep picking me. They all know this. But it is fun because it’s in a bar, it’s packed, it’s kind of exciting. I feel like Simon Cowell, obviously that’s my part. I play Simon Cowell on the show, and we get to make somebody very, very happy, but the crowd is like really into it. That part I think is fun.
John: That part is fun. Drew will be there. Megana will be there. Craig, I don’t think that Megana’s going to come as well.
Craig: I am now levitating.
John: Chris who does our Inneresting Newsletter will be there as well. They’re there to help support Scriptnotes, but also because we’re launching the new version of Highland and so we’re going to throw a party for that. If you’re in Austin and whether you have your badge or don’t have your badge and you’d like to join us for this launch party for Highland, that’ll be on Thursday afternoon at some point. You need to click the link on the show notes and tell us that you want to come and then we’ll send you the details about that.
It should be a good fun time to see the new version of Highland that everybody else will be using. Let us get to the marquee topic here, Moneyball. We will talk about the development and probably at the end of this because there’s actually a really interesting development history that we can talk through. Let’s talk about the movie that we’re watching on the screen. It’s based on a book by Michael Lewis, screenplay by Steve Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin.
Craig: Who?
John: Two hacks, they’ve never done anything else.
Craig: Can you imagine? That’s already screenwriting Voltron. That’s incredible.
Taffy: Right.
John: It is incredible. Story credit by Stan Chervin. Drew has found this undated 166-page draft. It has omitteds in it that makes it feel like it’s a production draft, but it’s not actually a very close representation of what we see on screen right now. Drew at some point made a hop in to tell us like, “This is a thing that was different in this draft as written versus the movie that we see.” Really for our purposes, we’re going to talk about the movie that we experienced.
If you were to download it as we’ve recently watched it, this is the movie we’re seeing. This is why it works on screen the way it works. Let’s get to the premise here because Taffy, you said that this quote contains so few of the traditional elements of the movie, like a B-plot love story, yet it’s so effective. What has been your experience and exposure to Moneyball and what prompted you to actually ask this question?
Taffy: Like I said in my email, my son has started watching Moneyball over and over. My son recites full scenes from Moneyball.
Craig: Yeah, he does.
Taffy: There are a couple of words that you could say that will trigger an entire scene. He is excellent at it. I’m not allowed to disseminate video of it, but I have video of it. In case you see me, I will show it to you.
Craig: Amazing.
John: I think you sent me a clip. We’re not going to post it–
Taffy: Did I?
John: Yes, I think you did.
Taffy: We started watching it a lot together. I have been a sports reporter, but before you get excited, Craig, I do not understand baseball on a level that I have had to, in ESPN Magazine stories, write, “please insert sports stuff here,” which is how it works sometimes if you’re bad. I think of baseball as the language Mandarin. You could learn it, but if you didn’t learn it before you were 11, you will never be fluent at it.
Craig: You might be onto something there because I certainly did learn it before I was 11.
Taffy: See. And by the way, I therefore think that there is something very, very– like I watch Moneyball over and over. I can now recite it. I still don’t know how baseball work. I think one of the successful things about it is that unlike the movie, also about a thing I don’t understand, Rounders? I don’t understand. When I watch Rounders, I don’t understand what I’m supposed to think based on the hand of cards that’s presented to me. I don’t feel that I am missing anything.
I feel like maybe these luminaries who wrote it may be learned about baseball, but understood more from my point of view than theirs, that you don’t need to know anything about baseball.
Craig: I agree with you. I’m running through my mental inventory of Moneyball and it teaches you the things you need to know along the way. You get a basic sense, okay, Billy Beane is the GM. That means he’s deciding who to trade, who to engage, but he doesn’t own the team. Then you have a bunch of scouts whose job, everybody played baseball and they’re old guys and they’re supposed to find you new talent. Then there’s this kid who’s helping him figure out with statistics, how do we solve this problem we have, which is that our team sucks.
One of my favorite quotes of any movie is Billy Beane, as played by Brad Pitt, defines the problem the Oakland A’s are having. You don’t need to know anything about baseball to understand this. “The problem we’re trying to solve is that there are rich teams and there are poor teams. Then there’s 50 feet of crap and then there’s us. It’s an unfair game. If you try to think like the Yankees in here, you will lose to the Yankees out there.” Anyone can understand that. We are dealing with an underdog.
John: Let’s talk about digging into more of Taffy’s question. There are things that she is expecting to see in a movie like this that do not appear. Part of it, I think it’s also because the presentation of the movie is not what we might expect. It is shot almost like a documentary. It feels like a documentary at times. The camera’s very loose. There’s a lot of archival footage put in there. You feel like you’re watching things happen in front of the lens, but it’s not as presentational as we might expect from other movies.
Taffy: Can I just say also on that documentary note, we looked up all of the actors in this movie. Some of them are scouts and some of them are professional actors. The professional actors are not acting like professional actors.
Craig: They’re not.
Taffy: They’re acting like people who are in a documentary.
Craig: I’m so glad you said that.
Taffy: It’s amazing.
Craig: Because the person that I’m obsessed with the most, just on a tone point of view, is this actor named Ken Medlock who plays Grady. Grady is kind of the villain scout. He’s the guy who doesn’t want to hear about the idea– the basic premise of Moneyball is baseball’s been around for 100 years. It is imbued with tradition and old ways of thinking, the Oakland A’s are a poor team and they’re losing. This kid comes along from Yale and says, “There’s a better way of thinking about how to evaluate players.”
Grady represents the old guard who’s like, “You and Google boy– as he calls them– aren’t going to change baseball.” This guy, Ken Medlock, I was convinced was an actual baseball scout. He had baseball body, gym teacher face, and just the fluidity and realism of the way he portrayed that character. People don’t talk about a great character actor enough. Ken Medlock, you’re my one cool thing this week. I don’t care. Ken Medlock. So good.
Taffy: Is his name John Henry at the end who plays the owner of the Red Sox?
John: Arliss Howard plays him. Yes.
Taffy: Sorry, Arliss Howard plays John Henry.
Craig: The owner of the Boston Red Sox.
Taffy: The owner of the Boston Red Sox. He’s an actor, but he is acting like somebody I would have interviewed and is trying to figure out how to speak to somebody for the first time in front of a– it’s amazing.
Craig: It really is amazing.
Taffy: It’s like a third kind of movie, a thing that’s conveying itself as the thing we’re used to in a documentary from all these ESPN, 30 for 30 things, right?
Craig: Yes, this stiffness to it.
Taffy: So interesting.
Craig: Bennett Miller, who directed the film, also, a ton of credit there for just both the visual style and also keeping everything so wonderfully grittily grounded. You’re right, like an ESPN 30 for 30.
John: Well, let’s also talk about things you might expect to see in this movie. Let’s imagine that Michael Lewis’s book lands on your desk and like, okay, well, how do we adapt this book? How do we adapt this story? The very basics of the story is Billy Beane is the general manager of the Oakland A’s, has this team that is not winning, does not have the money to do what he needs to do. Ends up recruiting somebody on to help him figure out how to assemble a team in a much less expensive way that is the antithesis of how you’re supposed to be doing baseball.
We get this Michael Lewis book. The things we expect to see in a movie, like Taffy points out, is like, well, where is the B-story love interest? Where is the Brad Pitt love interest? You have Brad Pitt and he doesn’t kiss anybody in the whole movie. Now, Drew, the script that you gave us, there is a love interest in there. Talk to us about what’s different if we wanted to look at this script.
Drew: Yes, from the get-go, he has a girlfriend character who he’s bouncing things off of. A lot of those scenes get repurposed and given to Jonah Hill in the final thing. Yes, throughout, she pops up, they’ll have dinner and just little moments where he gets to talk to her and use her as a sounding board.
John: The movie is almost completely focused on his quest to make this team work under this new principle. Yet there are moments where we are able to hop off of this main ride and see some things who are not directly baseball. We have his daughter. We have Robin Wright who is his ex-wife. We had one scene with Robin Wright and Spike Jonze, who plays her husband, which is great fun.
Craig: Awesome.
John: They’re useful, but they’re not crucial. I think they’re just there to– well, let’s talk about why they’re there. Because almost this entire conversation is going to be about the main arc quest about this. Let’s talk about the little side quests we do with the daughter, with the ex-wife. Why they’re there and what function do they serve in this movie? Because you could have cut them out but they still feel crucial. Craig, I see you squinting like you couldn’t have cut them out.
Craig: I don’t think you should. There’s the right amount of them. To me, the story it’s a classic redemption tale. This character, Billy Beane, is a real person, obviously, was a first-round draft pick coming out of high school, I think, and was projected by scouts to be a star. And he was a complete flop. Ah-ha, scouts, flop, failure, and now he rolls himself into this front office gig, which is generally seen to be a bit like, “Well, you crapped out, so now this is what you can do instead.” His success and that’s what we’re invested in like, can he come back? Can he achieve?
