DZ-95: Backmatter - Building and Maintenance — Transcript

Hi, I'm Stu Willis and welcome to Draft Zero, a podcast where two emerging-ish screenwriters try to work out what makes great screenplays work, except in this episode where we're most definitely not doing that.

And I'm Chas Fisher. This is our annual Backmatter episode, a looser format where Stu and I allow ourselves to leave homework to one side and just talk about more more.

At. We move away from the pseudo empirical to just into the pseudo.

So we talk about career stuff. We talk about writing stuff process, all those kinds of things. So there is less homework to do and more hopefully easy listening. So anyway, our topics for today include a little bit of housekeeping where we mull over what the next year of draft zero will look like. We're more than happy to take feedback and episode ideas, particularly for our hundredth episode. Then we are going to talk about first acts based on a.

Listen to question and it's an example of where it's out got feeling you know we might talk about a couple examples pray was something we talked about in the context of how first acts changing but it's gonna be more. I mean it's all opinion based but even more it's an op it as opposed to you know.

Pseudo academia. We're going to look at generating new material versus working on older projects and potentially.

Yeah, I don't know.

Going to discuss how to maintain hope in a career as fickle as ours. And then, yes, ending with the classic Star Wars discussion of Kenobi and Andor.

Yeah, for those who have not listened to an annual Black Man episode, generally for a period of time there was a Star Wars film coming out every year.

There are still some things I loved in Kenobi.

They've now moved into television, but every year and we would basically pick it apart actually because we're like, hey, we don't have to pretend to love things. This is Disney. They don't need our praise, so we would actually be a little bit more critical. In this case, all our criticism is going to be aimed at the dumpster fire of Kenobi. Interesting. Okay. I look forward to that broad freely-mending discussion, but it's interesting because I've been looking at through the lens of when we were talking about like, how do you maintain raised stakes in biopics and, and prequels are an interesting case of they're not obviously biopics, but they've got the same fundamental problem, which is, you know, the outcome. Oh yeah, yeah, that's why I think they're worth talking about.

But it's interesting because Kenobi and Andor both have that same problem and one handled it way better than another.

And then housekeeping.

So first of all, thanks to all our amazing Patreons for those of you who don't know, Draft Zero is brought to you more often by our Patreons. We're currently sitting around 200 US dollars an episode. And just know that that money does get Stu and I to commit to our, well, commit is a strong word, but it does get us to release about 10 episodes a year.

50, maybe a little bit less fluctuates backers. Just like 20 hours of content, let's be fair.

Yes a lot of content but why we set the threshold for monthly releases and then fortnightly releases so high is the only way we can.

How high is high? It's about $600 a month and that's not to pay us. So fundamentally, like at the moment, we've got, you know, Chris Walker, who you mentioned, edits most of the episodes most of the time. And we have Zoe, who's on the social media team and they're getting they're getting spare change.

Is significantly more than what we're getting.

Yes, that is true, but we're getting priceless exposure. But the idea is to set up a rate that would allow us to pay a professional to edit the podcast basically on closer to our schedule than their schedule. You know, because if it's coming out at two hours, it is pretty much a day to two days worth of work to get an episode with excerpts down to something to restructure it. Chris does really, if you think our episodes are rambling, you should hear the recordings because Chris does a great job restructuring the episodes. And like basically he was listener first he's like yeah I didn't care about that discussion that bit's good but I want it earlier so he does a bit of restructuring.

He's got great taste about knowing when we're not worth listening to.

Yes but to be able to commit monthly we need a back end team that will be able to turn around it as quickly as possible so even if we recorded it like the 28th.

But we are incredibly chuffed that anyone is paying us any money to make these at all.

Of the month that they will know that they're getting paid a fair wage to be able to deliver it by the end of the month right and you can only do that when you pay people appropriately so that's why that goal is still so high.

All.

We've had people like just tip us using the link tree which is you know people have also bought the merchandise the shirts and stuff like that which all goes it all just basically goes into the same pool of. Yeah, my drive zero business PayPal account let's flip it clear here. For all my whoopity-doo I'm late, I'm so weird I'm like the fucking galdorf here and he's just. Arrogant I don't want to flatter you, you're not arrogant.

I'll take it. Anyway, beyond our Patreon, what are we looking at in 2023? We are very solid on our first three episodes.

Samwise? I'm going to do a lot of things with potatoes. the things this man could do with potatoes.

We have a lot of great content. We have a lot of great content. We have a lot of great content. We have a lot of great content. We are very solid on our first three episodes.

I don't know whether the third will actually be within the first three run but I think it should happen so we'll jump to my schedule so we have already basically got the wheels in motion to record two episodes on ensembles and this is an interesting questions even worth talking about it now it's like what do we mean by ensembles.

Okay. Yes.

To but like the dividing line is between films whose genre is conventionally require them to be an ensemble so murder mystery going to be looking at glass onion we're going to be looking at like team sports films are probably doing pitch perfect maybe doing a family drama if we can decide that we will do for films maybe like a slasher like a film where the characters getting killed off right is kind of in samples one and in symbols to be films who's conventionally and not in some bulls so we definitely know that we're doing writers of justice. Right, which is this basically it's it's dead core but it's like a subversion of the dead call films dead call films like taken to use kind of like the trope maker is all about him being like a lone wolf so turning like the film about this dead call.

Well, the revenge movie is typically like the one person going on a revenge mission.

Show me there's probably war films that are like group war revenge collective.

Yeah, but I imagine you like we've said war films, those are usually ones that like mission films, like you think of saving private Ryan and yeah, yeah.

Heist films are all form of mission film.

So why are we looking at ensembles?

Well, we're working on a project that has a large ensemble cast, so you can see what we're once again talking about features, In some ways because you know features from a storytelling point of view have got like it's all about economy right you know I think.

Well, your biggest constraint is time.

The four things you're balancing as a writer in a story is character you're balancing plot so the events of the story what I call micro plotting which I think is it is like action set pieces of micro plotting but also they can be scare sequences in spooky things.

Oh, but even like a scene where a lot happens in a scene, like.

Yeah, it might go planning for me is a very specific thing, a detective thing, just going into the crime scene and looking into it. So all the stuff with the film actually kind of slows down part of the genre. And then you balance that with the kind of the narrative, how the film is being told. Right. And so in a feature film, that's what you're trying to do in 90 minutes or 100 minutes. And when you start adding in multiple characters, it's like, how do you service multiple characters and effectively doing all those things. And I think something like glass and is really interesting because services a lot of characters that has quite a lot of plot. It definitely has a bit of micro plotting going on and it has a kind of a more complex narrative structure. I'm saying this before Christmas because I actually saw it at the cinemas. And so we're doing writers of justice. We're going to be doing the woman King, which is kind of like an historical epic slash action movie, which are interesting because sometimes they can fall into like ensemble stories. Sometimes they're more Braveheart and focused on the great man of history kind of thing. You know, there is no great man, there is only the great many. That's my socialist.

You go, Stu. But to me, like the whole point of looking at this is when you're under this time constraint, that's your lack of resource and you're having to service multiple characters. Cause I think we're trying to in that run distinguish films that just have a lot of characters, but still follow like that single protagonist pathway where people don't need those other characters to be fully fleshed out. They can come and go and service the plot or, character development or what have you but particularly ensemble films like I'm basically trying to learn character tools, efficient character tools.

