DZ-112: Breaking the 4th wall — Transcript

Are you telling me if you watch Xena, you, uh...

If you have an unbreakable television date with Xena, I'm sorry to tell you, you're queer.

Hi, I'm Stu Willis.

And I'm Chas Fisher.

And I'm Mel Killingsworth.

And welcome to Drive Zero, a podcast where three emerging-ish filmmakers-ish try to work out what makes great screenplays work.

And today we are continuing with our series that we've done about different ways that the filmmakers or storytellers can talk directly to the audience. And this one is on breaking the fourth wall, or for people who may have been confused by some of our other terminology in previous episodes, barreling, which is to refer to looking straight down the barrel of the camera. And we're predominantly referring to when characters basically look at the camera and by extension are looking at us as the audience and how we're hoping to distinguish that from in the previous episodes we looked at like a taxonomy of different ways that storytellers can talk directly to the audience but I feel like this one's going to be the biggest contrast to voiceover. I mean, that's for me at least. Why would you choose voiceover or to break the fourth wall?

Because you're doing a video on YouTube and you want to make sure that you don't get copyright struck, so you put your face there instead of pausing on the video and talking over it, as I've been learning from recent experience.

And some do both, which is a lot of fun, but some choose one or the other and some vary back and forth.

Just jumping in quick to note that this episode, as all our episodes are, is brought to you by our amazing Patreons. If you want more Draft Zero more often, check out the Patreon link in our show notes. And one thing that you'll find there for free is our response to this question by top tier patron Alexandra, which as you'll hear, strongly relates to this episode.

Hi Chas, hi Stu, hi Mel. I've been very much enjoying your deep dive into all the various facets of talking directly to the audience. And it's got me pondering, namely, I wonder if direct address and voiceover aren't distinctly separate mechanisms, but lie more on a continuum. For example, the address to the reader-slash-audience is an old literary trope that stretches back to the invention of the modern novel in the 18th century. Lawrence Stern's Tristam Shandy from 1759 is a celebrated example. And of course, addressing the audience directly in the theatre dates way further back to Aristophanes in ancient Athens. All of which is to say that the so-called neutral third-person narrator, be it in a novel, theatre, or film, and who doesn't directly address the audience is actually more the exception rather than the norm and it's quite a recent norm at that so one of the things that's notable about a fleabag or ferris bueller's day off or wayne's world especially funny games is that the character addressing the audience knows not only that they're in a work of fiction but more specifically that they're in a film or a tv show which is an even more direct form of address than the more literary narrator like in Barry Lyndon or True Grit, who's using that sort of 19th century dear reader mechanism rather than a dear film viewer mechanism. All of which suggests a further question. Is the viewer being addressed a communal one, as in all you viewers at home, or is it a specific one, as in you Chaz, or you Stu, or you Mel, the individual? So what's so chillingly effective about the direct address in Funny Games is that the viewer can't hide in the crowd and the cinema audience, but is accused individually of being complicit in the violence portrayed on screen, which is, it seems, rather rare in either film or literature.

If you want to hear our answer to that amazing question, please go to our Patreon link in the show notes. All right, Patreon plug over, back to the topic at hand.

So Mel, what have we chosen?

Yes.

So we've got the pilot episode of High Fidelity, the TV show. And then we've got a season two episode of Abbott Elementary. And then we've got an episode from Fleabag, also season two, episode four. And so the High Fidelity, essentially, because it's the pilot, it's setting up how it does its fourth wall break conceit is sort of establishing the rules. Abbott Elementary is playing with the rules that it's already established. And it's, you know, maybe 30 episodes before this. And Fleabag is actually smashing all of its rules that it's established up into this point.

Yeah. It is interesting to me that we picked three TV examples, although it is well worth listeners going back to the previous episode on which I did not appear on how this technique was used in Fight Club.

For specific scenes. And it'll be interesting for us to unpack the idea of why TV particularly has done it. And if you haven't seen Abbott Elementary, documentary, I think because it's so episodic, you'll get a lot out of this discussion anyway, and equally true of High Fidelity, because we're talking about the pilot. They're all worth watching, but I think you can listen to this episode and yeah, you might get mild spoilers, but I don't think it's going to emotionally spoil you.

