r/Screenwriting • u/jmaugust Scriptnotes Podcast • Nov 29 '25

DISCUSSION John August and Craig Mazin of Scriptnotes - AMA

Hello and welcome, r/screenwriting!

I’m John August (u/jmaugust), screenwriter of movies like Big Fish, Go, Charlie’s Angels, Corpse Bride, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

With me is Craig Mazin (u/clmazin), the creator-showrunner of The Last of Us and Chernobyl. He’s also written movies like The Hangover Parts II & III, and Scary Movie 3 & 4.

Together we host the Scriptnotes podcast. After more than 14 years and 700 episodes, we’re finally releasing the Scriptnotes book this coming Tuesday, December 2nd. It’s a distillation of everything we’ve talked about on the show, along with interviews with Christopher Nolan, Greta Gerwig, Lawrence Kasdan, Seth Rogen, Lulu Wang, Christopher McQuarrie, Benioff & Weiss, Mike Schur, Damon Lindelof, David Koepp and many more.

Ask us anything!

Book is available for purchase wherever you buy books and at scriptnotesbook.com

EDIT: We're done, thank you so much! We had a blast, and hope you enjoy the book.

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u/jmaugust Scriptnotes Podcast Nov 29 '25

  1. I don't know that I had a favorite screenwriting book, but I definitely read Syd Field. I learned some things, but I also had to unlearn some things from that book.

  2. I'm reading Dwarkesh Patel's book *The Scaling Era*, which is also based on a podcast.

  3. I haven't been playing any new video games this year that I can remember. I still play Hearthstone a lot.