Yeah I think it's an opportunity for us to talk about efficient character tools but also have that conversations about yet efficiency is kind of the resources the resources that you have at hand and so then we'll probably build from ensembles into something we've been talking about for a while we just hyperlinked cinema. Which is kind of a more academic term but so kind of films like Contagion or Babel Babel now that's gonna be the film that is pronunciation I destroy. Love actually the following multiple groups of characters that kind of connectable by more of a thematic thread than them existing within the same plot so rather than them all being by affected by the plot they're being actually affected largely by the theme. And so it's going to be interesting to see what that brings out. But I, you know, we might not do all three in a row. We're definitely doing ensembles one and two with Mel joining us for those. And then hyperlink might happen later in the year. We might decide, oh, we've done too many big group characters. Because another one that episode we're going to do, that's going to be exciting. It's been kind of in the works for a while, but we're going to be doing fictional podcasts, partly because jazz has been working on one. I'm just taking an EP credit. That's it. And in my 5%, that's my level of involvement.

5% of nothing is nothing.

Totally. In fact, I'm going to work it in such a way that you're going to end up owing me money.

Well, that's yeah, that's the, the studio profit accounting method.

Friends of the podcasts, Lauren and me just released an amazing podcast, comedy podcast, Starship. It's now Starship Q-Star.

Yeah. So great. We were privileged, I feel, to be a part of a minor, minor part of the development process.

Well, they basically based a performance on my script reading.

They brought one, the pilot script into a writer's workshop and we did a live read. And so it's just been so amazing. if a queer comedic take on Star Trek is your jam.

Listen to it. And if it's not your jam, it should be. So you should listen to it. But we're going to have them on the podcast to talk about writing what they've learned transitioning from screenwriting into fictional writing. We've got a couple of other writers who've got similar projects. I'm not going to say who they are yet in case it all falls apart. A team of writers that have worked on an audible series that we're hopefully having on the show. And then also another one who's worked on a one person kind of audio drama. We want to do fictional podcasts, audio drama. It's a new area. A lot of screenwriters getting into it. and we just want to learn from other people's mistakes.

Yes but to be clear the reason why I'm doing a fictional podcast as much as I do listen to them you know we make podcasts as well is that I'm getting very sick and tired of the writing screenplay after screenplay that doesn't get made. And I want to adopt the just going to fucking make something attitude, but I want to make something super cool. And I can't afford to make my science, my space pirate murder mystery, even a short film version, but I can afford to do a narrative podcast version of it.

So I think this is me filling in the gaps but it feels like if you're a screenwriter or short film doesn't necessarily show off what you can do as a writer as opposed to something longer form right so if you've got X amount of money you can make a short film that's only like five or seven minutes you may not directed a lot of screenwriters do directed. Degraded or less success sometimes becoming a directing never having much experience sometimes a fine directors but the fact is there any get a five or ten minute thing out of it for that spend or they can go I can make an entire series if you look at what they do be starship Q star it's like nearly it's like is the 30 minute episode and there's what like six or is it eight.

More, yeah. I think they said it was over 200 minutes of content.

Yeah, right. Which is a huge amount of work. So it's longer than a feature film. It's an entire series and it certainly is a testament to Meigs and Lauren ability as writers. And then obviously because Lauren directed it. And yeah, Meigs produced it. Lauren was already a great director. That's how I know her because I went to film school with her.

And now produces.

But it lets them show off their storytelling jobs at something in longer form. So I think it is something that is becoming more and more attractive to screenwriters, who are looking for that minimum viable product to talk about. I'm connecting us to what we talked about last year.

I mean, I think I've spoken a number of years about turning this one script into a podcast, but I am actually now three episodes deep. And you know, one of the things I'm going to learn, and from these other writers is like episode length and things like that. Cause I've kind of sort of naturally fallen. So the previous script I had is like dictating where the episode breaks and I'm not entirely sure whether I should wrangle that or rework that for the format.

And also there's questions around intercutting right like a classic senior in a cutting between two locations in the order you know the George Lucas thing where one locations this color and. Not locations the other color so you can go fast and fast and fast and it just sounds like it doesn't work in an audio film that audiences get disorientated that. It's harder for audiences to relate to characters because they're lacking pictorial element to identify who a character is it's purely auditory. I mean, I think the form really suits you, Chaz, because you're someone who watches TV, well, listens to TV while playing on their iPhone. So, you know, it's effectively how you consume television anyway.

I'm withholding the profanity. Okay, so we've fictional podcasts, audio drama, hyperlink cinema ensembles.

Gosh, that feels like most of the year already. I mean, in a way, what's interesting about monologues is the characters often is it's still dialogue.

We would love to revisit dialogue in a more monologues and rhetoric point of view, because we've done lots of dialogue work of characters bouncing off each other.

They're speaking to the audience. They may be speaking to themselves, but that's still them speaking to another. But I guess it's the lack of the response.

I mean, a voiceover could fit in this as well.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Monologues voiceover and and then but also the rhetoric the kind of like poetic tools.

To me, because often you want to be in a scene where you've got one character who wants an outcome and other characters in the scene who don't want to do it. And ultimately, sometimes there's no action that character can take. It has to be dialogue. It has to be rhetoric. You know, it's so more recently, and it's not all that recent anymore, but the first God into the galaxy where Peter convinces everyone else to die trying to save Xander, right and it's not long but it is just purely through dialogue.

Okay, that's the way you're looking through it. Great. Yeah, that's a good example. Yeah, because I'm now going to voice-up is right. And the idea that that when characters talk to the audience is because they want something. And I mentioned that before the fleabag and the, Frank Underwood speaking to the audience because they want the audience to like them.

And spontaneous has VO as well, doesn't it?

Oh, yeah, I love spontaneous, which would lead us into tone. I'm really keen to get an episode and time. We'll see if we get like Brian Duffield, but I do think it'd be interesting to revisit, Tone but we I mean this is interesting question because we've got a lot of like we've had stuff on this list that's kicking around for a while something gets earlier something gets later. Originally we were talking last year focusing on character journeys right and in different ways to think about character journeys do you think we got through that did you feel like.

I feel like we're still missing one episode that I wanted to do, but I feel like we've attacked character journeys through a lot of different lenses and I'm feeling a lot more satisfied on that basis. Like biopics, weirdly we, we did a lot of character work. I feel like we've scratched a lot of that itch. I still want to do what I guess I call unchanging heroes where like the steadfast hero and is it as simple as just the world changes around them or are there more subtle ways that you can do that.

Yeah, that the world changes in response to what they.

Like Macbeth Macbeth doesn't change and that's his downfall.

Yeah, but he still has a moment of anadorysis. Yeah, we did do a lot of character.

Yes. We've done a lot of work on because I was writing this by pick and I still am I've written versions of it. All right, that's it's not like I've been working on the same script for three years But it's that idea of when the audience knows the plot outcome and the character doesn't really change that much how do you keep the audience engaged?

Yeah, OK, because I would feel like it's hard to articulate. If I was trying to look at the area that I wanted to become more consciously competent and then particularly then that whole unconscious competence. Do you know this whole thing about my saying words? Okay. It's worth because it is, it does be to trust Sarah. And it's an interesting thing for people to think about in their screenwriting and where they kind of end up getting stuck in the middle. So when we first start out doing something, we are unconsciously incompetent.

Are we getting to the Ira glass?

Kind of it's it's similar but I think it's a little bit more nuanced right it's got a little bit more of a scale to it so when we started something where unconsciously incompetent very quickly become consciously incompetent right and a lot of screenwriters when they first start learning screenwriting it's like someone like oh that's what film ending is that's what the thing is and so there's a sudden like massively you climb that hill to conscious incompetence really quickly so you actually feel a great level of like adrenaline rush of like I am learning how to screen Right.

