John and Craig invite Aline Brosh McKenna back to celebrate the third anniversary of Scriptnotes. It's a jam-packed, glass-and-a-half of wine, listener-favorite episode.

They look at ways to breathe new life into scenes and characters that aren't working, box office journalism and how Hollywood is always dying, scene geography, and the role of emotional intelligence (or EQ) in a writer's career.

In our bonus segment for premium members, we have original outtakes from the episode where we look at what changed in the world in our first three years on air, make predictions for what's to come, re-invent Spanx, and of course talk about D&D.

Links:

Going to the 2025 Austin Film Festival? Submit to our LIVE Three Page Challenge here!
The original episode 161 and its transcript
Aline Brosh McKenna on Instagram and IMDb
Why do people throw tomatoes? from How Stuff Works
The Knowledge
Global Entry
From 2014: Movies Have Worst Summer Since 1997 by Brooks Barnes
Mimeographs on Wikipedia and eBay
Maguire Watch on Everything is Terrible!
Filthy Scriptnotes episodes The Angeles Crest Fiasco and The Dirty Show
The Honourable Woman
This Movie Will Require Dinosaurs by C. W. Neill
N3TWORK
Preorder the Scriptnotes Book!
Get a Scriptnotes T-shirt!
Check out the Inneresting Newsletter
Become a Scriptnotes Premium member, or gift a subscription
Subscribe to Scriptnotes on YouTube
Scriptnotes on Instagram
John August on Bluesky and Instagram
Outro by Robert Hutchison (send us yours!)
This episode was originally produced by Stuart Friedel. Scriptnotes is produced by Drew Marquardt and edited by Matthew Chilelli.

Email us at ask@johnaugust.com

You can download the episode here.

161 - A Cheap Cut of Meat Soaked in Butter (Encore)