Because in his mind, he’s a loser. His whole thing is, “I am a jinx and a loser. What I’m doing here, on the one hand, theoretically will work and it’s bold. On the other hand, simply because it’s me, it probably won’t work because I am a loser.” We need some stakes beyond whether or not the Oakland A’s succeed. We need to know that there are people at home that he is trying to also prove himself to, that he feels like a loser in context with. The most important one is his daughter.
It’s not like his daughter and his ex-wife are like, “If the Oakland A’s don’t win, then like we said, you’re a loser.” They do believe in him. That’s why it hurts more. He needs to show them, though. He needs to. Or else he goes home with his tail between his legs, again, a failure in the eyes of the people he wishes he could impress. The only people I think he’s trying to impress in this movie are his– really, the only person is his daughter, actually.
Taffy: I also think his daughter is there for a much more practical reason, which is that she is there to talk about his anxiety about being fired. Also, I want to say, I don’t know if this is even an okay thing to say. In a couple of those scenes, Brad Pitt is a different size and wearing a wig. It makes me wonder if he is returned–
John: These small things I never notice.
Taffy: -because there aren’t enough. I notice wigs all the time-
Craig: Oh, goodness.
Taffy: -but Brad Pitt, I was like, “What are those veins in his neck?” He’s bulking up for Troy 2 or whatever. He’s brought back in, and also, she’s a girl at a funny age where she could look like a child or a grown-up within a second.
I guess I think that a lot of this movie revolves around the idea that if you look at the movie in a certain way, Billy Beane is a villain who is just– he throws things. He is cruel to people underneath him. He’s a little bit abusive. He is doing something that actually puts a lot of people’s livelihoods in danger, but she is there to ask him, “Are you going to be fired?”
We have to see with him that the stakes are so, so high. He has another scene with Jonah Hill, with Peter Brand, where he says to Peter Brand, almost apropos of nothing like, “You went to Yale, this is your second job, you’re going to be fine. If I fail at this, I fail forever.” It’s like him against the world, but what is he doing? What about this world? I think the whole thing lands, and he’s saved by the one essential question of the movie, which is, what is the best way to love baseball? Is it to honor its traditions, or is it to innovate so that it becomes what it could be?
Craig: I love having this conversation. I’m fascinated, Taffy, by your view that there’s a slightly villainous aspect to him because I have a very different relationship with this character. My relationship with this character is– one of the reasons I love baseball is that it’s fairly scientific. I remember as a kid reading– I talked about it here on the show before, a book called the Microbe Hunters. There’s this old book written in the 1920s, but it basically catalogs seven or eight great scientists in history who tracked down the cause of disease and figured out a way to solve it.
Louis Pasteur, for instance. One of the things that keeps coming up over and over in these things is how much resistance each one of these people faced by the church, by commonly accepted… And the tension that I felt reading this was, there’s like this innate anger in watching somebody who is scientifically correct having to force their way past ignorance, doubt, fear, and superstition to prevail at great risk to themselves.
Watching this movie, that’s what I connect to. It’s like watching a story about Galileo or Copernicus trying to argue that, “No, the sun doesn’t revolve around the earth. The earth revolves around the sun, and I’m going to risk my life and limb to prove it because it’s correct.” I love that. I do. I love him for it, and I forgive him all of his tantrums and his stuff.
Taffy: I think that you’re right, and I think that that’s why it’s a great movie. I think his villainy is just viewed from all of these different parts. I do think he’s doing the work of innovators, and he’s very afraid. Also, there’s no winning for him. Even at the end when he wins, he didn’t win the last game of the season, so he gets to hate himself all over again. I think this is what I meant exactly when I said this doesn’t come along with the traditional, not just a love story. But with a certain kind of sympathy and a certain kind of like a dog, all of the things that you would have if we were showing you were such a great innovator but a really difficult personality.
It’s almost like it’s one of the freest movies I’ve ever seen because it just allows him to be in this story about this thing he was trying to do without– when I was learning how to write screenplays, I was told that if you have this difficult character, you should give him like a disability. The professor, I remember, always said, “Clubfoot.” I don’t know. That’s what he always said.
Craig: Worked for Shakespeare, I guess.
Taffy: Right. I felt like this was free from the constraints of that. That’s more what I mean when I say the protections around a traditional story are that he’s just allowed to do this. He’s allowed to fire people and send them home. He is allowed to have the hate of the people. Also Brad Pitt’s performance in this, his contempt for the people he’s talking to.
Craig: It’s so good.
Taffy: It’s so good.
Craig: “What is the problem? Enh. What is the problem? How can you solve it if you don’t know what it is?”
You’re absolutely right about everything you say. The counter really is just that there are elements that if– and I don’t know what the ordering was. I don’t know if Zaillian sat down and then Sorkin showed up, or Sorkin sat down and Zaillian showed up. It doesn’t matter if you have both those guys. The things that pop out when you look at the book and the story are, A, this guy was first-round draft pick and failed. That’s good character setup.
B, the Oakland A’s suffer this incredible challenge because they lose their star player. In general, they’re poor, and so the owners can never afford to keep the good players. They always leave for free agency. Then by applying this method, which no one believed in, the Oakland A’s go on to tie the record for most consecutive wins in a season by a team, and that is capped off by this insane game where they were up by an enormous amount.
It was in the bag, and then they almost blew it, and then the guy who wins it for them is the very guy that Billy Beane went out and pulled off the scrap heap even though he had unrepairable nerve damage and can’t throw, as Grady says. All of that stuff gives you really basic things. The only thing that would be missing there and then along it comes is what is the central relationship. Where is the love story?
The love story, to me, I would argue, is between Billy Beane and Peter Brand, that it’s Brad Pitt and it’s Jonah Hill. Because obviously it’s a buddy-buddy love story, but it is two guys who decide they’re going to go all in with each other and trust each other. The look when they pull off that trade for Rincón and Jonah Hill, the passion of it. You see these guys are in love with each other. They’re falling in love, and the whole thing will be on their shoulders.
To me, there are those romantic, basic storylines, and of course, the beautiful moment of Billy Beane to say, “Okay, we’re winning. I’ll show up at the 20th game. Oh God, I showed up and we immediately started to lose.” That’s the final climactic test of a character, all that stuff. I agree with you. There is all this beautiful freedom, and then you have all these great traditional elements that I think, had they not been there, this would have been a hard movie to write.
Taffy: Can I just say one more thing?
John: Please.
Taffy: I’m sorry. I agree with all that. The traditional stuff I was talking about was more like someone having sex with Brad Pitt.
Craig: Oh. Yeah, that’s pretty traditional.
Taffy: It makes me always think, by the way, which is why I love sports movies, that I really do believe you just have a freedom in these kinds of movies. I also want to say that I think that the love story– I love their relationship, but I think the love story is between Billy Beane and baseball. It is like-
Craig: Fair way to look at it.
Taffy: -it’s the only relationship that changes. He and Peter Brand are sort of like Butch and Sundance for the long haul. Billy goes from, is the best way to love baseball, to look at its statistics, or is it to just love it? He comes around to the best way I can love baseball is by trying to get to win this game. Anyway, you go on, sorry.
Craig: No, I think that’s a fair point. Look, what’s the line that people quote the most? “How can you not be romantic about baseball?” Baseball, which is, if you don’t love it the way I do, is one of the more boring sports to watch on television. Baseball, without question, empirically, factually, is the best sport to turn into a movie. There are so many great movies that have baseball at their center, and so few that have football or basketball. There are some, but you don’t have a field of dreams. You can just go down the list of incredible baseball movies and how much fun they are, all the way down to Bad News Bears. There’s no–
Taffy: What is it about baseball that does that?
Craig: Well, great question. Only a theory. Baseball is one of the few games where everything stops to let one person face off against one person, even though there’s a whole team. Baseball is the only sport that doesn’t have a clock. There’s no like– baseball is full of these traditions. It is pastoral. The fields are all different. There’s this sense that it was cobbled together out of America. I think most importantly, it’s the fact that there’s no clock.
The ability to stop and pause and feel anxiety is enormous. And only baseball has a home run. Everything else, a touchdown is how you score. You score touchdowns or you kick a field goal. In basketball, football in hoop. Hockey, puck in net. Soccer, put ball in goal. Baseball, you can run around the bases. You can steal home. Then there’s the home run, which is just everything stops. Everyone has a party. It’s just dramatic. Slow, but it’s wonderful. I love it.
Taffy: It also has a moment as opposed to moves. It has a moment.
Craig: Has a moment. When we get to the moment in this film where Scott Hatteberg gets to the plate and has a chance to win this game for them, it’s the same moment that you’ve seen in The Natural with Robert Redford. You see this over and over. Everything slows down. Time slows down. Bull Durham–
Taffy: Parenthood.
Craig: Every movie with baseball, there is a moment where everything gets slow and quiet. It’s just me and the hands squeezing on the bat. Everyone almost shoots it the same way and it works every frickin’ time. Because, you put it perfectly, baseball has space for moments and other sports don’t.
John: Yes, if you try to watch a football game or soccer game–
Craig: Match.
John: -you’re trying to follow the ball. You’re trying to follow, where’s the ball? Because that’s where the action is. Versus baseball, you’re looking at the people and what the people are doing. You can follow the action much more clearly and so can the camera, so can the audience, which is fantastic.