And in terms of Abbott, Abbott is very close to something like Parks and Recreation and The Office and a lot of these mockumentary, long-running TV sitcoms. The biggest difference is that Abbott does play with it a little bit more, and that's particularly the episodes we picked up on.

Yeah.

It's a bit more meta.

So before we dive in particular, my big learning that I'm carrying over from our episode on Fight Club, which actually was prompted by Mel and then I kind of summarized it and took credit for it, as I do. Which is that what's interesting about barreling the camera, unlike voiceover, is it tends to imply that the character has a degree of the control of how the story is being told. hold. And so I think all these three shows explore that spectrum of the control of the character in terms of how they present the information. And as I kind of then talked about, that control of the story is a bit of a resource to use a kind of technical term, but it's something that a character can choose to use as part of their tactics of getting what they want from the audience. And so that control kind of informs that. And what's really interesting is Avid Elementary, as we will talk about, is a mockumentary. So there's a diegetic reason for them to be talking at the camera, but it also affects the degree of control that they have. That's kind of my key learning that I'm going to bring in. And one of the questions I'm going to be asking is like, are they in control of the narrative? How much control do they have of the narrative and how that then connects to what they want from the audience?

And I would also add kind of separately what the effect is, I guess, for lack of a better word, the narrative effect. So what does the character who is talking directly to us want? What are they achieving differently by breaking the fourth wall as opposed to voiceover or just you know acting respecting the fourth wall and then as against what is the effect on us of this technique and it's interesting so in our in our previous episodes on you know how filmmakers can talk more directly interact more directly with the audience we identified a number of levers and none of them are really it's not that they're not relevant they've all just been pulled very firmly in one direction when you break the fourth wall. So, the levers we talked about in relation to voiceover were, is it diegetic or non-diegetic? And that one will still apply here because we've got in-world breaking the fourth wall or in-world talking to an audience versus, I guess, it's still in the world, but I guess we'll talk about that. That's still an important lever that can be pulled. We had a different lever of a spectrum of who is talking from From an omniscient unidentified... Narrator or you know title cards from the filmmakers themselves right the way through to a character and whenever you got breaking the fourth wall it's always a character in.

The examples that we have chosen because there are examples which we have done including f is for fake and sans soleil but also examples like annie hall which is woody allen where it's like an actor writer and it's kind of them breaking character breaking character fleabag doesn't break character I mean, maybe Woody Allen doesn't really play a character in Annie Hall, but he certainly brings in, there's that great scene where he brings in the film critic, you know, to talk to the character and stuff like that. So he's definitely playing himself. I mean, that's the interesting question, actually, now that I've raised it. I've gone, yeah. To what extent is Fleabag riffing on, how much is it riffing on Phoebe Waller-Bridge's personality and her life experience, and how much is that informing the text in a way? Because I do think that is, it is seemingly a technique used by, you know, writer actors or people that are kind of positioning themselves as that. And I'm sure there are other examples as well.

Well, in Fleabag in particular, it came out of a theater show, a one woman theater show, where the entire time she's essentially speaking directly to the audience only without, you know, a camera in between her and them. So I think that it really sort of makes a direct line from one to the other. Obviously, not all theater shows that go on to be TV shows do that, but it is a very sort of, I'm going to sit and tell you a story if you've seen the theater show, which I have. And then obviously she's not doing that in Fleabag, but she's still taking bits of that from the theater show.

Yeah. So, all right. So, who is talking is still a relevant lever. And we know that it is a character in the three examples that we picked, but you're right, Stuart. It's not, you can break the fourth wall without necessarily it always being a character.

And I think we'll see that to a smaller extent in Abadie Elementary, but I'll get to that.

Whom are they talking to? And this is when I'm like, well, they're always talking to the audience. And then yet in this very three examples, we've got, I think, three subtle variations on whom the characters are talking to.

I mean, I think who does the audience represent is actually the interesting question. Is it the audience of a film show? Is it the audience in their mind? Who is this audience?

