Transcript

Aaron Nemoyten (00:00)
Hey, welcome to Make Games Drink Coffee. This is part two of my interview with Lauren Ash. We spoke about screenwriting and the Matrix and a bunch of other stuff relating to screenwriting.

This was a great conversation, ⁓ much less of an interview than usual, ⁓ and really just a nice fun conversation. So

I hope you enjoy.

Lauryn Ash (00:30)
want to hear more about your film studies degree that you mentioned that I think around the beginning of this episode maybe because I do not have a film studies degree despite writing in film and TV. And so it would be awesome to understand.

Like how that’s connected to your own game design philosophy and not just write the cinematics.

Aaron Nemoyten (00:48)
Okay, who’s asking the questions here? ⁓ No, so yeah, I think it’s really interesting. So I went through an interesting, I don’t usually use the word journey, but I guess it’s the right word.

Lauryn Ash (00:50)
Yeah, I know.

Aaron Nemoyten (01:01)
So I was actually writing a lot of music from the time I was about 12 because I got a hold of some music production software for ⁓ Mac OS 7 or whatever it was at the time. Something called Player Pro, which I’d never heard of anyone using in a professional context since, except I did ⁓ read recently that Apex Twin used it for some of his music. So that made me feel really good.

when I was really little, I wanted to do game design, basically. And then I started getting older and I was like too cool for it and music seemed cool and I played drums. I was in rock bands and stuff. But basically I didn’t have a real college plan. I got good grades on the…

you know, coasting by strategy. And I didn’t really know what I was going to do after high school. I ended up going to community college and my first semester I happened to take an intro to film production class that they offered at College of Marin because they happened to have these two professors who were really good with film and they they spun up a film program there with 16 millimeter bull X cameras and some consumer digital cameras and stuff like that. And it was a

really good program for community college and I really enjoyed it.

And so I decided that I would just do two years at college and we’re in and then transfer to SF State because it was inexpensive. And, you know, I was sort of warned against accumulating a lot of debt by going to a more expensive school. So the thing about SF State, though, is it’s a state school. doesn’t have a lot of money. So even though the degree is not officially a film studies degree, it was like just cinema. think they did not have enough equipment to go around once you get out of the beginning classes where you just have to shoot something on 16 millimeters.

So if you want to do the advanced film production classes, you got to fight for them. And I was not about that. I was frustrated by the idea that they would make me like fight to get into the film production classes. So I took a lot of.

just general film theory, whatever classes, watch films and read about them and learn about them, and some screenwriting classes. ⁓ Screenwriting teacher there is like the world expert on Orson Welles, and also he wrote Rock and Roll High School, the movie with the Ramones. That was his one professional screenwriting gig.

It was an interesting experience. didn’t go in expecting a film studies degree. I went in expecting to do more production. I did some production on my own. So I made a documentary film that Current TV picked up. That was Al Gore’s cable channel that he started. And I shot a music video for a local band. I did a bunch of other random stuff. But I finished that thinking…

Lauryn Ash (03:36)
Yeah.

Aaron Nemoyten (03:43)
I’m not going to move to LA, so what else is there? And that’s how I ended up getting into startups and programming and things like that. So I ping-ponged through a lot of different things.

Lauryn Ash (03:55)
I love

that though, because I think I also had community college courses on my like transcript about probably like 20 hours. I think I had a full semester because I was able to take them during high school. like, I love community college. I think it’s fantastic. They’re great programs and great professors out there. Like, that’s like such a wise move on your part.

Aaron Nemoyten (04:12)
yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it worked out. the thing that the film studies classes really taught me, if I had to generalize it, was…

that you are creating an experience for other people to perceive and interpret. And there are all these different ways that you can interpret those things. It may have nothing to do with what you were intending.

So you do have to keep in mind that like you were ultimately building something for other people to There are all these different tools in your toolbox to create that experience, but ultimately that’s what it is. It’s you have these different tools, you have a toolbox, you’re creating an experience and you hope that you’re going to convey and accomplish what you want to. And when people say, when people talk about, you know, death of the author or everything’s open to interpretation or whatever, or, know, there’s no good and bad and certain

certain

areas, I tend to think that there is the effectiveness with which somebody accomplishes the goals that they set out for themselves in terms of conveying ideas to the audience, getting them to feel a certain way. So that stuff is important. It does matter what the person making the thing is trying to do. And that translates to any creative medium.