I guess achievement like endorphins or dopamine like you get.

Yeah, you're going to map that match and that shift from out from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence happens very quickly. And then the next stage is conscience competence. Right. So you go unconscious incompetence to conscience. Yes. When you're aware of what you don't.

Conscious and competence. Okay. Yep. And then you go to conscious competence.

Where you can be more still kind of the stage that we're in. Right. It's a big stage where you're.

So we know what we're working on.

Yeah, and what you're good at and you and then the level where you want to go to is unconscious competence, right? Where you just do things.

That's all big drop.

And I'm going to relate this to sword fighting because I did a terrible tournament in October. My worldwide ranking dropped by like 500 fucking places. My mind was not in it. And given how few people do historical fencing. Like I'm ranked 500 inside so it sounds good but there's like 600 people that do it worldwide so you know it's a very small pool but the people that are really good at it. They no longer have to be aware of what their body is doing so they're actually look at it at a much higher level they'll be in a match and you can see them going they watch someone and go okay this is how I beat them and then they just execute. And that transitional stage is a lot harder. There is ultimately a level of consciousness, but the foundational skills to do the thing I no longer.

You stop thinking about it, like you just know the answer or how to...

We do that with formatting. I don't have to sweat now in terms of writing a script and I know how to pace myself. I know how to like, okay, it'll take me this long to write a script and this is how I paste it out and I've got the processes. The thing that I now want to become more consciously competent at to use like a John August word is kind of magnetic characters, the characters that you kind of really have an understanding about audiences, connect with characters and be in control of that. Because otherwise I think we fall into cliches that we go, oh, we need to make the character more likeable. likeable we make them funny and all that stuff and I think screenwriting and and storytelling is more sophisticated in that and I'd love to do an episode that works on thinking about how to make. We did like we did unlikeable protagonists twice and way back at the beginning but it'd be, interesting to revisit stories that have more unusual structures around their main characters.

And you know, this focus on character is born of the fact that certainly in my writing, and certainly when we write together, but I'm not going to speak for you with your other writers, is that I feel like we've got a pretty good handle on plotting, pacing, white space, structure, those kinds of things. And often the things that we're working in draft in draft out is getting the audience, the readers to align with how we see the characters. Because there's is often a disconnect in our writing between how we see our characters and how the readers perceive them.

Very common problem for writers because we spend more time in our heads with the characters than ultimately the audience do. So they see the tip of the iceberg, but we've literally sculpted the whole iceberg.

And we could potentially keep going on, you know, like not to forget structure entirely. We've got like, I think the ensemble stuff is going to go into larger structural questions, but we've also probably will continue looking through endings in different lenses. So we've got down here, you know, that, that binary choice of the, of the hero's choice at the end, but then there was also potentially looking at films through the Michael Arndt climax. I can't say climax and keep a straight face.

He's got like the decisive act. He talks about this decisive act thing. Yeah. Yeah. Cause we talked about it with everything every well all at once. And now we've forgotten it.

Hmm. Interesting. So if we found a few examples of that, where it's not for the main character.

But yeah, he, what was interesting is he saw the decisive act is not necessarily being from the main character.

That would be interesting. Yeah. Cause talking about steadfast characters, I don't feel that Luke changes that much in Star Wars. Like, in the same way, I don't think Harry Potter changes that much.

So in Michael Lance analysis, it's actually the decisive act is Han Solo coming back. It's Han Solo's decision to join the fight that is actually the decisive act that turns the tide.

They learn a whole bunch of fucking shit, but who they are as people, like I think Luke would have trusted the Force at the beginning of the film as much as he did at the end. They never showed him like doubting the Force in Star Wars. Harry Potter, they never show him not showing courage in the face of adversity. Like, ultimately, who they are as characters does not change. They just, what they learn changes.

I mean it raises a lot of interesting things about human nature to start getting into that is what is change of people just revealing you know the more things change the more they stay the same as in the things that change show you what is malleable and the stuff that doesn't change shows you what is the core essence so. Oh, this character in hindsight, it's easy to go this character doesn't change because what we're actually doing is by changing the external elements of them. We're revealing their core character, right? Which is that Luke cares about his friends and all those kinds of things, right? And that never.

That gets more interesting in Empire Strikes Back where he's actually put in a position of going, here is the path to become the Jedi or you can go and care for your friends. Like at least there's a conflicted choice, but never in Star Wars is there a choice between trusting the force and saving the galaxy.

Yeah, yeah, which is why the, which is why the biggest change to the Luke Skywalker character is actually in the focus, Felt forced awakens and not the last Jedi which is that Luke has chosen to isolate himself from everyone which is a which is character development. Right and it is interesting character development it's just done entirely off screen and then people really resisted about learning it in hindsight and I actually now wonder if people would have been more responsive. To that changing Luke if they saw it in real time because I think there is a difference between experiencing something with a character then us learning about it in hindsight.

Fair enough. Is that enough people excited about 2023? We will be very open to ideas for other episodes that you guys are interested in and in particular we are five episodes away from our hundredth episode. So yeah.

Yeah, well, my original plan was to plan. I had a notion of us going to Austin and doing a live hundredth episode, probably in like, a cupboard somewhere. This is your audience of three. Thanks Julio.

Either way, like I'm hoping to just have the audio podcast happening without me having.

Thanks Chris. But we probably actually hit 100 in the middle of the year, unless we're shooting something, which would be exciting or making an audio podcast.

To be heavily involved.

I think that is overly optimistic.

Yes, I agree. it is my goal. Yes. I will spend more money. I'm in the luxurious position where I have more access to money than I have access to time. Yeah, that is nice. I liked it. Oh God.

I mean, you know, if you want to spend more money, it becomes more possible. All right, it's looking about resource constraints. Well, I think in some ways what we had there was a long first act. I was trying to transition to it. So we had a reader question. Do you have the question at hand? Chess keyboard internet searching music.

It was on Twitter, wasn't it? No, is the answer. I do not have it at hand.

Okay, I found it. Zacha what listener Isaac wrote to us on Twitter and said not a back man a chat but sorry mate we're doing his back manor but I feel there's a significant shortening of first acts in films. He was wanting something more empirical and we're not going to do the empirical thing because it feels like it's a fucking thesis about whether or not first acts have become shorter and whether or not that's anecdotal. And we said we'll do an informal chat about it because we've had some experience with a couple of projects and first acts and our own kind of becoming more more consciously competent or more consciously aware of what's going on in first acts which is I do think there has been a change. With the nature of streaming and we've got friends that write for Netflix and like the emphasis that Netflix puts on those first five minutes of this of the pilot scripts is huge. This is not necessarily their formula and maybe people can look it up I'm not going to bits this idea of like if you make it through the first five minutes of an episode you watch the first 15 if you make it through the first 15 you're more likely to watch it to the end of the first episode you make it through the first episode it's something like the next milestone is episode 3 to make it through episode 3 you probably watch the whole show.

I mean, putting it obviously the advent of streaming has led to an easing of consumer choice, where you're not in a movie theater, where you're locked in. You haven't gone to Blockbuster and rented a movie and you'd have to go back to Blockbuster to get a different movie.

Sorry, I was bored within the first five minutes. Can you take this DVD back? It'll take you 20 minutes to drive the blockbuster.