Yeah. From when in time is the communication coming? Now that is firmly locked because we're seeing the character talk although it could be interesting i'd none of the examples that we're looking at do this but it could be interesting if a character were to break the fourth wall and leave the narrative time wise that they might know more about the story that.

Happens in high fidelity there is a moment in high fidelity where there's a flashback and there's a piece to camera there's also uh not in these examples but in fight club one of the fourth fourth wall break is in a flashback where you kind of actually go jack the edward norton character is not present in the scene but he's.

Physically standing.

There like a tv presenter and.

Talking about.

It as if he is so i do think it's something that you can use.

And what does the communication want from the audience and we've already discussed that it might be the character talking to us as the audience might want something and separately the filmmakers might want something else so So, actually, these levers still are relevant, hazzah, and possibly applying them to the three examples will bring value. So, shall we jump into High Fidelity?

I ran into my ex last night. So, how was it, you know, seeing him? You know that scene at the end of Braveheart where they rip all his entrails out and he's like freedom, but it's like a positive thing, you know, because he like inspired his people or whatever? Yeah. Like that, but without the silver lining. Pretentious location, owner's a little rude, two and a half stars. You guys have a bathroom? If I let you go, I gotta let everybody else go to the bathroom, and I can't do that. But I'm the only one here. I'm just too adored to have it come to pass You know that you do this after every relationship? Do what? No offense, but you tend to overthink things a little. Your ex went back to New York. It's cool he's back in town. We were both so whatever about that lily girl. What lily girl? I think I tend to think about things the exact right amount. Thank you.

It's not the most straightforward of the examples, but at least it's one single character and whom they are talking to does not change.

Yeah. And High Fidelity opens on Rob breaking the fourth wall. Like it opens very quickly into Rob talking to us. And then it interrupts it as Mac finishes breaking up with Rob.

I think it's best if I do, sir. Just stay for tonight. No. Okay, just stay for a drink then. I don't think a drink's gonna do it, Rob. How about two drinks? Jesus Christ, can we just make this just a little bit easy, please? Oh, I'm sorry, is this inconvenient for you?

And then Rob, like, returns to break the fourth wall to finish explaining.

I see you. I see you. Congratulations, you've made it to the top five mac number five with a bullet.

Welcome and mac is unaware of to whom rob is talking so it sets those two things up very quickly rob is breaking the fourth wall talking to us and other people within the world seem unaware that this is happening. And it's very much... Not explained within the film what rob is doing it feels almost though like an internal monologue the way that rob is talking how things are phrased talking about her process the way that she likes to list things both in her quote-unquote normal life and as well as that carries over quite readily if you've seen the movie then the first two maybe three episodes of the tv series basically cover the same sort of ground and a lot of very similar things and then it sort of breaks away but if If you've seen the movie, it's quite similar.

Should we actually summarize the series rather than just diving straight into a scene?

It's how it opens.

It is how it opens. Absolutely. And I'm going to be like, you may be wondering how we got here. And then I'm going to explain the context for it.

Really?

Which is, it's based on a 1995 novel by Nick Hornby. And what's interesting is I do think the novel has that kind of like quasi, maybe semi-autobiographical quality, which is kind of why the internal narration kind of has that feeling and it's basically about a character rob uh who owns a record store and it's her kind of revisiting her past relationships right and the kind of the connection of her relationships between music and popular culture that's kind of the overall show right it's not quote-unquote plot heavy the first episode she starts with this breakup as you just talked about with mac right then it kind of goes to explain her her breakup with simon who turns out he realized this is he's a gay man and he starts working at her record shot she has a date with the character that took me a long time to realize was from white lotus because he's less of a jerk so he this character is clive they go on a date at the beginning she thinks he's ghosted him and then he kind of comes back at the end and turns out he's actually kind of a nice guy and then so you get these senses like she's like oh maybe i can explore this and then she runs into her ex mac and then we set up what i presume i've only watched the The first episode is going to be the conflict, the central conflict of at least a few episodes, which is her trying to decide between getting back together with Mac, her ex, or exploring a relationship with Clyde.