Lauryn Ash (05:25)
And not only like, is that the best way to think to describe that there is no such thing as the death of the author. I think if anything, the author and the author in this context for everyone listening does mean anyone that it’s a game designer, a screenwriter, a cinematographer, ⁓ you making your reviews on book talk. Okay. Like you, the author of that creation, right? Lest I say the content. You have a creative work.

the way in which you communicate your ideals, like that will come across to your readers. And I think if you’ve communicated in a way in which everyone is picking up kind of the same vibe, that is successful communication versus if you are communicating something, but only maybe 50 % of people are picking down, getting the vibes. Like it’s not really the successful communication that you want. And that’s really what I’ve actually learned even more so with all of the screenwriting that I have been doing.

is understanding and translating that even something that might make sense in a games writing context or something that might make sense in the direction context, right? This is what we wanna see on screen. I’m not telling you how to do it, but we do need to use this very specific walk animation or this very specific cycle, right? And it’s prescriptive in games or it would come across that way in a screenplay as prescriptive versus directive. Assuming you don’t have an unlimited animation budget or you’re PCapping.

Aaron Nemoyten (06:39)
Yeah.

Lauryn Ash (06:50)
or performance capturing everything, assuming you only have a certain set of animations, right? It would come across as very prescriptive in a screenplay, but that’s simply because in a screenplay, you’re gonna have way more people bringing it up and taking into that. And so it’s like, now my communications in screenwriting are totally different. What I thought was very clear from maybe a games writing perspective, or could be clear to me in a novel, right? Very prosey, very flavorful, very beautiful.

And screenwriting is like, please stop. That’s not your job. That’s the director’s job. That’s the cameraman’s job, right? So it’s all about that transference of information. It’s been really interesting to kind of see him hearing you talk about having that creative endeavors and having the audience transmission something. I hate arguments about the death of the author because I’m like, well, without the author, what is there AI slop?

Aaron Nemoyten (07:45)
This is true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There’s the average of everything that conveys nothing.

Lauryn Ash (07:46)
That’s true.

It’s

yes, the average of everything that conveys nothing like what are really well put together sentence. What did it say?

Aaron Nemoyten (07:56)
Yeah. Yeah. ⁓ so I want to talk about the matrix script because you, sent that as an example of something interesting to read and talk about. But when you were talking about, know, how successful is somebody at conveying the thing, ⁓ a phrase popped into my head, which is, have you seen adaptation?

Lauryn Ash (08:15)
I have not seen adaptation, but the reason why I did bring up the Matrix script is because I think it is, if no one’s read the Matrix, by the way, and if at this point you haven’t seen the Matrix and you’re listening to a game design podcast, I’m not quite sure what niche that is. ⁓ But I would say that the Matrix script for me is what taught me the lesson of conveying what you mean to your audience in the written format. And I do want everyone to know that this is a production script.

Aaron Nemoyten (08:29)
you

Yes.

Lauryn Ash (08:44)
So I don’t, I believe it is not the, it’s not like to say the first draft, like it is a production script, which means that it has gone through several revisions to kind of match their vision of what they want to see on screen. But even reading the scripts, you will be able to see the vision of the matrix and maybe even more so because you are backdating, right? And recalling the movie that you have seen. So if actually you’re listening to this and haven’t seen the matrix and are still listening to a game design podcast,

Aaron Nemoyten (09:06)
Yes.

Lauryn Ash (09:13)
I think that, yeah, it’s gonna be a wild trip to read the script and then you re-watch the movie. And that’s a lot of what I’ve been doing to kind of see how people are communicating their visions.