Let’s follow the ball in this story and take a look at how it unfolds on screen. We’re going to start with, the movie opens with Billy being listening to– not really listening to this disastrous game.
He’s frustrated. This is where we wonder if he’s a villain because he smashes the radio. He’s really upset. Then, seven minutes in, we get him explaining what the problem is and what he needs. This is a scene where he’s going to talk to the owner of the team. Let’s take a listen to this clip from seven minutes into Moneyball.
Billy: We’re not going to do better next year.
Steve: Why not?
Billy: Well, you know we’re being gutted. We’re losing Giambi, Damon, Isringhausen. Done deal. We’re in trouble.
Steve: You’ll find new guys. You found Jason, you found Damon.
Billy: I need more money, Steve.
Steve: Billy.
Billy: I need more money.
Steve: We don’t have any more money, Billy.
Billy: I can’t compete against $120 million with $38 million.
Steve: We’re not going to compete with these teams that have big budgets. We’re going to work within the constraints we have, and you’re going to get out and do the best job that you can recruiting new players. We’re not going to pay $17 million to players.
Billy: I’m not asking you for 10 or 20, 30 million dollars. I’m just asking for a bit of help. Just get me a little closer and I will get you that championship team. I mean, this is why I’m here. This is why you hired me. I got to ask you, what are we doing here-
Steve: Billy, I–
Billy: -if it’s not to win a championship?
Steve: I want to win just as much–
Billy: That’s my bar. My bar is here. My bar is to take this team to the championship.
Steve: Billy, we’re a small-market team, and you’re a small-market GM. I’m asking you to be okay not spending money that I don’t have. I’m asking you to take a deep breath, shake off the loss, get back in a room with your guys, and figure out how to find replacements for the guys we lost with the money that we do have.
Billy: I’m not leaving here. I can’t leave here with that.
Steve: What else can I help you with?
John: All right, such a great scene. You guys are talking about your experience with baseball and so you were making fun of me for sports ball and not knowing anything. Here’s what I will say. I had not seen this movie in the theaters, I don’t think. Until Taffy wrote in with the email, I was like, have I seen Moneyball? I watched Moneyball and it’s of course fantastic. What I found useful is I could see the analogies to the studio system that we’re used to working in this movie.
Billy Beane is the producer. He’s not the director. He’s not the coach. He’s not the one who’s directing all the action on the field. He’s the producer putting the whole thing together, but he’s not the studio head. Right now he’s talking to the studio boss saying like, “I need more money.” They’re like, “There’s no more money. You got to figure out with what you have.” He has to figure out like, “Okay, well, I don’t know how to do this. I’m explaining very clearly what I need, and I’m not getting what I need. What am I supposed to do?”
The scene we just played is essentially I want song. If this was Moana, this is How Far I’ll Go. This is I have this thing I need to do, and I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to need to find a way to win because I want this team to be a competitor at the highest level. I want to win.
Craig: You nailed it there, and I love your analogy of, because it’s dead right, this guy that he’s talking to is the studio chairman. He’s the producer. The director is the manager, and the actors are the players. He is saying, “You guys want me to, and I want to win.” He’s not even saying, “If I need more money to be able to do the job, you’re asking me to do so I can keep my job.” He’s saying, “I need more money so I can win.”
“I want to win,” and what this guy is telling him is,” I don’t have more money. You’re not getting more money.” I love just how stolid he is, “And hey, I’d love to win too, but also, it’s not actually that big of a–“ really, as long as our tickets sells and I profit, he’s not in it for the same reason Billy Beane is. That’s very, very clear. What a wonderful way of establishing where Billy is in the pecking order, what he wants, and what the problem is.
John: Yes, I agree with you, establishing what is the problem so that the hero can go about trying to solve the problem. So Billy Beane goes back to his scouts because he needs to find a replacement for the players that he’s lost. The scene in the movie is terrific with all these– a mix, I think, of real scouts and some actors in there playing scouts, and as we talked about, the documentary feel of this is fantastic.
Now, the script that Drew found actually has a scene that’s different that’s really, really good, and so I thought we might do a little play acting here, and let’s read through the scene that’s actually in the script for this thing. Craig, will you play Billy Beane?
Craig: Sure.
John: Taffy, can I have you play Grady? I’ll do Poat. I don’t know whoever Poat is. This, we are in the conference room with a team talking about how to put this together, and Billy Beane has lost his patience with his scouts.
Billy: What if we’ve been wrong this whole time about what ingredients manufacture a win? What if this whole time we thought it was the chicken that made the chicken soup taste good when really it was the onions that made the chicken soup taste good? Onions are a lot cheaper than chicken. You see what I’m saying?
Poat: I don’t have the first idea of what you’re saying.
Billy: We got to go start over. We got to go rethink this thing. We got to go look where others aren’t looking.
Grady: With all due respect, we’ve been doing this for a long time.
Billy: It doesn’t mean you’re doing it right. You watch nature docs? You know what happens to the runt of the litter? He dies. I’m open to any solution, as long as it’s not what the other guys are doing. Now, I’m going to Cleveland to poach an outfielder named Brandon Garcia.
John: All right, so this is a scene that’s not in the movie. At the end of this whole segment, we’re going to talk about sort of the development process of this, because this is a really weird situation. What I like about this is like, this is the feeling of the scene, but it’s not the actual words that are in the scene. You can see the scene like, oh, I get the shape of this. I get like what it is that he’s trying to do, but these words are not what we’re actually seeing on screen.
Craig: I think runt of the litter made it in, as I recall.
John: Yes.
Taffy: Runt of the litter did make it in, but it also feels like you’re doing a baseball movie and you’re writing it and you don’t know how much the person reading it knows about any of this. You just over-explain so that everyone’s on the same page and then you could take it out.
Craig: That’s a really good point. One of the things that they threaded beautifully on the page and then on the subsequent film is, they make sure that the way Billy is explaining things to these guys, and specifically the what is the problem scene, why I love that scene so much is, he’s explaining it to them, but not in a way that you would have to if you were with baseball people. He’s explaining a baseball thing to baseball people, but he explains it in a way where you go, ah, they haven’t considered doing it like this before and very specifically, he talks about how important it is to get on base.
What he says is, “I don’t care how people get on base,” because these guys do. All he care is how he gets on base. This is who we have to replace, Jason Giambi. This was his on-base percentage. We have to get three people who in the aggregate recreate Jason Giambi. That is a way of explaining things to baseball people where I go, oh, yes, whereas the chicken soup thing here feels a little bit like, oh, none of us know baseball, so let’s use a cooking analogy.
John: Yes. All right, so we zoom ahead and so he’s going to talk with the Cleveland Indians about doing a trade there. It’s in that room that he sees Jonah Hill’s character. He’s playing Peter Brand, who’s just a guy off in the background who would be a day player, except that Brad Pitt notices him and is like, “There’s something, people are listening to this kid for whatever reason.”
He goes and finds this kid in the bullpen and talks to him. There’s a scene which is like a first kind of an aggressive meet cute between them there. Then the real meat of the scene happens in a parking garage below. He’s just like, “Follow me down to the parking garage.” Let’s take a listen to that parking garage in which Peter Brand explains his theory of the case.
Peter: There is an epidemic failure within the game to understand what is really happening. This leads people who run major league baseball teams to misjudge their players and mismanage their teams. I apologize.
Billy: Go on.
Peter: Okay. People who run ball clubs, they think in terms of buying players. Your goal shouldn’t be to buy players. Your goal should be to buy wins. In order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. You’re trying to replace Johnny Damon. The Boston Red Sox see Johnny Damon and they see a star who’s worth $7.5 million a year. When I see Johnny Damon, what I see is an imperfect understanding of where runs come from. The guy’s got a great glove. He’s a decent leadoff hitter. He can steal bases, but is he worth the $7.5 million a year that the Boston Red Sox are paying him? No.
No. Baseball thinking is medieval. They are asking all the wrong questions. If I say it to anybody, I’m ostracized. I’m a leper. That’s why I’m cagey about this with you. That’s why I respect you, Mr. Beane. If you want full disclosure, I think it’s a good thing that you got Damon off of your payroll. I think it opens up all kinds of interesting possibilities.
John: Wow. I pulled that clip this morning and so I was watching it as I was playing. Now that I just listened to the audio, you realize that music cue comes in at just that moment and says like, aha, this is where we’re getting a resonance between what he wants and what I want, that the light bulb is starting to glow there.
Craig: We also start to shift to footage of Johnny Damon and what he does. Johnny Damon, it always hurts me in my heart a little bit because the Yankees eventually make the same mistake the Red Sox do with Johnny Damon, no offense to Johnny Damon, but everything that this character is saying here is correct. The most important part of this is baseball thinking is medieval. It’s hard for us now, if you are a baseball fan, to process how medieval it was all just this short time ago.