As an aside, it's very funny to me that you think that Jake Lacey is an asshole because in every other thing he plays, he's the nicest person, like lots of rom-coms, really lovely guy. And so White Lotus was casting very much against type because I'd seen him in a bunch of rom-coms and a bunch of other things. So it's pretty great.

He was in Girls as well, wasn't he?

I forgot that he was in Girls. Yeah.

What I would say as well is the framework of the book, the movie, and this pilot, and as well as throughout the episode, and Mel, you've already mentioned it, is Rob likes to make lists. It's also, everything is kind of tied to music. Rob owns a record store, the characters work in a record store, they're often making playlists or mixtapes or writing lists of whatever they're going through at the time and linking it back to music. And the list for this episode was her top five breakups. And for me, the reason why I'm going to state it up front is that all the different iterations of this story is about Rob trying to overcome their very internal barriers. So, in this version, the TV version, Rob states that the breakup with Mac was so painful that she will never swim in deep waters again.

Truth is, I've been completely out of my depth. And after that, I was determined to never get out of my depth again. So, for the last year, I've basically just been, Paddling around in the shallow end.

So she's deliberately made herself emotionally unavailable for fear of being hurt.

And importantly, she actually, in her list, she flashes back to her as a young kid and the breakup that she had when she was like nine years old. Private is like, you're meant to be like, you're not, you're still not over that. Your relationship that lasted six hours. and importantly the kid at the very end the button of that flashback is the kid looking at the camera and saying what also.

Very importantly which i think is funny because the voiceover essentially of the flashback is coming from the present and she's telling us that the reason she remembers the specific time of their date is because she had an unbreakable date with xena airing so she's She's also very clearly telling us that she's bisexual, which comes up more clearly in a couple of episodes, but she absolutely is.

Are you telling me if you watch Xena, you...

If you have an unbreakable television date with Xena, I'm sorry to tell you, you're queer. I don't know how it manifests exactly, but that's just a fact. Science.

But wasn't breakup number three with Kat?

Comes up soon, yes.

So, the main reason why I'm talking about that, and I actually love, Sue, that you brought up the kid, because it shows the rules in which they're breaking the fourth wall. Because when in flashback, that's the only flashback where Rob is not playing herself. But from memory, Rob doesn't break the fourth wall in any of the flashbacks except that one. When they're in the flashbacks, they're generally in voiceover, her relaying what has happened. And the point I'm making here is, for the most part, it feels like that breaking the fourth wall is coming from the narrative present. But the kid... Breaks the fourth wall separately and.

That's the the joke yeah right i think is the kid as you say it's kind of her internal narrative and i think that's important to compare to uh fleabags at least in the fleabag episode we re-watched for this the flashback that's at that does not have fleabag looking at the camera at all right it's completely with there is no fourth wall break right which i think is kind of connects to the idea of what fleabag is doing so i think what you talked about, what are the rules around the fourth wall breaking is something that you can ask themselves, what is breaking the fourth wall meant to be representing or who is the audience representing? And I do think, I'm going to dive into it now, even though we're still just on high fidelity, there is a difference between how they shoot the talking to the camera and the barrelling in high fidelity and in fleabag. In fleabag, the camera is often at her side and she's glancing over her shoulder behind or glancing to the side, et cetera, et cetera. In High Fidelity, it's largely kind of shot front on, like broadly speaking, it's not meant to be like quick asides, because I think the big difference between High Fidelity and Fleabag in terms of their intentionality around the talking to camera is that Fleabag has effectively got like intrusive thoughts. She's speaking just her mind in the moment, right? In High Fidelity, it's Rob kind of trying to understand her story. And so she's kind of telling the story as a bit of a process. She is thinking with her mouth open, right? It's kind of like how she would do it to a therapist, I guess.