So now with the advent of streaming, it's like pressures on the storytellers. I think there is a real pressure on the luxury of a slow burn. First act is really hard. Like we're writing a, a horror movie at the moment where we're heavily referencing a whole lot of Australian films. And the continual feedback we're getting is shorten your first act, shorten your first act, shorten in your first act. But then they are saying they'll say something like, you know, like.

But also where's the character development going?

In Wolf Creek and we're like, no one died in Wolf Creek for 45 fucking minutes.

Like that opening 40 minutes is super tense they set up the tension purely in text on screen about the number of people I think it's number people that go missing right and then like based on a true story whatever it is and then they just in a slightly uneasy bit of off-pointing music and you were just tense for the first 45 minutes before anything happens and it doesn't feel like you would have that kind of structure in a modern slasher film. I mean there is in Halloween some of the sometimes the first kill can be in the cold open and part of the reason that the classic horror cold open is a kill is because it buys you 20 minutes or 30 minutes of setup.

I feel Halloween ends like it did have a cold open, but it wasn't a Michael oriented cold open. It was a character cold open. And I feel like it had a long first act, which is, going to a point that we made off Mike is I think original stories that are going to have the majority of their life on a streaming service. Theatrical releases are becoming almost non-existent for independent film. They are under pressure to get the story going, or at least lay down the promise of the premise or whatever you want to talk about. Like they are under real pressure upfront. They can't afford a slow burn first act, but I feel like established IP where you've got people who are going to settle in, you have that audience trust. I feel the, filmmakers still have the luxury of longer first acts. It would have been a different form of tension. Like Stephen Cleary does a great analysis on different types of fear that you can play with in relation to narrative point of view. And I think we've talked about it in a different podcast, but I think in horror movies, like long first acts, you're just generally playing with tension. Rather than with where you're doing this intercutting or, you know, fear of in the present is very different. Like you've got jump scares or gore or other things. So they're feeling the pressure to have those big horror moments earlier in that film.

Yeah and the point is it's conversation about first because that's the first act that I feel is diff the franchise to skin the franchise has changed the expectation of what that structure is right like if an alien film comes along now and there has been Prometheus and Covenant but it feels like whatever we're going to see next is going to end up having the alien appear.

In the first five minutes.

In the first five minutes right and you kind of get a little bit of that like like Alien Resurrection has a little bit of that moment and stuff like that but they're not as patient. Isaac coming back to that a question was like I was this related to like kind of like the blacklist model and I'm talking about a model rather than the website is script coverage and ranking is kind of like competitive screenwriting side you the screenwriting is like a competition it's like a sport more than an art.

But he's talking about the reward scheme, right? Like our scripts that have banger first five pages doing better than ones that do a slow burn and something big happens on page 30, which I'm not sure about what he's saying about the blacklist model. I remember the year that I did relatively well at Austin. I then went and found the one that won Austin screenplay and I got through to think page 15 and nothing had happened. If we're talking about incentive schemes, screenplay competitions, they force the readers to read the whole script.

Appear as if they've read the whole script.

They need to, I mean, because they get such bad press if they, if the coverage they get back feels like they haven't read the whole scripts. Anyway, if you've got a script where you're looking for having that slow bone first act, I think it's harder to pull off. You and I are certainly finding it harder. set out to write a horror movie where we wanted it to start out as a rom-com essentially that got interrupted by a horror movie. We've just almost lost the entirety of that. No, no, we're, we're.

I think you're being overly negative about what we've ended up doing.

I mean, we're happy with the choices we're making, but the, and bring like move all the rom-com.

We had to add a cold open. Yeah.

Elements to like a flashback and shorten it. So it wasn't like you get into the new world at page 12. It's like cold open death characters in the new world flashback to what we had for the first 12 pages.

I think answering Zach's question, I don't think it's as, which is kind of what I think you're saying, Is that is a whole bunch of incentives throughout the industry about making the first 15 or so pages really grabby because you're talking about a. Industry in which everyone is time poor so they want to know that your script is going to be worth their while within. 15 pages if they give that I have read for that redacted I've read for competitions where I do not have to finish reading the script. I won't say who they're for but it's essentially like this is if you can't finish reading it then it doesn't deserve to be win or be considered so if they lose you in the first page put it aside and I've had scripts when I first started it was like no I'll give them five pages and now I'm pretty ruthless because I got a stack of scripts that I'm not being paid to read that I'm like mate you've lost me in the first page. Unfortunately that's the nature of the business right that you're talking about time for people that you need to grab their attention and be remarkable or hold them in such a way you know and there are people that can do that with just the power of their language you know the. Opening of alien is absolutely hypnotic but is hypnotic on the page like the script that was written by you know Dan O'Brien and then and then by Walter Hill. Is a fantastic read and even though quote-unquote nothing happens the read itself has the magical quality that Ridley Scott brought on screen so if you're going to do the slower first day maybe the problem is our slow first day just wasn't that.

Wasn't well written enough.

Or it didn't indicate like it wasn't correlated enough with the promise of the premise you know we're going to be talking about writers of justice. And our ensemble episode and there's a big turning point on page 30, but the inciting incident is like four minutes in like it absolutely just pops.

And maybe this is again pure speculation without doing any research here, but I think possibly even in franchise films where people have got got the luxury of a captive audience and a longer first act and that kind of thing. They are still very quite sequence based. So I think that inciting incident, if you're on Thor four, the inciting incident will feel a lot like the end of a first act because everyone knows who Thor is and they're like, let's go on the mission already.

Oh, but I would actually argue the inside incident of Thor 4 is Gorr the God Butcher getting the sword. So it actually happens in the whole open.

Yeah. But thought becoming aware of God the butcher is like a minute 10 just again where the fuck is a first act we're talking in you know constructs and do not necessarily apply movie to movie but I think what we're talking about is a distinct pressure to grab audiences sooner audiences are less patient.

Yeah, the end of the first act is harder because like when you come back to the structure which we've talked about that the first act or sequence is the exposition of the pre-existing conflict right and then there's the inciting incident or the complication to that pre-existing conflict which is Romeo and Juliet falling in love right that's the inciting incident but then what is that transition to more complications so yes Isaac I think you're right at first actually getting shortened maybe not necessarily getting short but you kind of have to put a certain kind of wow you know to kind of need to clearly identify what your genre is, possibly put your star up front, you know, something that is going to grab the audience and do that on the page.

It might not be that first acts are getting shorter. It might be that inciting incidents are getting closer to. Yeah. These are arbitrary things that an analysis of the film won't tell you what the writer of the film necessarily saw as being those points anyway. So.

Authorial Intention Never Survives Contact with the Enemy, which is the audience.

Sure. But you know to use Craig Mason's terms what we're talking about is analysis not generation so we don't know what tools help that writer generate that material.

I would slightly disagree with him because what we're talking about is a feeling that someone is an audience member is saying I am feeling that first acts are getting shortened and what they are feeling I think is that maybe that there is less development of character and world. Before the story starts right and so it feels like I'm not learning who these characters are in which case it's a deconstructive tool but for me because I'm so audience focused it's about what is the audience with this trend. What is the result in terms of how it affects the audience emotionally and then then beginning like Pavlov's dog where audiences are now because producers and small P producers just list filmmakers a shortening first acts. Our audience is getting used to shorten first acts and therefore it's actually becoming harder to do longer first acts because they've been trained into it.