Spoiler alert, not only do the Oakland A’s and Billy Beane adopt this way of thinking, everyone does, and not just a little, an enormous amount. It hits its crescendo with a guy named Theo Epstein who becomes a very young Billy Beane-ish general manager of the Boston Red Sox. Boston Red Sox don’t, they’re not able to get Billy Beane. They end up with Theo Epstein. Theo Epstein applies all these principles and breaks the curse. The Boston Red Sox finally win the World Series after a gazillion years.
Then what does Theo Epstein do? He leaves Boston Red Sox and goes to the Chicago Cubs, the only team with a longer curse, and they win the World Series using all of this. The problem baseball deals with now is that maybe they’ve gone a little too far with this. They have a billion statistics now. It has become insane. Just a short time ago, what they had was a bunch of scouts going, “He’s got a good baseball body. He’s got good hands.”
John: Yes, it was like phrenology. Yes, it felt medieval. Now, I’m not pushing back, but I’d say like, growing up, I always heard about baseball stat. People were always obsessed with stats.
Taffy: That’s what I was going to say, that you could look in The New York Times and–
Craig: Sure, there’s a box score.
Taffy: Yes, and see what happened at every point in the game. I also just want to say, my birthday is on October 26th. I can’t tell you how many game three, four, five, like surprise dinners I’ve had with boyfriends that forced me to watch one of these games. It feels like it’s all statistics and that’s what every– people make snow angels in statistics. It’s hard for me to understand why this was such a big deal.
Craig: Here’s what statistics used to be. I, of course, collected baseball cards like every little boy baseball fan. On the back of the cards, there were statistics. A hitter has a batting average. That’s how frequently they get a hit. They have home runs, hits, stolen bases, runs batted in. Those are your five statistics.
Here are what you have now just for hitting: You have batting average on balls in play. You have isolated power, late-inning pressure situation, on-base plus slugging. You have slugging percentage, which wasn’t a thing back then at all. Pitches per plate appearance, runs created, weighted runs above average. The most important one, wins above replacement. They figured out how many wins you create above the league average of who you are at your position. There are weighted runs created plus. There are maybe, and pitching– don’t get me started, there are about 40 statistics that they have now, including things I literally don’t know what they mean, like skill, interactive, earned run average. The spreadsheets that are happening right now with these players is insane. It’s insane.
John: Now Craig, what I would say though, is the success of this movie is that we don’t need to know about any of those statistics, because the only thing that Jonah Hill is introducing is that we need to actually figure out how much they are worth. Because we, as people, understand money. It’s like we don’t have the money to do this thing, so how much money is this person worth? I think one of the things when we’ll get into the bonus segment too, but like the movie talks a little bit about assigning a value to a person and reducing them down to just their statistics and not think about them as human beings.
Craig: As people.
John: Yes.
Craig: I will say like the one thing that they did brilliantly here was, and this was an early day’s thing for this sort of stuff, sabermetrics is ultimately what it was called, is on-base percentage. Like I said, it used to be, how many hits do you get? How many walks do you get? How many home runs do you hit? How many hits do you hit? What he’s saying here, what Peter Brand says in that speech we just heard is, I see an imperfect understanding of where runs come. Your goal should be to buy wins, and in order to buy wins, you need to buy runs. What he boils it down to is, to get runs, you need people on base.
They have to reach base. The imperfect understanding of baseball was walks. It’s mind-blowing to think that this was revolutionary, but the big revolution at the time was saying, a guy who reaches first base by hitting singles, and a guy who reaches first base by walking a lot, are the same guy. We’re paying the singles hitter an enormous amount more. They boiled it down to just that one concept. So why do you want Jason’s little brother, Jeremy Giambi, because he gets on base? Why do you want David Justice, an old guy whose best days are behind him, gets on base? Scott Hatteberg, gets on base.
Taffy: Am I correct to think though, in baseball, that it’s more interesting to watch someone run to the base than to walk to the base?
Craig: Of course.
Taffy: Is that what it is? It’s that like betting changed this? It’s that it didn’t matter anymore if it was entertaining, it mattered what you were betting on?
Craig: The ultimate entertainment, I think, is winning. What fans want is winning.
Taffy: I feel that way.
Craig: You, as a Yankee fan, if a pitcher wants to fall apart and walk eight guys in a row, which means a bunch of guys are going to score just by being walked in, awesome. Getting on base is not as exciting as getting a hit, no question. Winning is the most exciting thing. That’s what sells out a stadium and sells out your season tickets for the next season.
John: And in baseball and other sports, if there’s a thing that is happening that is not entertaining, they will change the rules to make the more entertaining thing happen. That’s happened in baseball in the last few years, right, Craig? Where they’ve changed some of the things to speed up the play and just make-
Craig: They have.
John: -it a more interesting game.
Craig: By the way, after a century of refusing to. I just want to say, baseball has been the most rules-change-resistant sport there is. Over the last 10 years, I think they have made a few, not dramatic, but a few good rules changes. For so long, they refused to change anything. Whereas basketball is like, you know what, they love the three-point line. They love it in colleges, screw it. Let’s do it. Let’s put it in.
John: Brilliant. All right, so let’s get back to the actual movie that we’re watching on screen.
Taffy: Especially since it’s so sad that I’m not going to remember anything you said, but I understood it in the moment. So sad.
John: Getting back to the movie that we’re watching on screen. Billy Beane is implementing these changes over the resistance of his scouts. He’s making trades and changes to the lineup that his head coach hates, that everyone says is not going to work. I think according to movie logic, it doesn’t work. Luckily, the true story is that it does not work at the start. They’re not winning games. Everyone is coming down on him like this is a stupid idea and he’s doomed for failure until it starts to work.
Taffy: And they have this moment where the two of them have to really recommit to each other. Billy and Peter have to decide like, “Do we really believe in this?” That’s a very touching moment to me. I think that so many of the things we’re talking about are aided by music and showing something on the screen that is illustrating the thing that they’re saying. In that moment where they recommit to each other about it is the moment that I understand really what I’m watching.
Craig: We have to personify the resistance. The resistance was personified by this scout Grady. Grady gets himself fired by putting his hand on Billy. His very baseball-y kind of thing. Then we have a new villain. The new villain is Art Howe, the manager. Played brilliantly as always by the late greats Philip Seymour Hoffman. The problem now is, okay, I’m the producer of the movie. I’ve come up with a plan that might make this movie good with the tiny amount of money we have. The director isn’t going along with the plan. And I can’t set the lineup directly.
What I can do as a general manager though is start to trade guys that I don’t want playing to make the manager have to play the people I do want playing. This is the great tension and in the best part of it all is that in the end, you see Art Howe– by the way, this isn’t really how it worked in real life. They did not fight like this. Art Howe makes the fateful, wonderful decision when everything is on the line. They’re trying to make baseball history to send Scott Hatteberg to the plate, which is his commitment to being honorable and pursuing of truth rather than baseball medieval thinking.
John: Now, so one of the things that the story does do, they establish that Billy Beane does not watch the games. He does not want to listen to the games. He doesn’t want to have any direct interaction with the players. He doesn’t travel with them. There are moments along the way that he is actually becoming more involved in the day-to-day. He’s in the locker room more and talking with them. A scene I think really embodies this is his conversation with David Justice, who they’ve now recruited on-
Craig: So good.
John: -to play for them. This is a senior player, and they’re having tension. This is all happening at a batting practice. Let’s take a listen to this scene.
Billy: Had a few thoughts.
David: Yeah?
Billy: Yeah.
David: Can you teach me some things?
Billy: Excuse me?
David: I’ve never seen a GM talk to players like that, man.
Billy: You’ve never seen a GM who was a player.
David: Huh.
Billy: We got a problem, David?
David: Nah, It’s okay. I know your routine. It’s patter, it’s for effect, but it’s for them. All right? This shit ain’t for me.
Billy: Oh, you’re special?
David: You’re paying me seven million bucks a year, man, so, yes, maybe I am a little bit.
Billy: No, man, I ain’t paying you seven. Yankees are paying half your salary. That’s what the New York Yankees think of you. They’re paying you $3.5 million to play against them.
David: Where are you going with this, Billy?
Billy: David, you’re 37. How about you and I be honest about what each of us want out of this? I want to milk the last ounce of baseball you got in you. And you want to stay in the show. Let’s do that. Now, I’m not paying you for the player you used to be. I’m paying you for the player you are right now. You’re smart. You get what we’re trying to do here. Make an example for the younger guys. Be a leader. Can you do that?
David: All right, I got you.
Billy: We’re cool?
David: We’re cool.
Taffy: Villainy. This is such a mean scene. This is so mean.
Craig: It’s so wonderful you think that.
Taffy: I feel like his arc is like, yes, he keeps a distance from his players. There’s this point where he’s trying to give them a pep talk and it’s like an eight-word disaster. “You don’t look like a winning team, but you are one, so play like one,” is what he says. In things like that, I feel like we are being set up storytelling-wise. By the way, patter is such a showbiz word. I do not believe at all-
John: Don’t believe it.
Taffy: -anyone here [unintelligible 00:50:00] yes. I think we’re being set up for a guy who is trying his hardest to keep his distance and can’t do it without getting a little bit messy. That’s what the three-part runner about cutting players is, when he’s trying to show art and he keeps cutting players.