Aaron Nemoyten (09:24)
Yes. ⁓ One thing I wanted to mention real quick though, in adaptation, so first of all, adaptation is fantastic. Nicolas Cage plays two brothers with different personalities. And one of them is trying to write the movie that you’re actually currently watching. And he goes to a screenwriting course and there’s you know, screenwriting guru.

giving all his advice. And one of the things he says is he’s telling you what not to do. And he says, God help you if you’re writing voiceover or using voiceover, ⁓ which the movie is doing. But I was just thinking about when you’re trying to convey something to an audience, I just thought, and God help you if you’re doing satire, because that is the ultimate, like you never get everyone. You can never get 100%.

Lauryn Ash (10:07)
You never get everyone. You’ll

never get a hundred percent. if you can get, I mean, that’s why SNL is still running after so long, right? Like if you can get 90%, it has to be relevant too. Like satire only age as well if it’s universal and the relevancy never like doesn’t die with it, if that makes sense. Versus there are jokes that only work in the moment, right? Comedy writing is all about jokes that work in a moment. So getting a humorous situational comedy, right? It’s a lot.

was about to say is less challenging, I would say, than satire, right? Because I think any situations can be comical. ⁓ It’s also funny to hear you mention voiceover, because I think what you mean is narration.

Aaron Nemoyten (10:41)
yeah.

Yes, that is what I mean. You’re right.

Lauryn Ash (10:49)
Yeah. Yes.

think, yeah, just, just to be clear, because I think that there’s voiceover, but you can do VO and it’s more like, on the phone, right? Or it’s like, are you there? Versus it’s just like, today was a day like any other.

Aaron Nemoyten (11:05)
Right. I want to set up a little bit about screenwriting just for for anybody listening that isn’t familiar with with screenwriting. So.

Lauryn Ash (11:06)
6 a.m. making the pot of coffee.

Aaron Nemoyten (11:16)
I’ve learned a little bit more about how to think and talk about this from the Script Notes podcast, which is like a phenomenal podcast. ⁓ It’s two guys that have a ton of experience. ⁓ One of them actually wrote The Sheep Detectives, which just came out, ⁓ but he also wrote Go and Big Fish. And then the other one, ⁓ Craig Mazin, John August is the first one. Craig Mazin is the second one. He… ⁓

did the Last of Us show, did Chernobyl.

Anyway, so I wanted to just set up screenwriting a little bit as a concept. ⁓ So the Script Notes podcast, they talk about this a bit about like, what is the purpose of a screenplay and why is it different from a novel or anything else? And the thing about a screenplay that’s so interesting is that it is a format that has been honed for the last hundred years or whatever. And it has multiple purposes, which is that it is meant to be read.

But it has to be read in a way that tells you things about the movie.

but it can’t be too much. So it needs to give you the tone. It needs to give you information about the characters, about the scenery. It also has to convey something to anybody who is going to be a location scout or anybody who is going to budget the movie. They have to know how many locations there are and they have to have some kind of understanding about how many shots there are and whether you’re inside or outside and whether the time of day is going to matter for your production schedule. But it also has to be entertaining. It has to be something

an actor can read and understand what they’re going to have to do for the movie. So screenplays are their own art form in a way because they have to serve different functions than just if you’re reading a novel, for example. So I wanted to set that up because I think that’s what makes discussing screenplays so interesting.

Lauryn Ash (13:00)
I think that’s a really great way to explain what a screenplay is. I would add that ultimately, a screenplay is an exercise in the author’s capability of telling you what they really care about and what they don’t.

Aaron Nemoyten (13:12)
Mm.

Yes. And there’s conflicting advice, if you go out looking for advice about screenplays, about like, don’t write too much direction in your screenplay. And if you go and read the screenplays, let’s say the original Natural Born Killers screenplay that you can find online, it’s got a bunch of very specific camera move descriptions.

Lauryn Ash (13:39)
So I actually wanted to talk about that. So I think this is actually a great way for me to talk about what a production script is. So when you see camera movements, that’s a production script. And the reason why I mention this is that a lot of my early scripts followed the production script methodology where I would label a camera. I would label a specific sound effect. I would even say things like cut to, move in, et cetera.

