Aline: And the next thing is you actually get a mattress into a bed. But you’ve got to be — really think like an entrepreneur. And just to go on a side topic for a second, I know you guys have talked with bewilderment many times about why there aren’t more women who do this. And it is easier to understand with directing because the raising of children is not very compatible with being on movie sets. But I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why there aren’t more female screenwriters and I think it’s this aspect of being an entrepreneur. You are really running a small business which is you. And you have to put yourself out there every day and wear your sandwich board of like, “I’m interesting. You’re going to listen to me.” And I think that women are attracted to things where they can demonstrate excellence in a somewhat prescribed fashion. That’s why women are killing men in colleges and graduate schools. But screenwriting is not like that. Screenwriting is a lot like you’re starting a business of making flavored pistachios. Craig: Here we go. Ice cream. Here we go. Aline: [laughs] Flavored pistachios, I don’t even know where that came from. Craig: Flavored pistachios. John: Well, I can see the movements. I thought you were going to go for some Etsy kind of thing. I thought you were going for some crochet – Aline: Or like, yeah, macrame, squirrel hats. I went back to squirrels. Craig: Macrame squirrel hats. And you girls with your flavored pistachios. Aline: [laughs] But you got to go out there and like be an entrepreneur and save your money and really put yourself out there. And I think that it’s not a thing that we encourage women to do from childhood is to really say like, “I’m interesting…” John: Well, I wonder if culturally we have a different expectation about men in their 20s, it’s expected that you are broke, and you are sleeping on couches, and that your life is a disaster, but you’re doing all that stuff and so eventually you’re going to break through. And we perceive a woman who is doing that as being a failure. Because that’s not a viable way for her to proceed. We are more worried for that woman than we are worried for the equivalent man in the 20s who is living that sort of marginal lifestyle. Is that true? Aline: I don’t know if it’s that. I really think it’s about when you’re coming up as a writer, like I remember I ran into a friend from high school and I had just started being a writer, and I had maybe sold one thing. And we were at a party and somebody said to me, “What do you do?” And I said, “I’m a writer.” And he looked at me and he said, “Do you really tell people that?” Craig: [laughs] Cool guy. Aline: And I thought, you know, I really — it takes a leap of faith and a confidence in yourself to say, yeah, I’m a writer, I have something to say. Because essentially what you do as a writer is you say, “Listen to me. That’s the very first thing you do.” Craig: Well, that’s, and I wonder if this is something in terms of the gender thing that women are trained by the world around them, if not by their parents, to not aggressively go after what they want because they themselves have an inherent desirability. That they are instructed to essentially play hard to get and to let things come to them. Aline: I don’t know. Maybe in a — I really think it’s an adjustment on that which is to go out there and say what you have to do at the beginning of your career which is I have nothing to prove to you that what I have to say is valuable except this: what I believe, my voice, my sensibility, my humor, my intelligence. And it’s just as good as anyone else’s. Probably better than someone else’s. You’re going to listen to me. I’m going to sit in a rom. I’m going to command your attention for 20 minutes. Craig: Right. Aline: I’m going to go outside the box. There’s no format for this. You know, it’s a very unscripted kind of unplanned thing. And what I want to say to women who are listening, and I was talking at a thing at UCSB and what I didn’t know, what I didn’t understand, when I started I thought you had to know people and you had to network, and you had to do all these things which I was really — how was I going to do that? My parents were first generation immigrants. They don’t know anybody. There was no uncle I could call. There was none of that. Craig: “Aline. I don’t know anybody who can help you.” Aline: Right So, I had to really take that. And what I didn’t know is you’ve got to have the goods, be good at what you do, serve that apprenticeship of becoming good at what you do, but you also have to say, “My point of view is valuable. Listen to me. I have something to say.” And I do find young women, younger women, they just do it. They just, you know, I’m working with this young comedian. She makes these YouTube videos on her own. She pays for them on her own. She’s a great DP and she writes songs and she just does it. And I think that it really is changing and that young women have now unmitigated access to media. They don’t have to audition for anyone. They can just write their blog, or do their video, or put it out there. Craig: Sisters are doing it for themselves. Aline: They really are. But what I would say is if you’re trying to get into Hollywood screenwriting, which is a more Mandarin, closed system, you have to bet on yourself. And part of betting on yourself is saving money. Craig: Mm-hmm. Aline: It is. Because every penny you save is money you can spend giving yourself time to write that great script. And that’s why I was really cheap when I started was just, you know, I know that if I get paid, if I can hold onto this check, if I can stretch this check as long as I can, that’s more time that I can spend working. Craig: Yeah. Aline: And if you get your first check and you blow it, you’re going to have to go and get that job which is going to be distracting and exhausting. John: I hear you.

http://johnaugust.com/2013/scriptnotes-ep-119-positive-moviegoing-transcript saving $ is "betting on yourself... every penny... is money you can spend giving yourself time to write." - aline brosh mckenna #scriptnotes