Again, on my 30 millionth viewing, I started to think, that’s actually pretty terrible. You are firing people and ruining their lives because you’re having an argument with this guy. It’s the same thing as a guy who throws his chair across the room. It’s like a display of something that hasn’t aged very well.
Craig: I shockingly have an entirely opposite point of view about this.
Taffy: Good good good.
Craig: One of the things about sports, and when you listen to fans discussing sports, they’re brutal. The fans are the meanest ever. A little bit like the way the audience out there on Twitter is the meanest about, we never talk about each other’s shows or movies the way people online just go, garbage, blah. People are brutal. There are entire, still functioning, listen to AM radio stations that are nothing but call-in shows for 30 to 50-year-old, 60-year-old men to yell about players sucking. There is a brutal reality to sports, which is winning is winning. Every athlete gets into it to win. It is a binary function. There’s winning and losing.
Billy’s job is to make them win. He’s not cutting those players to win an argument. He’s cutting those players because that’s their best chance to win, and there’s somebody in the way of their best chance to win. That’s the thing about sports where it gets super focused. This scene, to me, is not villainy. This is actually kindness, because when you start to lose it as a man, where you’re like I had this physical capacity as a man, and there’s a reason the scene is set where it is. It’s in the stadium, in the back area of the stadium inside, and David Justice, who was an amazing player, is in the batting cage crushing these pitches coming out of the pitching, the little machine, right?
He’s putting on this display of masculine power, and Billy is like, you need to graduate because you’re 37. If you’re hanging on to what that was, it’s leaving you. I’m telling you have to redefine the value of your masculinity, and your masculinity’s value is no longer physical prowess, it’s wisdom.
Taffy: It’s we’re all told that we can’t always play the children’s show, right? Is that what it is, the children’s game? That’s what it’s called?
Craig: Yes.
Taffy: I feel that the movie agrees with me that it’s villainy, which is why he gets the soda in the end. I think that you’re right. I also think that when he restores the soda after David Justice is like, why am I paying for my own soda? It is an admission of villainy.
Craig: I don’t know if it’s an admission of maybe imperfection, but I want to point out how fantastic the beginning of this scene is. This is where there’s this formalized romantic way of portraying men talking to each other, and Mamet is the king of it, right? Sorkin and Zalian both excellent at it. The beginning of this: I got a few thoughts. Yeah? Yeah. Teach me some things? Excuse me? Never seen a GM talk to players like that, man. You never seen a GM who was a player. We got a problem, David? Now, there’s so much being said there in this blah way. You got a few thoughts? Get out of here. Yes. You have no validity with me. Teach me some things.
He’s just going basically, dude, you suck. You’re not a player. Then Mr. Sensitive/Villain goes, yes, I was. David Justice goes, not like me. Not even close. What are you doing down here, man? Then this thing about the money. I’m sorry, he’s right. The Yankees were paying $3.5 million dollars for David Justice to play against them. It’s hard truth and that’s why at the end, I think David Justice says we’re cool because he knows it’s true.
Taffy: Right, he can’t win.
John: My previous analogy, like this is actually a story about show business. You can map everything into the equivalent show business thing. I think about Amy Pascal running Sony Pictures while this is happening and she was the owner of everything and she had to make this decision. The three of us have all been the person in charge on set or we’ve had to make tough calls. I remember going to the first AD saying like, “I never want to see that extra again.” Just like, “Make them disappear.” That’s villainy but it’s also like this is standing in the way of what I need to do my job.
This conversation is really, it’s having the conversation with your lead actor, the top of the ticket. I need you to be a leader here. We had Ryan Reynolds on the show. We were talking about that, about when you’re number one on the call sheet, I need you to do a certain thing. Act like the number one on the ticket and be the example here. Having that honest conversation is just so crucial. I can’t imagine the back half of this movie working without this scene.
Taffy: I agree. I will say that the second AD having the conversation with the background person is the villainy. You were incredibly passive in that as you were supposed to be, right? You were supposed to not, you’re not supposed to fire them yourself. That’s the thing is that all the more so, this is him doing it in a way that we understand, but is brutal.
Craig: Yeah, and effective.
Taffy: Very effective. It pokes at every masculine little point. He just punctures everything.
Craig: But then builds them back. Yes, that’s the thing. I think the reason it works is he’s not saying you shouldn’t play or you should quit. What he’s saying is the implication of the movie was David Justice shows up and he’s just like, this team sucks. I’m just going to take my money, go out there, dog it, not try that hard, whatever. If the stuff works great, if it doesn’t, I don’t care, right?
Then he’s coming and saying, no, no. Actually, you do have a role here that could matter. It won’t be by occasionally hitting a home run. It’s going to be by teaching, mentoring, and leading by example. That’s your new value. You can feel in the scene– who’s the actor that played? He did such a good job.
Taffy: He did such a good job.
Craig: Playing David Justice. You can see him actually like, yes, actually, there is a competitive spirit in me that resented the fact that I have to give up and not care. Billy’s given him a reason to play.
Taffy: It’s so interesting because maybe the whole runner about cutting people is about how the most direct conversation is actually the kindest. That you don’t sit there and you don’t sit– maybe the movie is trying to explain that to you, this scene.
John: Yes. Brad Pitt’s character explains to Jonah Hill, this is how you cut a person. We actually see Jonah Hill having to do it and how to have the grown-up conversation about how to be the second AD who’s telling the extra that I don’t ever want to see on set that goodbye, you’re being paid for the day and see ya without a reason, why you were so annoying in that shot.
Craig: Or over apologizing or dragging it out or making it, there is– and Billy Bean’s character is brutally direct. You can also see from that very beginning scene that you cited, John, the problem that he has is also brutal. There’s no way to win if you pussyfoot around it. You have to just go straight at it. When you see the, my favorite scenes in the movie are the two scenes where he’s with the scouts because he’s so brutally direct. It’s wonderful. Watching again, that greatest character actor.
Taffy: My son Ezra is available to act that out for you right now.
Craig: Ezra may just do it all day long. One day I’ll be Billy, he’ll be Grady, then he’ll be– and then we can do the Fabio.
Taffy: Oh, he’ll do both sides.
John: Who’s Fabio?
Craig: He’s a shortstop.
Taffy: Who’s Fabio? I think he’s a shortstop.
Craig: He’s a shortstop. Yes, no, you got to go carry the one. There’s so many great little moments in there that are incredible. He walks a lot. Do I care if it’s a hit or a walk? Then he points, you do not. Do you want me to talk when I point at you, yes.
Taffy: When you point at him.
Craig: So many great things in those scenes.
Taffy: Yes, oh my God.
Craig: Anyway, this movie, and can we just talk for a second about the beautiful thing at the end? This is why I love baseball. They have this incredible moment where it does all work. Billy seemingly is able to overcome the curse of him even being near the team and they win and they win because of Scott Hatterberg and a home run. It’s tremendous, but they don’t win. They don’t, ultimately they don’t win the World Series. There’s this lovely, it’s a metaphor, Stone Hill over in the Plains-
Taffy: I know what it is.
Craig: -of this guy in their farm system who hits a ball and because he’s a big guy and he’s slow, he thinks it could be a double. He rounds first, gets scared that he’s going to get thrown out, tries to get back to first, falls. Then it turns out he hit a home run.
This is true. The Billy Bean didn’t think he did it and he did. He changed baseball permanently. By the way, the Oakland A’s winning 20 games in a row that season, that is insane. That is bigger than winning the World Series. It’s so special. The tragedy, of course, is that the Oakland A’s are no longer in existence as of right now.
Taffy: Last week.
Craig: That’s correct. The Oakland A’s played their last games as the Oakland A’s. The entire franchise is leaving Oakland and is being reconstituted as the Las Vegas Aces. This is not the first time this has happened in baseball. This has happened a lot in baseball and in all sports. There’s a reason that the basketball team in Utah is called the Utah Jazz. It’s because they used to be in New Orleans.
John: Because jazz is what I associate with Utah, yes.
Craig: Of course, the Los Angeles Lakers, because of all the lakes in Los Angeles.
Taffy: Oh, I didn’t know that.
Craig: Yes. These teams come from elsewhere and keep the names sometimes. In this case, they do not. The A’s became the Aces. It’s clever but it’s sad. The Oakland couldn’t survive. They just couldn’t survive. One of the reasons, ironically, they couldn’t survive is because everybody else picked up on it. The big market teams that do have a better fan base and do sell more tickets and can spend more money, they all follow the Billy Bean model. All of them.
John: Let’s now close up this discussion and talk about Brad Pitt’s character. Billy Bean and the decision he has to make at the end. The end of the movie finds him going to Boston. He’s talking with John Henry, the owner of the Boston Red Sox. It’s a really interesting scene. It’s raining. There are umbrellas. They’re in this semi-outdoor space. We’re going to hear some rain in the background here. This is that discussion and ultimately a job offer for Billy Bean.
John Henry: Steve told me he’s offering you a new contract.
Billy: Yes.
John Henry: Why did you return my call?
Billy: Because it’s the Red Sox. Because I believe science might offer an answer to the curse of the Bambino because I hear you hired Bill James.