Aaron Nemoyten (13:44)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Lauryn Ash (14:03)
And what I learned is that a lot of these are the production scripts and all of that is done after the script has potentially been purchased and is set for production. That’s considered what you could say. I’ve heard them called spec scripts. This is different than a spec script, say as a kind of like an episode of Seinfeld.

right, or an episode of The Simpsons, for example. Like that’s a spec script as well, but a spec script for even a new and unique maybe feature film that you’re writing is a spec script. And they don’t want to see things like camera movements or things. You do want sound cues, but maybe you don’t always want a sound cue. You do want to show there’s an explosion, but you wouldn’t go VFX colon. And you might see that in a production script. so then unfortunately, what we find though, is that when we reading scripts online, then

those are most usually the production scripts. Those are not spec scripts versus scripts on the blacklist might be spec scripts or have a higher chance of being spec scripts. And so it is just something to consider, right? Is that

Aaron Nemoyten (14:59)
Yes.

Lauryn Ash (15:05)
I have been told to take camera movements out of a lot of my scripts because I was being too directive and too prescriptive and that would be someone else’s role. Like I’m not allowing collaboration for anybody that really cares about camera like I do. Someone else will have a collaborative idea and the hope is that I have written it in a way that would make it obvious that you should use a very specific camera. ⁓ But they might not, right? And that’s not up to me.

Aaron Nemoyten (15:32)
Yeah.

thing that I, I think I’ve learned from listening to people who are working screenwriters is that there is no one way to do it. There are some ways that it’s usually done, but that doesn’t mean that you have to. that often

the little flourishes that break the rules from a confident screenwriter are the things that will draw people in and sort of say like you’re in good hands because this person understands how to break the rules when they need to to drive a point home or create a feeling. Like there was an example, I can’t remember what script it was that they were talking about on the Script Notes podcast that ⁓ would.

put certain things in a different color because it needed to be, I think, a different time or different character or different perspective or even using a different font than you’re supposed to use. Like all of these things are, if it helps the reader.

to understand and sort of feel what needs to be conveyed there, then that translates to the actors, that translates to the director, and that helps them understand the vibe that you’re going for, the mood that you’re trying to create, and that stuff’s really important. But you can’t go too far out of that because then people get confused. it’s like there’s a balance. And a camera move might be the right thing if it is the most important and best way to convey the…

you the idea that you’re trying to, usually it’s not. Occasionally it is.

Lauryn Ash (17:01)
Now, I would say there are the reason why I mentioned a camera is that I think it’s a very quick way to show the audience what you want to do or the reader what you want to do in your screenplay. But you could always say moving towards instead of saying camera zoom, right? And moving towards is different than a camera zoom as well, because it might not be a camera zoom. It might actually be moving right the camera on the track. And so I think that

Aaron Nemoyten (17:19)
Yeah, yeah.

Lauryn Ash (17:31)
That’s kind of why I brought up the camera. But you’re completely right in that a lot of times modern scripts will also now have images or a very specific kind of depiction of something. And that’s for when it’s a very important thing to see that someone’s say a handwritten note and you get a clue. You draw the symbol that the murdering organization uses. And you need to see that in the screenplay.

Aaron Nemoyten (17:55)
Yeah. Yeah.

Lauryn Ash (17:58)
because you can’t convey the iconography, right? And then maybe you even icon, you kind of insert it throughout your script, right? and then the symbol comes up again. And now when anyone reads the symbol in all caps, they’ll realize, ooh, it’s that image that I saw.

Aaron Nemoyten (18:12)
Yes.

Aaron Nemoyten (18:17)
Make Games Drink Coffee is brought to you by me, Aaron Nemoyten I’d love to grow the audience for this podcast to the point that it can pay for itself in some way. To that end, it would really help if you left a review, if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts Spotify, or like and comment if you’re watching on YouTube. You show that algorithm who’s boss. All right, back to the show.

Aaron Nemoyten (18:39)
getting into the matrix screenplay. So you sent that to me as something to potentially talk about full disclosure. I read half of it last night and ⁓ then my daughter woke up and I had to tend to her and get her back to sleep. So I’d say 40 pages is plenty to talk about. ⁓

Lauryn Ash (18:57)
You did the right thing.