I think cinema literacy is also changing, right? Like, I'm sure I'm going to attract a lot of disdain for this, but I love Westerns. And quite late in life, I went to the Peckinpah Westerns that, you know, supposedly changed everything. But because I'd seen a lot of Westerns made after Peckinpah's Westerns, I'd seen what he changed about the genre absorbed already. And so when I saw his stuff. I'm like, well, this doesn't really feel that iconic or new or different.

I think that literacy, yeah.

I mean, we are able to absorb story at a faster rate. Like Anna can't even sit through the original Superman, the 1979 Superman credits because they go too long. But that amazing job, William score.

Yeah, I mean, she's not wrong. But I mean, that's also a different type of like, that's when people were still, you probably didn't have 15 minutes of trailers. So the idea people were still filing cinema while the credits were going right was like part of the style that you kind of loaded your credits up front because people were still entering.

I mean, I watched elf with my kids the other day and it was the first time I'd seen elf. And elf has a prologue and then it goes into head credits with a little animation and the kids were like is the movie over because they hadn't seen head credits before so they were like, did we just watch the prologue and now we're in the credits and the movie's all done?

I mean, I think it hints to our discussion with and dogs. I think what was interesting about and I actually feel the weird thing is that television is slowed down films are getting faster. Television is this weird like over tired like it's both way too fast and also way too slow you know like we do not need two hours episodes of TV but and always really interesting because they dropped first three episodes at once and I watched them and I'm like this really feels like they were just a pilot and it was an hour and a half pilot they broke into three episodes to make it more palatable right but a lot of people were turned off by the pacing of it and I wonder if it actually would have been better from a psychological point of view. Going we're doing an hour and a half pilot and then it's just going to be an hour episodes after this because it's like oh it's only 30 minute episodes and then they all became 45 minutes after that anyway right so it's kind of misleading in a number of levels.

Worked for you and me, but it was the lowest grossing or lowest viewed grossing. It's not the right word. Star Wars show.

Shame if you haven't watched and or best thing you can do for your screenwriting career is stop listening to this podcast I'm watching it or fantastic.

But before we get into Kenobi versus Andor, we like to in these back matter episodes, be ever so slightly vulnerable and personal and talk about So we've got a couple of different topics here.

You're vulnerable and I'm personable.

The one that I propose, because it's one that I'm really struggling with, is the, when you are time constrained, and that's a resource, is that pressure to generate new material versus working on older projects. Because when I was more of a baby writer, I would write a script, rework it until a number of readers said it was okay. And then I would submit it for screenplay competitions, placing those, and then I would write a new script.

Yeah, you wouldn't get stuck into doing development development wasn't something you had to do with as a baby rider.

Yeah. And so I would keep on moving on because what I wanted was that breakthrough thing, right? So the way that I saw it is the best way to achieve that breakthrough thing was to just keep writing more and more and more.

Then you probably learnt more from each new project than you did by redeveloping it.

Now, unfortunately, I'm at a stage where certain projects have a certain amount of attachments or interest from different people. And so I'm kind of like, I should work on this thing more than working on something completely new. And there's also the fact that this is possibly unique to me, but I don't think it is. I find writing a first draft of something way harder than rewriting.

I think it is unique to you because I think it's more than just time and talking about cognitive lot right like you talking about like the actual mental effort it's like. You know I've had an incredibly busy quote unquote day job like like my last six months just been mad you know for good and worse I had a friend I'm moving house like a lot of work going on which has been great. Insane amounts of travel. Basically, if I get time off, I'm like, I'm gonna watch TV or spend time with my partner or play video games.

Play video games. Do input.

But not even input like literally like, yeah, down, unwind, you know, like dealing with burnout.

Down to F.

And part of me gets the whole like, oh, I've had a whole day off. I can't believe I've done fuck all. You know, I should be writing a new project, but the cognitive load of that is so high. Right, it really is.

But you and I, we've got a follow up project. Like the second thing that we'll write together that I think we're both really excited about, but we haven't touched it since the beginning of this year because, we've done rewrites on other projects that both together and separately. And then I've been focusing on this podcast thing because I'm like, I thought that would be easy. And that would be one of the key learnings is writing for a visual medium is very different from writing for an auditory only medium.

All I do is delete the action lines. We've got the dialogue.

So yeah, I feel like this year, usually each year I've got one new, like brand new first draft and I don't have that this year.

Yes, and I don't either, and I've got a list of things.

I do think there is good to balance generating new material with working on all material because for me, working on all material or working on all materials, not the right way to put it, but rewriting because it's so much easier for me, I can duck out of my busy life, and rewrite a lot easier than I can.

Do you think you're talking about the difference between shallow work and deep work?

To an extent, yes. That's definitely a factor is like, I'm more scared of the blank page than I am of the page with text on it. But I think sometimes I'm kicking myself because I think that new project of ours could be the thing that goes. Like I think it's a really good idea, but we just have not found the space to dedicate anything to it. I mean, okay, here's a lesson. Acknowledging for me that certain parts the creative process take more energy than others and need more button chair time and so perhaps my, angst over this being the first year in a long time where I haven't created a finished new screenplay I should I still don't regret the choices I've made in terms of how I've spent my time I think that's the thing that I'm struggling with that maybe that's like a career transition thing.

We also had like post pandemic transition thing like most lockdown city in the world for two years and suddenly it's like oh we're looking go and do things.

But one of the drafts I worked on was paid. The other one was us re revisiting an existing project because it actually hopefully has to some extent sprung back to life in terms of the potential of getting made. So we should focus on that rather than the new shiny thing. And then the podcast is me sort of hip pocketing like if everything goes away I'm still gonna fucking make something next year.

Okay, so there's the big difference in our life is I know.

I'm asking a hypothetical here. I'm not trying to get Stu to pin down his schedule for me.

Because I'm contractual, I can also be very responsive. So it's very hard for me to plan. I'm very reactive. But so what I have to do is like I either have to time block and go, this is absolutely what I'm doing. And it's very space based. So I think for me it would be like I am going to go away.

Well, you've suggested you and I go on a retreat next year to try and get through the next draft of something that we're working on.

Yeah, exactly. So it's the change of space. It's forcing it to happen will work for me. Okay. And that can work for the new material as well. The thing is, I think part of the cognitive load of writing like a new project is you're throwing a lot of balls in the air. It's the whole juggling thing and it ends up consuming most of your mind.

And also it's just like, it takes me three hours to write three pages from a blank page. So it just takes a lot of time.

Three hours for three pages. That's fast man. Like most writers that I know are like happy, like there were writers that are happy with only three pages in a whole day as their full time writing.

Yeah. I query how many of those writers have children. Cause I feel like when you have children, you just like your productivity within narrow windows increases a lot.

Yeah, I mean, you can walk around an art gallery and look at it in many amazing paintings and just go, it's kind of less amazing when you think about them having free childcare and free like laundry and free domestic service. You know, it's true. Not that you do. You're actually a very helpful, mostly helpful.

No, but even so, one of the things I've been struggling with recently is I have two magic days a week. I call them magic days. because there are days that my kids are in school that I don't have to do my day job. And the day job has been encroaching on that somewhat. And it uses the same brain juice as writing. So if I do an hour of legal work, that kind of almost kills the entire day for me to sit down and start writing. But then also just like life admin has gotten too much. And I'm just finding myself not prioritizing the button chair time. And often it needs space. Like I will focus if I just go out of my house and go to a cafe, I'm more likely to get a good spell of work done. Then if I stay in the house and I don't get distracted by laundry, deliveries, whatever. And I'm not, I'm not someone who's prescriptive about this. Like I'm, I will go with whatever projects flowing, but I also do know that if I've spent a bit of time away, it takes me some time to get into the flow.