John Henry: Yes. Why someone took so long to hire that guy is beyond me.
Billy: Baseball hates him.
John Henry: Baseball can hate him, you know. One of the great things about money is that it buys a lot of things. One of which is the luxury to disregard what baseball likes, doesn’t like, what baseball thinks, doesn’t think.
Billy: Sounds nice. Well. I was grateful for the call.
John Henry: You were grateful?
Billy: Yes.
John Henry: For 41 million, you built a playoff team. You lost Damon, Giambi, Isringhausen, Pena, and you won more games without them than you did with them. You won the exact same number of games that the Yankees won, but the Yankees spent 1.4 million per win, and you paid 260,000. I know you’re taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always.
This is threatening, not just a way of doing business, but in their minds it’s threatening the game. Really what it’s threatening is their livelihood. It’s threatening their jobs. It’s threatening the way that they do things. Every time that happens, whether it’s a government or a way of doing business or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins, they have their hands on the switch, they go bat shit crazy. Anybody who’s not tearing their team down right now and rebuilding it using your model, they’re dinosaurs. They’ll be sitting on their ass on the sofa in October watching the Boston Red Sox win the World Series.
John: There he slides a piece of paper across the table.[movie scene playing]
Billy: What’s this?
John Henry: I want you to be my general manager. That’s my offer.
John: All right. What’s crucial to me about this scene is that he’s done it. He went out with this goal and someone is finally saying, yes, Copernicus, you were right. The solar system is the way that you described it, not the way that everyone always described it. It’s so nice to have an outside person come in and say, you did this.
It’s important for us to have the people who we’ve established in the movie, who he loves, who love him, provide that support, but to have an outside person that he’s always been pushing against come say, no, kid, you were right, is crucial.
Craig: Absolutely. Even more so, give our hero, I still think he’s a hero, give our hero a chance to do one last heroic thing which is to stay loyal to the sloppy mess that he helped improve. It’s like listen, I inherited a broken down trailer home and I worked really hard to make it look like a mansion. And I’m going to stay with it. And Even though I know I’m going to be losing to you probably, because now you now, Bill James was the guy that invented sabermetrics, which leads into the whole thing that Peter Brown was talking about. Now you got Bill James, now everything I know, I’m going to lose.
I’m going to lose over and over and over because now I’m not, because the trick is out, but I’m not leaving because I’m loyal. Literally, that’s exactly what happened. He stayed with the A’s and the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.
Taffy: I also think all sports movies have a stoic guy. In a romantic comedy, the equivalent would be a “you complete me” or a big sweeping kiss. In a sports movie, it’s the stoic guy cracking a smile. It’s Kurt Russell in the tunnel in Miracle. I think in this movie, I know, I know. You’re like, everything in your body just needs them to be happy for a minute.
Craig: For one moment.
Taffy: I think when he turns to Peter Brandt and says, “You’re a good egg.” That is our sweeping kiss. That is everything I need, which sets me up for that car scene that murders me dead every single time. I just need three notes from that song and I’ll need a minute. It’s really beautiful.
Craig: Yes. In the end, you have to boil all the sports away and get down to who am I as a person? What is my value? Have I performed up to the level of expectation that my loved ones should have of me? It doesn’t matter if their love was unconditional. It wasn’t to me. I needed to fulfill conditions for their love. Did I? The answer is yes, I did.
That’s why everyone who sees a movie like this can connect to it. Everyone. It doesn’t matter. This is where I do think this is different than Mamet when you talk about movies about men being all men-ish.
Mamet movies are brutal and Mamet stories are brutal and they’re wonderful and I love them. Glengarry Glen Ross I’ve gone all day about it. The sentiment of Sorkin and Zaillian, and they are sentimental to me, is why I love these movies. Love them. I get transported by them. They’re just wonderful.
Taffy: You didn’t have to learn about sports. I leave with as much knowledge as I came in with and it’s fine.
Craig: True. That’s absolutely true.
John: I want to go back to something you said quite early on about shame. We were talking about, and I think Craig, you also mentioned that Billy Beane is a character who was recruited and was going to be a superstar and was not. He feels shame. He feels this thing that was supposed to happen didn’t happen. It was his fault and he just did not live up to promised potential. The journey of the story is like how do you get past that shame? How do you get past the fact that you were seen as an underachiever, that you didn’t do this thing?
He’s actually able to finally do it. Having this outside force and everybody else say, yes, you did it. You changed baseball. You are worthy in baseball. For a movie that is so much about what is a person worth? What is a person in baseball worth? He’s proven his worth. That’s ultimately what he seems to be going for here. Like most movie protagonists, he couldn’t explain at the start of the movie what he actually needs inside. We as an audience see at the end like, oh, he got that missing piece that he was so hungry for the whole time through.
Taffy: That’s so interesting because the thing I always think with this is one of the plots is changing baseball, but it’s actually about a man processing his failures. If you look at the structure of it, it’s exactly at a third that you see the first flashback. The question is like, how long are you allowed to play? We’re all told we have to leave the children’s game and we don’t know when it is. The question that looms throughout this, is this when I’m leaving? Even as the GM, I’m playing the children’s game. Is this when I’m leaving? Is this when I’m leaving?
Craig: Wrapping this up, we talked a bit about how the screenplay that we have that we can look at is not a very good reflection of the actual movie that’s in front of us. Some of that is, I think, related to the development of the movie. Here’s what we know. This writer Stan Chervin pitches and sells the idea to Sony in 2004.
We’re going to talk about Amy Pascal. Amy Pascal was running Sony Pictures at that time. Brad Pitt was attached to a draft by Steve Zaillian in 2008. Chervin apparently wrote something, but Steve Zaillian came in and wrote a draft, and that is the draft that got Brad Pitt attached.
Steven Soderbergh attached himself to the project in February 2009. There’s a quote we have from him saying, “I think we have a way in making it visual and making it funny. I want it to be really funny and entertaining, and I want you to not realize how much information is being thrown at you because you’re having fun. We found a couple of ideas how to bust the form a bit in order for all that information to reach you in a way that’s a little oblique.” Former athletics players and manager Art Howe were set to play themselves. Dimitri Martin was cast as Paul DePodesta, who was the actual real person in real life who became later the Jonah Hill character.
The Jonah Hill character is not the person in the book. It’s a composite of other things and stuff put together. DePodesta ultimately asked, “Can you change the name of my character?” Because, it’s not me. The movie was given a green light with a $58 million budget.
Then five days before it was supposed to shoot in July 8th, 2009, Sony canceled it. They stopped production on it, and Soderbergh left. Bennett Miller was brought in December 2009, and Amy Pascal brought in Sorkin for a rewrite. We don’t know where stuff was at quite with this, and so we don’t know, I’ve never seen the Zaillian draft. I don’t know what stuff is what. I think we always can reach for and feel what feels like a Sorkin-y bit, but I’m not sure we really know.
My speculation is that there’s a draft, but the way scenes were actually shot, it feels like in going for that documentary feel, they probably did it a bunch, and they weren’t as text-obsessed as you would expect in a Sorkin movie.
Taffy: The thing I heard was that maybe the previous version was more literal documentary, real players, people looking at the camera and interspersed. I don’t know, I don’t know if that’s true, I don’t know that apocryphal, I just–
Craig: I think that’s what Soderbergh was going for, from what I understand.
Taffy: Yes, which is its own great way to go.
Craig: Could have been great, that’s the thing.
Taffy: You never know.
Craig: You could have three different versions of this movie that are all great. I am just thrilled that we got what we did get, which was very romantic, sentimental.
Taffy: It’s a very sentimental movie.
Craig: It’s very sentimental, it’s very dramatic at times. It clearly is, like the score is borrowing from those, the score for The Natural, like one of the great movie scores of all time. Ba-bam, ba-bam bum bum. It has that when Hattenberg hits the home run, that, whoa, that dramatic swell. I love the tone.
John: The movie was given a July 2010 start date, so about a year after it had been stopped, it got started again. Brad Pitt’s still attached, budget reduced to $47 million, and they went ahead. Amy Pascal coming in there and saying, “We got to go change some stuff, and you don’t have as much money,” feels very much like the owner of the ASA, no, this is how much money you have to do it, and figure out a way to do that.
Craig: What else can I help you with?
John: On the first Charlie’s Angels, I remember a meeting on a Friday afternoon going in, and Amy Pascal’s going through the script, and she’s like, and she just ripped out five pages and she’s like, “These are gone, figure it out. Basically, got to go save some money,” and that’s how we did it.
Craig: Figure it out is one of the great lines. Robert Weiss, who I worked with, he’s a producer, go all the way back to Kentucky Fried Movie and Naked Gun. He produced one of the great bad movies of all time called Nothing but Trouble, starring Chevy Chase.
Taffy: I love Nothing but Trouble.
Craig: Yes, it’s insane. It’s terrible, but it’s also so crazy that it’s worth watching. In the development of it Chevy Chase, the characters start in Manhattan and then they drive into Pennsylvania, and Chevy Chase, Bob Weiss was like, “We’ll do the New York stuff in Toronto. We can’t afford to shoot in New York.” Chevy Chase is like, “No way, no. If it’s New York, we’re shooting in New York. In fact, I’m going to call–“ the head of the studio was Mark Canton. “I’m calling Mark Canton right now.”