Aaron Nemoyten (18:59)
think it’s a fantastic script to read for a lot of reasons. ⁓ Reason number one is that it’s got really evocative prose when it needs to. And it’s really good at conveying the mood of something in a very like very short ⁓ amount of time. So generally screenplay shouldn’t spend a lot of time describing things. It should be like just enough to give you the vibe. And like the first line of this screenplay is it says fade in on computer

screen so close it has no boundaries. And that tells you so much in six words. And if you’ve seen the movie, you know, like, yes, that’s exactly what happens. And that’s the feel. Like the idea of no boundaries is serving multiple purposes there, which is also brilliant.

Lauryn Ash (19:47)
not only is it brilliant, like the next line is so evocative and it frustrates me to no end in that like I must become this good. It’s a blinking cursor pulses in the electric darkness like a heart coursing with phosphorus light burning beneath the derma of black neon glass. I’m like, what the hell, man? What is that? I’m like, I cannot. And then what’s really interesting is that it tells you the tone.

Aaron Nemoyten (20:10)
Yeah, yeah.

Lauryn Ash (20:16)
that every character is going to use the world, right? This world is some sort of miasma of beautiful darkness, but we also know all the matrix. When you’re an audience member, I mean, you’re really just seeing like a blinking cursor. Bink, bink, blink, blink. And that’s why when Aaron was talking about how a screenplay needs to set the tone, like you need in that moment, that’s all one sentence, by the way, as well, everybody. In that moment, we get that this is like

this is the tone of the movie. And it’s just really phenomenal. ⁓ And you can’t do that in every script. Not every script is gonna start like the matrix, but I just, the brevity, the economy of it, like that’s why I love writing. say love writing, I don’t always love it, but I would say I’ve been really enjoying screenwriting because it’s just so brief, so evocative. And there’s a lot of lessons you take from games writing where you do kind of have to be so brief.

Aaron Nemoyten (20:58)
Mm-hmm.

Lauryn Ash (21:15)
You have character limits on every single line of dialogue, every single line of text.

Aaron Nemoyten (21:20)
Yeah, well, and also with games, ⁓ players are often impatient. And if you establish a precedent that characters are going to talk a lot and you don’t get to play until the characters are done talking, people will just start skipping or they’ll start tuning out. Unless they’re playing a Bioware game and they know what they’re getting into, for example. Not that those games waste speech, but people, if you play that game for the plot,

Lauryn Ash (21:21)
Thank

Aaron Nemoyten (21:49)
and the characters that you’re gonna listen, but.

Lauryn Ash (21:50)
But also

you have to listen because the game mechanic of dialogue, the gameplay and the dialogue are the same. And so in the Bioware example, it’s not that they, if anything, they’re incredibly economical with their words because they have to balance this conversation style of gameplay where whenever you enter a scene, it’s not a cut scene. ⁓ It is something where you could potentially participate in, even in the ones that look like really high budget cut scenes.

Aaron Nemoyten (21:56)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yes.

Lauryn Ash (22:18)
And so

while they are dialogue driven, because most games are dialogue driven, they’re not, you know, narrator driven, except for Disco Elysium, we love you. ⁓ Which is also, which also is dialogue, to be fair. ⁓ But they aren’t meant to be read, they’re meant to be played. And so in that case, that’s why I would say that like it’s still economy, right? It’s still the gameplay and all of those lessons that we’re talking about.

Aaron Nemoyten (22:40)
Yeah, and speaking of economy, I think one of the most fascinating things about me reading the Matrix script after having seen the movie a bunch of times is, and granted, I haven’t seen it since ⁓ Resurrections came out because we like binged all the other ones in preparation, so it’s been a few years, but there’s so much that was cut. There’s so much dialogue that was cut out, and I think it’s a great lesson in…

If you read that dialogue after having seen the movie, I think for almost every line that they cut, you can immediately go like, yeah, we didn’t need that. We didn’t, we didn’t need that. It’s extra stuff. There’s extra little detail that Neo’s friend slash neighbor is, is paying him to hack the municipal computer so that they’ll take the boot off his car. So they think he paid the fine or whatever. And that is cool. It is clever. It is kind of funny.