Yes oh yeah like it will take me because of where my head's out it will take me a while to get back into writing like I'll need a couple of like basically I need to get bored of playing Call of Duty you know bored of watching it should like I need to kind of like to recover from burnout I kind of need to go to the other extreme of boredom. It's a gear change, you know, and I think it was easier when you're younger or maybe you just got less responsibilities.

But all of this is about, I don't know if there's any quote unquote lesson to take from this. It's, I think time is the most precious resource.

Yeah, no one can tell you whether it's like, because there's the whole gambler's fallacy, the sunk cost fallacy of working on a script that's not going anywhere. Right. But then there's this point. And I think we're with that. It's more that we're existing in the space of like, it's not sunk course fallacy, but it could be.

One of the things I sunk a lot of time into this year was rewriting a pilot because a producer got attached. And so we created the pitch deck, we got on a graphic designer, did final polishes on the script, and then the producers submitted it to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, like the ABC. And the main premise is it's all about the conflict between a mother and a son. And we only found out two months later that the ABC is rebooting a famous iconic Australian show called Mother and Son. One of the actors in the pitch deck.

That's right. Oh, my God.

Is the actor that they've cast for the mother and mother and son.

Wow. So in all of that, how do you maintain hope?

I put this question in the Trello because this is the third time in my screenwriting career where, I've got paid writing coming up next year and the potential for stuff to get made. But the previous two times that that's happened, it's all just banished. And so part of me goes, I should stop being excited about this at all. But then part of me is like, no, no, I should acknowledge that these are good things and that I'm moving in the right direction and that these are opportunities. Without counting my chickens is a very Australian. Is it Australian or would that translate? Counting your chickens before your eggs have hatched. Is that the saying?

I don't know if it's it sounds just like rural.

Anyway, you, how do you maintain hope?

The question is, is it maintaining hope or is it how do you avoid despair? You know, when I before I got into film, I was more into music. I wrote a whole album when I was in high school. It's terrible. I should put some links in the show notes. And I did music and film in my undergrad, right? It ended up just kind of fading out of my life as something that I did. It's not like I made an active choice to stop writing music. There may be a point where I'm like going to pull out a synthesizer and bang out some synth wave or something. So part of me is like, there is this point where it could come into generating new material. I wonder if there's writers and I could be one of them. It's like the last new script I wrote was five years ago. Like I maybe I'm just tinkering and maintaining the scripts that I have, but I'm not generating anything new. So I guess there to me that these topics are related that hope is kind of like hope is an active thing right hope is for me it's not just a feeling of optimism it's actually. Pursuing and being active and so to be active requires conscious choice and so it's like I'm going to work on a new thing and just assessing I think we've got good processes we with our writers group do a quarterly. We only ended up doing it like three times this year. We skipped one, but we do a quick accountability as part of our workshops every fortnight did and do I did this and I do next week. I'm going to do that. Did not achieve the thing do it next week. week. But like their processes for creating action. And then you can sit there and do the Steve Jobs.

We'll see you next time.

Thing of if so many weeks have gone by and nothing is changing, you need to ask yourself if you know, it's the whole thing. If nothing is changing, what needs to change? And so for me, it's like maintaining hope is less about maintaining optimism. Because I think you can feel despair, or you can like, but what I want to avoid is disinterest. Or maybe when the disinterest comes, That's what I know. It's over.

To paraphrase you so in my mind I often separate hope being an emotion and the actions that arise from being hopeful. I'm going to keep working and writing on projects because I hope still I'm not despairing. I'm not quitting. Right. But it sounds like what you're saying is if you have processes that keep the actions in players then either hope will come or it's irrelevant whether you feel it or not.

Yeah, they're correlated. that feeling of the, by doing the action, you'll end up feeling hopeful. But that's for me, that's like my experience of depression and I've, um, have been that it comes from a lack of like, for better word, lack of stimulation, like a feeling of trapped or inertia, right? That's when I feel the most despairing. So the way I avoid that is by taking action and, and kind of move forward and not getting stuck in loops and stuff like that. Right. So that's, the personal thing for me. So I guess that's how I relate to that.

I mean to me like with this year I'm just I'm mentally planning for neither of these things come about because that will is leaving me more emotionally well defended for these things to fall apart but I don't want that to come across in how I act or interact you know in pitch meetings or other meetings and stuff like that.

It sounds like what you're saying is you don't want to feel upset if things don't happen but you want to act with the confidence is if they are.

Yes. Which is something that I feel like Americans are way better at than Australians. There's something cultural there.

There is at least some cultural stuff like Americans are way more accepting of like the hustle and the idea that people are hustling and have side. Yeah, of course you've got a day job and doing hustle like I find, you know, whenever I go to LA and it gets itself selective the kind of people that you we hang out with when we get to LA and all that stuff are going to be in that zone. But it definitely feels like it's a lot more understanding of like, of course, of course you'd be doing a hustle and you got your day job. But you know, that's just what you have to do as opposed to in Australia. It's like, oh, you know, when are you giving up on this? I mean, maybe it was like a year or two after I graduated from the VCA.

It's been a while since then.

My sister was like, so when do you think you'll stop with this film stuff? Well, I mean, I, my nephew just graduated and he's about to do engineering and I'm like, I hope you do well at engineering because I'm going to need to borrow money from you. So wow.

My brother has said he'll fund one of my movies when he cashes out of his stocks in his engineering business.

Can he cash them out soon around? Like, no.

Sadly, no, he is not in control as to when they, when they vest.

All right. Speaking of visiting, did you want to cover any of like the big lesson from craft or career from this year? any kind of thing that's kind of resonated that we've done.

I'm happy to hear your take on it. I cannot think of anything that's. It feels like it's been a slow osmotic absorption rather than I can think like, or I made a quantum leap in this understanding or in this area of my writing.

I particularly liked our episodes on genre, right? I keep on coming and thinking a lot about like the conventions of genre and how that leads to creation of meaning and the patterns that we scene, how we invert patterns. It's just because I watched it last night. The Writers of Justice, what's so interesting about it is that that one shift of, it's not the one shift, but it taking, dad core and making an ensemble kind of changes the meaning of the film. Right. And so I think that's really like, I want to become stronger of being in more control of that. But I think that's really useful. And this will lead us into Andor, because it's not a, something that I've got a very specific lesson about but it's like I want to know how you do it which is in the biopics we talked about the biopics were kind of effective because the characters acted like the stakes existed for them right. And at the time I think we criticized it in the episode Kenobi the Kenobi never really acted like he was in danger right like he acted as if he had plot on and what's interesting about and or is that and or does not act as if he no one acts as if they've got plot on. And what is fascinating because there's a great line I'm slightly paraphrasing the quote but it was like how do you maintain tension or whatever it is about writing a prequel to Tony Gilroy and it's like well we're all leaving a prequel we all know we're gonna die right it's gonna happen at some point.

I mean, okay, he's a piece of screenwriting education advice. Because Tony Gilroy is on the fucking media cycle at the moment. There is so many incredible podcasts with him out at the moment where he, yes, he's ostensibly talking about Andor, but he also talks about everything else. So he was on WTF. He was on, he's been on various times, the Q and a podcast with Jeff Goldsmith. Like there's a lot of great writing advice from Tony Gilroy out there at the moment.

Yeah, so your time is better spent listening to him.

I like that the show is the idea of what do we do where we take this guy who is one of.