He picks up the phone, “Mark, Chevy Chase, I’m hearing that we can’t shoot this in New York. I demand we shoot in New York.” “Thanks.” Click. “We’re shooting in New York” and then he walks out, and then Bob Weiss picks up the phone and calls Mark Canton and goes, “Did you just tell Chevy Chase we’re shooting this in New York?” “Yes.” “Are we?” “No. Figure it out.” I always love figure it out is like-
Taffy: I love it.
Craig: -that’s amazing. Yes, no.
Taffy: Oh my gosh.
John: All right, that wraps up Moneyball.
Taffy: Thank you.
John: Quickly, let’s go through some one cool things. Taffy, do you have one cool thing you want to share with the audience?
Taffy: I do. I went to a Yeshiva high school, so I always feel that I am behind in my education.
Craig: My dad would teach, he worked at Grady High School in Brighton Beach, and then after that day was over, he would go to Mirror Yeshiva.
Taffy: That’s serious stuff. To teach what?
Craig: To teach the Yeshiva book, his history-
Taffy: How to read.
Craig: -because they had to pass the Regents exam.
Taffy: I know, it’s because of the Regents exam.
Craig: The Regents exam.
Taffy: Everything we know is because of the Regents exam.
Craig: The Regents exam. Everything is secular that you know.
Taffy: Right. I did not read great books but I read the Scarlet Letter four times.
Craig: Because you had to.
Taffy: That’s like cheating on your husband. Also because it was kosher. It punishes women for infidelity. It’s good, it’s good.
Craig: It’s good.
Taffy: I always feel that I am behind in my education, and I found this app recently called Imprint, and it is teaching me philosophy. It’s teaching me step-by-step. Also, I feel that I have several undiagnosed learning disabilities. It is teaching me exactly how I would like to be taught, short sentences and cartoons. I think that is my-
Craig: Imprint.
Taffy: It’s called Imprint. I think it’s like $25. It’s so good, and I am learning all about Stoicism. Right now learning about Stoicism. We’re moving on to Kant.
Craig: Oh, Immanuel Kant. Boy, you’re about to get into synthetic apriority and posteriority.
Taffy: Someone didn’t go to yeshiva.
Craig: Correct. Also, Kant, as it turns out was wrong. If you can avoid reading his massive super boring book, then you’re–
Taffy: I’m just going to see a cartoon about it. I think I win this.
Craig: The best way to learn Kant. The best way.
Taffy: All right.
Craig: Amazing.
John: I have two uncool things that are very closely related. These last two weeks I was traveling. I was first in London, then in Paris. I was in London in large part, to see ABBA Voyage, which is the ABBA show outside of London. It is incredible.
This is a sanctioned ABBA thing that uses, I thought it was holograms, but it turns out it’s not holograms. It is just done with really good visual effects and ILM and a real band that’s playing and just a purpose-built space. It was really incredible. The illusion that, I am somehow back in 1970 and I’m watching ABBA do these songs was great.
Really, I just thought ABBA Voyage was fantastic. If you like ABBA, even to some medium degree and you’re in London, see it, because I thought it was really good. Relatedly, weirdly, the apartment we were staying in, we got there and it had one of those narrow, stripped fireplaces that was lit when we went in. I’m like, this is really wasteful. Let me figure out how to turn this off. Then I realized, as I got very closer it’s like, oh, this is actually not a fire at all. This is some sort of virtual screen thing that’s incredibly compelling and looks like a fire.
It turns out it was actually the same basic technology as what I was seeing in ABBA Voyage in that there are foreground elements which are actually up above in the enclosure and there’s a split glass thing like how we do teleprompters that is making it look like it’s at the base and then there’s a video screen that’s really compelling. We ended up leaving it on the whole time, and I genuinely miss that fireplace in the apartment.
I was just astonished that both in the ABBA Voyage show and in this fireplace, synthetic things that felt so real and compelling are possible in 2024 through recording this. I applaud the technology behind them and encourage people to check out both of these things. I’ll put a link in the show notes to this Opti-V fireplace, which is the European version, but there’s many other ones out there.
Craig: The Dimplex Opti-V Duet. Well as promised, my one cool thing has to be Ken Medlock. I was looking Ken Medlock up as we were talking here because if you look at his resume, it’s classic character actor resume. He’s happily still alive. He’s 74 years old, but he hasn’t done much in movies since Moneyball. Really, it seems like he might be like possibly semi-retired because he really hasn’t done much since those years. Here’s something not surprising at all to find out. He played baseball. He played in minor leagues. He was a pitcher for the Decatur Commodores in the 1970s.
That’s a team that I don’t believe exists anymore. Then later worked as a coach for the St. Paul Saints. He was like most people that have ever had any experience in professional baseball, he never made it to the major leagues but he’s a player. You could just tell. That’s the thing. I’m so not surprised. I would have been so much more surprised if he had not played baseball just because he has that thing. He’s got baseball face, baseball voice, baseball– it’s hard to describe. Anyway, brilliant, absolutely brilliant job. I’m obsessed.
I think he’s only in three scenes. He’s in the two scenes with the scouts and then he’s in one scene where he confronts Brad Pitt. By the way, you’re going toe-to-toe with Brad Pitt and he just ate him up. He ate him up. Yes.
John: I want to congratulate Ken Medlock, Bennett Miller for directing him so well, but also let’s shout out the casting director who found him and found that this is the person who can do this role. Whenever we see those moments where that one actor was in one scene and killed it, that’s some great casting directing there probably.
Craig: Let’s find out who the casting director was, shall we? Casting director. Casting by Francine Maisler, who’s-
John: Oh, Francine Maisler–
Craig: -just a legend.
John: Indeed.
Craig: Legend.
Taffy: I’m sad that we didn’t get to talk about Brad Pitt’s stress eating in the movie.
John: Oh my God. The greatest.
Taffy: The Twinkie.
John: Constantly eating.
Taffy: Yes, the Twinkie that he jams angrily into his mouth. It’s not in the script.
Craig: It’s so great. I think it was a thing, he was like, I want my character to always be eating.
Taffy: Same.
Craig: It’s a real challenge when you’re directing because of continuity. It’s just the sandwich is too big, too small. You have to have a bucket. You have to spit the thing out or otherwise you’re going to be barfing after take seven. They committed and just pulled it off. It’s great stuff.
Taffy: Because he shoves everything in his mouth. There’s no continuity problem. You just need 30 Twinkies.
Craig: That’s true. That is also such a guy thing. Like oh, screw you food. I win.
Taffy: We do that. Just so you know we do that too.
Craig: We do it in front of everyone and you guys are like, there’s no one watching.
John: That is our discussion on Moneyball. Scriptedness is produced by Drew Marquardt. Drew, thanks for all your research and help here. It’s edited by Matthew Chilelli. Our outro this week is by Spencer Lackey. If you have an outro, you can send us a link to ask at johnaugust.com. That’s also a place where you can send questions. You can find the show notes for this episode and all episodes at johnaugust.com.
That’s also where you find transcripts and sign up for our weekly newsletter called Interesting, which has lots of links to things about writing. We have t-shirts and hoodies. They’re great. You’ll find them at Cotton Bureau. You can sign up to become a premium member at scriptnotes.net. We get all the back episodes and bonus segments like the one we’re about to record on money. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, thank you so much for joining us.
Taffy: Thank you for having me. I just want to say thank you to my assistant Chris Logan, who is wearing a Mets jersey right now and is so excited about this. Don’t spit on him right now. He’s having the best day of his life.
Craig: It’s going to be over real soon. If they make it to the Yankees, if you’re so lucky to make it to the Yankees, we will destroy you.
Taffy: I still don’t know what that means, but thanks, everyone.
[Bonus Segment]
John: All right. We are here for the bonus segment. We’re going to talk about money. Listener note here: Craig had to disappear at a certain point. If he vanishes for a bit in this conversation, it’s because he had to give up the room that he was recording in. Taffy and I are going to be talking a little bit in the middle part without Craig there, but you’ll hear him at the end because of editing magic.
All right. Taffy Brodesser-Akner, I just finished reading your book, Long Island Compromise, last night. I was reading it on the flight on the way back, and then I stayed up and read the final chapters. Such an accomplishment. So well done.
Taffy: Thank you.
John: I want you to go out and read it. Taffy, your book is about the intersection of trauma and money. Do you feel any resonance between the things we were talking about in that and Moneyball?
Taffy: Yes. If we’re talking about worth, and thank you so much for saying such nice things about my book, which is about how money makes you crazy. I want to say that people ask me very often, what was making a television show like? I answer with actually what is a good answer to your question, which is this:
I work at the New York Times. I work at the New York Times Magazine. I’ve worked there for many years. Before that, I was a freelancer. I know how much you get paid and I know how hard things are. I think very often about this story I wrote about sexual harassment at Kay Jewelers. Remember every kiss begins with Kay?