But the movie is not hurt having had that removed. And actually, a lot of the stuff that has been removed from the script are things that make the movie feel more concrete and less surreal. Like references to it being in Chicago have been completely removed. I imagine because someone told them how expensive it would be to shoot in Chicago because they ended up shooting in Australia. But removing that also contributes to the movie being more surreal.

And the real world, sorry, the in-matrix parts of the movie feeling less real because they don’t have those details. They’re not as grounded. And I think that all works really well.

Lauryn Ash (24:10)
And it works really well in the production sense. And I think what is really important though to take away from this is that as a screenwriter, those details matter and those details ground the characters. And like you mentioned, the purpose of a screenplay is not just what are we gonna shoot in the movie, it’s to tell the audience and mainly the reader, the execs, the people that wanna produce the movie, who is Neo? What does he do, right?

Aaron Nemoyten (24:13)
Yes.

Lauryn Ash (24:38)
I think an audience member, especially like in the 90s and in the early 2000s when hackers were really well known, like they know what a hacker does. They don’t need to see that on screen anymore. And now what I would say is a reader doesn’t need to read what a hacker does. When we’re now making movies in the modern era, right? We kind of know what hacking is. But back then, I think they needed to show that Neo is not a good guy.

in this same matrix world, right? He’s not an upstanding citizen of society. He’s someone who’s like, I will just hack really well. And yes, now it’s like this never happened. So you’re good, right? The truck comes up. And I think it actually also shows his character, right? How does he interact with his neighbor? He goes, I need the money. yeah, he’s not, I’m here for charity. I’ll do this because I’m a great guy. It’s like, do you have the money? Because if you don’t have the money, get out.

Aaron Nemoyten (25:22)
Yes.

Lauryn Ash (25:31)
right? he’s incredibly less sympathetic that way. And I think that it’s that type of textural detail that you need in a screenplay. I didn’t tell you to read this one because I was hoping to read a different one, but we both did not get time to do that. But if anyone is a fan of the Kingsman movies, ⁓ you have to read the first script for it because it’s completely different when it was originally written and it was called Huntsman and Sons. And

Aaron Nemoyten (25:32)
He’s less sympathetic that way.

Interesting.

Lauryn Ash (26:01)
The theme and the tone of the movie are exactly the same. And most of the dialogue is the same, but the order of the scenes, the way in which they’re actually produced, and honestly, a lot of the additions that came from the production, and I think maybe the production version of the screenplay that I have tried to find, but I’ve read this Huntsman and Sons ⁓ original instead, is really, that is the one to study as well.

because The Matrix is a great movie, but if you like Kingsman, recognizing that what was produced is like you mentioned, Aaron, The Matrix became more surreal, Kingsman became more fantastical, more absurdist, right? And in the script, it’s actually a lot more down to earth, grounded, and it really grounds the characters in this kind of wholesome way where I can see why it got picked up, why it wanted to be produced. But then when it gets to screen, I can see why they made it more fantastical, made it crazy, because how do you differentiate it in a world of spy movies?

Aaron Nemoyten (27:00)
Yes, and I wonder how much of that is the influence of Matthew Vaughn because he has this very fantastical sensibility compared to most other action directors.

Lauryn Ash (27:10)
He dies and I absolutely love his as well. actually before writing Kingsman, Jane Goldman, who is the original author.

of Huntsman and Sons, this was she was originally adapting it from the comic book. She had worked with Matthew Vaughn in the past. And so kind of recognizing the kind of existing relationship between them, she was probably very strong, right, on characters, grounded relationships, themes, tone, emotion. And then Matthew Vaughn picks it up with her. They start writing it together and they’re like, okay, now let’s take this to the next level, right? Let’s take it to the top.

Aaron Nemoyten (27:43)
Yes, and that movie

does have a very good grounding in character. And the main character does have a really interesting background story and an arc. And he has to be convinced to, you know, become a super spy. And then it turns out that the person that has to be convinced is better at it than the people that feel entitled to it. And that is a really important theme.

