231 - Room, Spotlight and The Big Short

Jan 5, 2016

With Craig out of town, John invites Aline Brosh McKenna and Rawson Marshall Thurber over to discuss three of the best-picture contenders and their unusual scripts. None of them have classic protagonist-antagonist setups, and all three upend expectations of narrative structure. We talk about both how they work and why they work.

 

Also this episode, what lessons we learned from 2015.

 

Craig is back next week for a normal episode in which we’ll discuss Star Wars, Scriptbook, the WGA amendments and character names.

 

Links:

 

• Rawson Marshall Thurber on episodes 100, 101, 123 and 124, and on Twitter
• Aline Brosh McKenna on episodes 60, 76, 100, 101, 119, 123, 124 152, 161, 175, 180, 200 and 219
• Room on IMDb and Wikipedia, and the novel
• Spotlight on IMDb and Wikipedia
• The Big Short on IMDb and Wikipedia, and the book
• Compose Yourself
• Tom Clancy’s The Division
• The Hunting Ground on IMDb and Wikipedia
• Get your tickets now for Scriptnotes, Live on January 25 with Jason Bateman and Lawrence Kasdan, a benefit for Hollywood HEART
• Outro by Matthew Chilelli (send us yours!)

 

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.