Okay, so let's start. What did you like about Obi-Wan Kenobi show?

Two known Jedi's left in the entire galaxy. He's lost his entire community. Lost his entire way of life. And frankly, he would be blaming himself because he fucking made Darth Vader or Darth Vader grew under his tutelage, unchecked and unnoticed. And, I love that they take that from that place to a point where he can forgive himself enough to actually reengage. And I like that they measured that with his ability to see Qui-Gon, was going, you have now stopped beating yourself up about this. And I liked the really great moment in the whole season is when he and Darth Vader fight and Darth Vader says, you didn't kill Anakin Skywalker. I did. Like not only does it feed into the nostalgia of that line, from a new heart, but it, to me, it really acted in the emotional journey that Obi-Wan was on.

Actually I would say that line is pretty great not only does it make that line better but it's actually Vader saying how dare you have the arrogance to think you did this I did this it's actually a great inversion because it's like you you narcissist to think this is your fault.

On. So those are the things I liked. I did actually really enjoy sassy little layer. I was just struggling so much with the fact that in a new hope layer has clearly never met Obi-Wan ever before.

Oh, you, you may remember, you may, this is la you may remember me from my father fighting in the clone war. like.

Remember that time we went on a six month fucking adventure together. So that's where you've got like prequel issues, but then you're also talking about, I think the plot armor side of things is the scale of the set pieces that they undertook in Kenobi is very different to the scale of the set pieces that they do, in Andor. So we could say that Cassian feels just as afraid doing the heist on Adani as Obi-Wan feels trying to rescue Leia from the Inquisitor base. But it just feels of such a different scale of one dude walking alone into a base full of Sith Lords or Inquisitors, plus Darth Vader and everyone else. It just felt like of a scale where it's like that's what made it feel like plot armor not not his fear or anything like that. It was just like the scale of what they were undertaking.

I think that is a good point it's scale it's the help ability of the threat against him and the way he acts basically don't they do that let's just walk out together and like it felt. Because it felt like that they could succeed the characters didn't have to work hard in order to succeed right like in and or they literally take like almost three episodes two episodes to plan the highest and then do the highest. Because the amount of time and effort and training the characters are spending in it makes us go these guys are really scared that they're going to fail. Obi-Wan looks at that base and like oh I'm putting my rope and just walks in right and walks out so it feels like he may be scared but there's nothing in his actions or how he's approaching it. That makes us feel that he considers himself actually under genuine risk.

Or the amount of time like Cass spends in the jail plotting his escape as well. You know, like it feels like they've been in there for months doing it, not just like, I'm gonna walk into the base.

So actually what it let's pick this I think maybe it's more than it's what plot on it is is actually it means that it's plot light. They don't have to because they know the character is going to succeed the plotting is more elliptical right and they put less pressure on the character so it's not like that I mean there is plot on a light. Oh I get up and there's no scratch on me but there's the plot armor of what we're describing here which is that Obi-Wan doesn't seem to act. If he's under genuine threat because it feels like the writers are not putting him under genuine threat and therefore he's not taking action if plot is character over time or is the actions that the characters take if you don't put them under enough pressure. Right if you don't give them enough obstacles or stakes then they're not going to take actions that are appropriate to that and you feel like you can be like oh yeah it's some see through they don't like we don't have to spend much time doing that.

But even the culmination of that whole show was in Tatooine, the Inquisitor kidnapping Luke and Uncle Owen, Aunt Beru fighting off the Inquisitor and Obi-Wan coming to save them. You know that every single one of those characters except the Inquisitor live. There is zero tension from a plot perspective in that scene. Whereas if we look at what they've done with Andor, they're surrounding him with people that they're making you invest time and loving, right? Like that March through.

It's all the supporting characters.

Ferrics, that protest, you're like, all of these people could die. So there's, it's not just plot armor. It's the amount who like in Kenobi, he was surrounded by known characters. It wasn't just Kenobi, who we know survives. But they were at least were preparing for to dive.

I think that was true. I think that sequence was slightly more successful in terms of building tension. I would say that Uncle Owen and Aunt Peru definitely acted more like they thought they were under genuine threat, right, unlike the earlier episode. So I feel like what you're saying is true, but in terms of my thesis, like, well, once you've rewatched anything, it loses tension because we know that these characters live, right?

For Luke. Then we would all be like that character's gonna die.

Yeah, but imagine if they introduced earlier a character on the farm that wasn't Uncle Lime when I'm Peru. And then yeah, it creates some tension, right? Yeah, I mean, obviously, Andor has that genius that they surrounded and even Mon Mothma. The question isn't whether Mon Mothma will survive, it's at what cost, right? And we're beginning to see what that cost is with her daughter and all that stuff.

Yeah. And her sister and her husband and her planet.

I mean the whole theme of the show is what cost rebellion. What is the cost of rebellion? I mean that was Rogue One, but they're doing such a better job of it.

I mean, I did. So again, going back to things I liked about Kenobi because Reva was a new character, the, Inquisitor and I had no idea whether she would live or die. I really liked her journey of basically trying to be a successful Inquisitor so she can get, close enough to Darth Vader to kill him. And then A was aware of it the whole time and just dispatches her so summarily.

That was that was pretty clever.

There are some really great ideas in there. It's just that because most of the show was him and Leia and then him protecting Luke, it just, yeah.

Yeah, it was it was less than the sum of the parts like I think you McGregor in the role of Obi-Wan is great. He kind of I do like him starting off as I don't want to use the force him becoming more confident about it. The idea of sassy layer knowing that the slight retconning but they were definitely in a weird place where definitely I agree with the set plates this field a lot more scale down and and or it may be to do with them shooting in the volume like people have tried to be like oh that's because they were shooting on location and limited by the volume but it also could be kind of a lack of ambition in terms of the visuals I mean I was excited to see the inquisitive base in live action but it felt like. It was so easy for him to get in and get out, you know, even the DSX Machina of the others like flying in at the last minute.

Really, we're focusing on one thing when that was just one episode in the whole season, but it was like building like that was a kind of climax that it was building towards like, you know, it was so awesome when Vader fucking grabs that ship and rips its hull open. And then the other one gets up and flies off. And my wife, who has watched a lot of cell was enjoy cell was just like, why didn't he grab that ship?

Everything felt a little bit too easy.

Not enough consistency. I mean, there were a lot of people after the episode where, where Vader and Obi-Wan had confronted each other for the first time, then Obi-Wan gets away because there's fire in between him and Vader's like, why hasn't Vader just like jump over it or pull Obi-Wan Like there was just some inconsistencies about Vader's power. Like.

Plot armor is actually more inhibiting the writers, but they're kind of like weirdly going softer on the characters rather than going harder. They're not doing the Breaking Bad of like, how do we write our character into a corner and how do we then write them getting out of it?

Well, I thought one of the cool things was that where Obi-Wan refuses to help that young Jedi on Tatooine, where it's a combination of like, I've quote unquote, quote got a mission but really I'm just too scared and don't want anyone to know I'm here I don't want to fight anymore like that was cool he was forced into a choice do I let this young foolish reckless person die or do I save him but potentially expose myself and Luke and.

I mean the thematic question in what is the thematic question.

To me it was about survivor's guilt and coming that's what it's trying to be is coming to terms with survivor's guilt but it didn't do enough of that?

Yeah, because in some ways the what it's not the ninth sister, but the sister, the Inquisitor, that's about her. She's a survivor and she's turned to the dark side as a result of being a survivor. Yeah, but yeah, it doesn't quite do enough with it. Whereas the and or idea of what cost rebellion is something that affects all the characters.