Lauryn Ash (28:08)
Yes, and that’s all in the original

script. That’s all in the original script. That’s Huntsman and Sons. Like that’s all in that. Another great movie by both of them, Matthew Vaughan and Jane Goldman, is Stardust.

Aaron Nemoyten (28:20)
seen it I really want to I know I’ve heard great

Lauryn Ash (28:22)
Anyway, I

have to bring that up as well because Kingsman is entirely different than the movie Stardust. I mean, it’s just totally different genre, tones, themes of people who’ve seen them. And I have to mention it because as a screenwriter, I think sometimes, especially in the modern world, and this is very true in games, that whatever your writing portfolio samples are, that’s just kind of who you become. The work that you’ve done in the past kind of carries forward into how studios want to hire you now. And I’m just gonna tell you that I’m like, hey, you can start with one way.

Aaron Nemoyten (28:49)
Mm-hmm.

Lauryn Ash (28:52)
and you can change genres completely. Stardust is a fantasy love story and it is beautiful and I love it, but it has the same grounded kind of character arc of like someone that needs to be convinced they need to become better than who they were. But also they are better than the others around them, right? ⁓ Well, because they’re not entitled and that’s kind of the themes, okay? ⁓ And I just think that it’s really fantastic to see that. And so I had to mention that as well because it was something else where I just rewatched it, Aaron, where I was like, crap, I gave you the matrix.

But I actually just read an even better example of the things that we’ve been talking about.

Aaron Nemoyten (29:26)
thing I wanted to mention about this Matrix script is that this version that’s available on imsdb.com is dated April 8th, 1996. So the Matrix didn’t come out for another three years. I don’t know what month it came out, but at least three years. And the idea that you would need to show and explain hacking

Within those three years, 19 by the time the matrix has come out or around that time, it wasn’t just the matrix. It was also the 13th floor. It was existence. It was, ⁓ well, dark city had come out in, I think 98 and well, that’s not hacking, but it is sort of a surreal alternate world.

type thing. in other words, the zeitgeist sort of became this thing that actually made it easier for the matrix not to explain itself. So maybe in some ways they got lucky. also the movie Hackers, of course, which is a absolute cult camp classic. So good holds up, you know.

Lauryn Ash (30:31)
Exactly. Like that came out. And that’s what I’m saying is that like a lot of people in the screenplay writing world, right, especially in LA, everyone who’s in film and TV is going to say, you know, it’s all about timing. it’s true, right? It’s like how they didn’t know when they wrote it, how much they need to explain. And they had to have a longer act one because a lot of the cuts for this movie happened in act one. And then when it came to finally produce the movie, even if they had shot those film, like those scenes, they can cut them because it’s easier to get into the action of what is going to be.

Aaron Nemoyten (30:40)
Mm-hmm.

Lauryn Ash (31:00)
most recognizable and most memorable for consumers.

Aaron Nemoyten (31:03)
I wish we could have talked about screenwriting longer, but unfortunately we are out of time. So maybe we’ll have to pick this up another time, maybe over actual coffee, but Lauryn Ash, thank you so much for being on Make Games Drink Coffee.

Lauryn Ash (31:16)
Thank you so much for having me, Aaron. It has been great. I’m glad we got to talk not just about drink coffee and make games, but also make coffee and drink games. I’m drinking up those experiences and it’s been so exciting to be here today. I’m really looking forward to anything we do in person or being able to chat again. And if anybody wants to reach out to me, I’m super open. I am at espressocat.bluesky and you can also find me on LinkedIn.

Aaron Nemoyten (31:44)
And that’s the end of today’s episode. Once again, a link to the Matrix screenplay will be in the show notes. It’s a great read. Thanks for listening to Make Games Drink Coffee. You can find out more at makeGamesDrinkCoffee.com, and you can email me at makegamesdrinkcoffee at gmail.com. Remember to like, follow, subscribe, leave a review, and tip your barista. Drink up. I’ll see you next time.