Craig: Yeah, mall jewelers.
Taffy: Oh my God, terrible stuff. Two and a half years it took to write that story. Maybe 14 cities, thousands and thousands of New York Times dollars. It was dangerous. There were threats. There was crying. There was protection ordered for people. It was hard. It was scary. And it came out and the money I got paid for it was the same amount of money that I got paid per scale to write a six-page outline for an episode of a television show based on a novel I’d already written.
Craig: Voila.
Taffy: I couldn’t get over it. I would say, I’m writing paragraphs that are true, that are out there in the world and people took a risk in talking to me. I couldn’t get over it. I still can’t get over it because I think what does this mean?
Also, maybe we know what it means because we see how news is being treated. We see how entertainment is treated, although it’s starting to happen in entertainment too, this lessening. But it made me understand that it’s just crazy what we value in this system. To assign money as an assignation of what is valued, that way lies madness.
John: Yes. I’m thinking about the times often on this podcast, we talk about why are screenwriters paid the way that we’re paid, which is arguably too much. It’s interesting we’re talking about Moneyball because there are fewer professional screenwriters than there are professional baseball players. It is, in the end, a unique skill, a thing that we’re able to do and that gets us paid the way that we’re paid. And that I’ve also been in the same situation you’re fine. It’s like, I feel like I’ve been paid too much for the amount of work that I’m doing here or that I’ve had to play tricks on myself saying like, I just do not want to write this. If I actually break down the amount I’m being paid per page, I’m of course I’m going to write this. It’s crazy.
Taffy: Right.
Craig: What we get paid doesn’t necessarily make sense from day to day. The same talent that we have earns us X. Then two years later, for some reason, it earns us twice X. Then for two years later, it’s half X. There’s no real rhyme or reason when you focus on it. Overall, one of the things I’ve come to understand is, and it’s hard to process, no one would ever suggest that what we do is as valuable as, say, somebody that’s working on a vaccine.
John: Right.
Craig: Those people get paid less, probably, than the people working at the New York Times Magazine. Then there are people who get paid even less than that, who are doing other things that are just beautiful work. Then there are people who don’t get paid at all, the unpaid labor of the world, particularly among women. Then the question is, how do I morally reconcile all this? Kant will have some stuff to say about this as you go through your course. One of the things that I’ve come to just understand is that entertainment which we think of as frivolous, while it certainly doesn’t save anyone’s life, seems to be one of the reasons people like to live.
It’s one of the things we’re here for at all. If we took it all away, including watching sports or playing video games or movies or television or reading great fiction, then at that point, people may not care as much about having their lives saved. Because what’s the point? People’s value of entertainment is so profound — way more than I value it, by the way. I love the creation aspect of it but sometimes I do I can feel guilty about these things. The bottom line is, the demand for what we do, particularly if it works for people, is so high that this is how the market functions.
Taffy: Right. I don’t think I feel bad about it because now I’m both people. I’m making that for an outline. It’s just astounding to me. It makes sense to me that athletes and actors get paid an inordinate amount. They have at least the perception of an expiration date of their prime, whereas you and I can imagine that the older and older and older we get, eventually we’ll keep. You’re right. I don’t know. We may be dwindling already. I don’t know.
John: We also have an opportunity cost. Part of why I’m getting paid this thing is so that I’m not doing something else.
Taffy: I think these are all these questions about how we value a person. I think the answer is, I was always this person and then I got an amazing agent who suddenly had access to things like this. But I was always like this. If you go back to when I was being ridiculed at my first job at Soap Opera Weekly, I was writing the same things that I am now highly valued at the New York Times for writing. It makes no sense. What are we supposed to do with that?
Craig: Let’s go back to your book here. One of the characters in Long Island Compromise, Beamer, is a screenwriter. He’s a screenwriter who’s written with a writing partner. It’s really clear that Beamer’s not the talent there. Beamer has some soft skills but he’s not the writing superstar here.
Now that the partnership is broken up, he is questioning his own worth because he was getting paid good money to do this as a writing team. It’s a real question, can he do it himself? Is he worth anything by himself? He comes from a family where he didn’t necessarily need to make money. This was all a game for him to start with.
Taffy: Right. He, by the way, when you’re as wealthy as Beamer Fletcher is, the money isn’t meaningful. The question is when we meet him is my value dwindling? My agent hasn’t called me back in two days. That is what he knows. That is what I live in fear of, is I haven’t heard from you. Oh, it’s been Sunday, okay. You still love me, my agent? Thank you.
John: Our sense of self-worth is like a price tag on it. There’s the number of likes we get on a post. There’s the number of people who show up to a book signing. There’s all these little ways in which we determine our value based on outside forces coming in to tell us things. None of that actually reflects our own internal sense of valuation.
I think you’re going to be looking at in your Imprint app probably, is really where is the sense of self, the degree to which our self-perception is internally generated versus externally put upon us. That balance is tough. The dollar figure people are paying you is one of the ways in which you calculate your own self-worth.
Taffy: It’s one of the ways they calculate my self-worth. Can I ask you, what do you think? What do you think about all this? Your quote, it goes up and it goes up. Do you feel better about yourself? Or is there a point at which you’re like, I’ve made it. Is it success or is it money or is it money defined as success?
John: There was a point early in my career, like project after project, my quote was going up. I remember at one point, my agent, my lawyer, were pushing really hard on the studio to pay me more than this, or basically better, or John won’t do it. I was upset with them because I felt like they were pushing too hard. Basically, ah, I’m not worth that much, you’re asking for too much.
Then we moved into a period which was supposed to be technically post-quote, where they’re not supposed to be asking for quotes, but people still supply them. You’ll wait to get an offer. Then they’ll say like, “Oh, no, let me send you these last few things so you can say this is how much he’s actually worth.”
You can also as a writer, get to a place where your quote is so high they won’t even consider you for certain projects. That’s a situation that people will run into, where it’s like, I was at a lunch with a producer and she was talking about this project that they were looking to do. She said, “Oh, no, we’re looking for a younger writer for that.” I heard younger writers, like babies really, she meant a less expensive writer. I was 30 at that point. I was like, “How much younger do you want?” But they meant less expensive. There are certain things which you’re just not on the list for because they just know you’re too expensive.
Taffy: Which is where money backfires, because the more they’re spending also in this business, the closer they’re watching and the more their ability to make a decision is jostled by the immense amount of money. There’s a sweet spot, it seems, where you stay under the radar of anybody being up at night worried about the money that’s being spent.
John: Yeah, it’s crazy. Then I would say like over the course of my career, a lot of the places where you really feel your value because it’s just so direct is when you get paid on a weekly to come in and do on a project, it’s like my weekly quote got really high. It’s like, that was exciting, but also I felt like you’re on a tightrope. It’s like, Jesus, am I really worth this amount of money for this one week’s work? You quickly realize, yes, they want your writing, but they mostly need you to be able to survive in a room with some of these people because these are sometimes monstrous, sometimes just really talented, but also very demanding people.
And there’s very few people that, there’s a scarcity problem. There’s very few people they can put into that room who can survive in there and then also still deliver the project that comes out of there. That was really what I was going to be paid for was not necessarily the words I was writing, but the words I was able to say in those rooms.
Taffy: That’s so interesting. Also, that is the true opportunity cost because every time you’re doing one of those weeklies, you’re not doing something that is the product of your brain, the product of your creativity. It is maybe the least gratifying thing. What if the way you can define your self-worth in this business monetarily is the amount of money someone like John August is paid to fix your terrible screenplay? I would like to think that they don’t pay more than $150,000 a week to fix my crap. If they do, I quit because I should be doing something else.
John: I’ve actually heard that rationalization not applied to me directly, but someone saying, no, yes, they’re replacing you. They’re bringing on this big writer, but it means they really love the project because look how much they’re paying that person. Which is absurd, but also true because it means if they’re willing to spend six figures on something or seven figures on something, they really are planning to make it. So it’s good news that you’re being replaced by this big giant, expensive writer because it means they really want to make it a thing. It’s crazy.
Taffy: You go home that night and you share the same blanket that David Justice had to say, well, Billy Bean thinks I’m a good leader. That’s all you have to keep you warm that night. I guess I’ll be a good leader.
John: You’ll be a good leader. You are a fantastic guest on the program. Thank you again, Taffy for doing this.
Taffy: You guys are the best. I had such a good time.
Craig: Bye, guys. Thank you.
John: Bye. Thanks, Craig.
Links:
- Moneyball on IMDb
- Moneyball screenplay
- Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Long Island Compromise by Taffy Brodesser-Akner
- Scriptnotes LIVE! at the Austin Film Festival
- Highland Pro Austin launch party – sign up here!
- ABBA Voyage
- Opti-V fireplace
- Ken Medlock
- Imprint App
- Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
- Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
- Gift a Scriptnotes Subscription or treat yourself to a premium subscription!
- Craig Mazin on Threads and Instagram
- John August on Threads, Instagram, Twitter and Mastodon
- Outro by Spencer Lackey (send us yours!)
- Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.
Email us at ask@johnaugust.com
You can download the episode here.