I mean, I just, whenever there's no Jedi in Star Wars, it's so much better. But I like it for anyone who hasn't seen it. And or the reason Sue and I, obviously we both love Star Wars, but seriously, and or to me felt like the wire. It felt like some of the best TV I've watched all year, almost regardless of the fact that it was set in a Star Wars universe. It was, I can't believe that in this political era, a TV show made by Disney was so overtly anti-fascist and anti-authoritarian.

And anti-corporate.

Anti-corporate, anti-surveillance, anti-incarceration.

Oh yeah, it's attacking the prison industrial complex.

Like I just, I could not believe the balls on that show. So, and obviously that aligns with my politics, but just the bravery to be that, political in a fucking Star Wars show seems unbelievable to me. But it was about molding Cassian from this person who I still think even I struggled with the early episodes. Watch them every week as they came out. So obviously didn't struggle too much, but I was really trying to find out, like get a grip on who Cassian was. And I still don't think I've got a very clear idea on who he was coming into the show.

Yeah, you're not the only one that feels that Cassie is the least interesting part of the show.

He became more interesting as soon as he was recruited, like as soon as they were plot missions that he could be of service to, he became more interesting. But in the beginning, he seemed to be getting in his own way.

Well, I mean, and they've dropped the whole sister thing for now. He was motivated to find a sister and then suddenly it's like, wait, what?

Like an episode. But even his relationship to Bix like and his relationship to I don't even know the character's.

Yeah, so determined to find a sister except now. So it'd be interesting to see whether they bring that back, but I mean.

Name but the big tall like mining dude I don't understand why he likes Cassian at all.

Yeah, okay, so it's one of those characters where they have friends, but we don't understand why those friends are friends with them.

There's cause a lot of stuff has clearly happened in backstory that we don't have access to.

Not really too, yeah. Do they like him because they actually like his mother? My whole quip was Andal is actually not named after Cassian, it's named after his mother. Right, like his value to the rebellion is actually the fact that he's connected to his mother. Not just his skills, but his symbolic power is actually the fact that his mother is probably actually going to become a folk hero.

I mean, we can keep gushing about and all, but it took its time, even though we know cast survives, it surrounds casting with a whole lot of completely unknown characters that.

Whose fates are unknown, but I don't think like Cassian is constantly put in positions where he doesn't seem to know how to get out and nothing is easy for him.

And he's, he puts himself in positions where he has even said, like, it's better to die, Trying then to just survive being under their yoke, you know, and then there's just all these wonderful heartbreaking moments around him. Like the, the Andy Serkis character not being able to swim in a weird kind of way. Cassian in that first season has less of a character journey than everyone around him, but he's facilitating or he's part of like that character. The only circus character goes from being an enabler of the system of control to being the figurehead of overthrowing it.

What I like about the show is it's clear that Cassian isn't a leader in that sense like he is an enabler he gets shit done but I think the show is very good at articulating that he is not the leader like he's not the chair he is not the the face of the rebellion. But he is someone who's going to get it done and he enables other people's to be other people to be leaders and I really like that they're not trying to make him everything they're not trying to be like he's not going to be the one giving the. He gives a speech but the speech isn't necessarily a great speech it's an effective speech to get people to do what he needs.

And I mean, every time we see the recap, when we see the young kid with the manifesto that we talked about, Alice man's whenever we see him die, because I chose it every recap is like, oh, that little kid. And there are more thematic scenes in that show than in Kenobi. Like the scene between Luthen and his mole in the ISB up on that gangplank.

I wonder if it's also better because it's not like will and or survive but it's like we know and survive it's the outcome of the pot question is directly related to the thematic question. It's not just that it's theme and character it's revealing the fact that he is willing when he discovers that he's mole.

That's not there for any reason other than to get Luthen to say what rebellion has cost him. That he'll never be a hero. He is resorted to their methods to beat them. He is a compromised by his own value system. He considers himself evil.

Like there is he is going to have to let these men die and then what is the part but yes that speech is for the audience.

Yeah, but you didn't for plot reasons you did not need that scene or that character.

Yeah, no, you're right. Like he's he's sauce comes in talents and he just needs to say the well fuck I'm going to have to let them die now. And the guy being like, what? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You ignore all of that. Like it's, it doesn't move the plot along of the overarching show. It's not to say that it's not hugely important.

Okay.

But it's, it's a, like a D plot where you don't even meet the guy that he's sacrificing, who's attacking that power station. It's a show that knows what it's about, that that even though we know that one character survives, that means it has the luxury of, imperiling other characters, but also the scale of it. Like what I love about it is it's so banal. Like it's from, Ferrex is this tiny little mining town.

Great architecture. Space, Florida.

Yeah. And then he goes to, you know, his version of space Florida gets arrested on the beach, and then goes to jail. It's a great, great show.

Okay, it actually comes. This was not something we've directly talked about in this podcast, but something I've been thinking about a lot this year and start last year, but it connects to stuff about character and or in the importance of having thematic scenes. It's also something I've been thinking about is the importance of having scenes of characters by themselves. So it's just the audience and the character. I actually think it really can be a really effective way for the audience to connect with character.

I'm writing in the schedule right now characters by themselves.

Oh, in terms of episodes. Yeah, I mean, I like that. Hopefully would be a very short episode because it's like here's five movies where we see these moments of characters by themselves and we kind of project into them. Them and we kind of project emotion into them but I think it actually makes the audience feel more connected with the character.

It's not just characters by themselves it's characters by themselves in scenes where usually it's not plot it's not like the character is like defusing the bomb by themselves right it It is, it's just time with characters sitting with themselves.

Yeah, the plot. Yeah, it's where they're almost letting their mask down. Like we feel that we're seeing a side of the character that they wouldn't show anyone else. It's the moment of Darth Vader, I can't keep it in Star Wars, having his helmet put back on before he has to go outside.

But you I mean that scene what I love about that and it's such a throwaway moments empire isn't it where you first see him it also means he wants to take.

So you get that moment of him, you know, like us saying that, Oh, he's a monster on the side, but then there's some kind of, you know, scar or whatever.

The helmet off and he has to wear it all the time I could actually that scene.

Hmm. Why not both?

Makes me feel sorry for him not go he's a disgusting monster under the helmet yeah it could be both.

All right, speaking of both, is there any key lessons in wrap-up for Black Matter? No?

No, probably not from Backmatter.

Yeah, it feels more epic because it's all it's dealing with stuff that's literally life and death for the whole universe.

I still think the scale thing, what makes Andor work is how small scale it is. That doesn't mean it's not tense. That doesn't mean it's not important, but it's just made such an incredible show by not being epic. Do you have any learnings from Backmatter? That's your takeaway every.

I am correct.

Yeah.

Yes. All right. This episode is being brought to you pretty much just by our patrons. So thank you, patrons, particularly in especially Kazimir, Eduardo, Jennifer, Garrett, Beyond, Randy, Jesse, Sandra, Theus, Alex and Krob. You for being supporters of the podcast, some of you for a very long time, right? Like almost since the doors opens. So thank you very much for your ongoing support. Thank you to all our Patreons. Please consider becoming a Patreon or tipping us on using the Linktree PayPal account or buying some merch. It is, possibly Christmas, just being Christmas. Hope you had a good Christmas, I just realised.

Stuart was supposed to edit this and get this out before Christmas. I'm pretty sure he'll get it out before New Years.

I haven't specified the year.