Yeah, absolutely. And the one thing, the reason why I bang on about it a bit is they have picked a point in time when the fourth wall breaks open. Are coming from. They are immediate, right? When Rob breaks the fourth wall, she's very much in the moment that we are seeing narratively as well. So, you're talking about that very opening one, she is crying. She's in the middle of a breakup and she's listing her breakups. She finishes the breakup with Mac and then says, all right, the list has changed. Well done Mac, you've made it to number one, right? You've made my top five breakups. It's in that instant. And that's why I'm kind of banging on about the flashbacks a little bit, because I think it would be very different if, you know, like Woody Allen in Annie Hall, those breaking the fourth walls, who Woody Allen is when he's breaking the fourth wall is not necessarily the character he is in that very instant. Whereas in both High Fidelity and all three of the examples and in Fleabag and in Abbott Elementary, whenever a character is talking directly to camera or looking at camera, they are in that narrative moment.

Their present tense, I guess. Yeah.

And the immediacy of it is, I think, the big difference I've taken out of this from voiceover.

Yeah. And I think High Fidelity in particular uses voiceover in those flashbacks, right and so then it will kind of have her in the moment and i think we're kind of assuming that the voiceover is it starting with a piece to camera we go to the flashback we now hearing the voiceover we're still assuming it's coming from that singular moment in the present tense it's not coming from her from episode eight right yeah it's coming from this specific scene so the piece to camera helps us understand from when in time the voiceover is coming right and it does give them the option i haven't watched the whole show yet and i think i probably will now but it wouldn't surprise me if If there is just another piece to camera or two in future flashbacks, it wouldn't surprise me. Like, it doesn't feel completely unchararistic, right? Because, I mean, they've set up that contrivance right in that first flashback to her as a child.

But I imagine even if there was a breaking the fourth wall in a flashback- It would be Rob from the narrative present, not Rob from the, in the time of the flashback.

I don't know. I haven't seen the whole show, so I can't speculate other than what I say, what I've seen, which is that she does it as a child, right? Yeah. Because it's the child using adult language. It does feel like this is her from the present putting words into the mouth of her as a kid, as a teenager. Yeah.

There's one other moment, which I do think if we're talking about the levers that it pulls, that is, it's kind of a clever bit. I don't think it has a huge meaning to it, but there's a use of the diegetic music, which sounds like a soundtrack, because obviously there's a lot of music that's played on records and played within the show. But then there's also a soundtrack. And then there's a moment where Rob sees Mac and there's a song playing and then she takes her headphones out and suddenly the music gets quite tinny.

Mac. What are you doing here?

So it's almost that we are within her headspace there and um it's this diegetic non-diegetic music it's the filmmakers playing with what we're hearing and then she's hearing as well and that because that is our point of view character and the only one who breaks the fourth wall which i just thought was a bit of fun and it's something that shows do even if there are no fourth wall breaks but it feels like an extra little punchy bit of you know if we're hearing her constant and she's constantly talking to us, it's like, oh, we're with her in that as well. And then she sees Robin takes them out and it's breaking that moment as she starts talking to Mac.

Yeah.

So to come to my... Controlling question um literally about control how much control do we think rob has over the telling of this story and what do you think is the emotional effect of that i think she's got quite a lot of control in fact i think and and we'll get to it when we finally get to fleabag i actually think she's possibly got more control over the telling of the story than fleabag does because of what it's trying to represent about her psychology yep right we.

See everyone from All the flashbacks, like, do we really know that Kat was that much of a dick? Maybe Kat was, maybe Kat wasn't. But either way, the only knowledge that we have about that breakup and all of the things that led to it is from Rob, not just Rob's point of view, but Rob directly telling us this is what happened. And so she has essentially all of the control.

She prompts every flashback. They're not prompted by an omniscient storyteller. The flashbacks aren't happening to her. She is taking us to the flashbacks.

Look at this number in my list. Now I will show it to you. And she's picking which ones we see and don't see as well. She's picking the moments in time that she shows us. So it's all to present herself in a certain way or her experiences in her way.

Referring back Mel to the moment that you picked up where she takes the headphones off and the score becomes diegetic when she bumps into Mac. She is deliberately told that moment out of time because we see her go on the date with Clyde and all of that's playing out and she's hurt her hand. And then we see why she was in such a mood at that point. She's told us that she only bumped into Mac shortly before going on the date with Clyde, and she tells us that later.

It supports her story and supports her telling us these things. Yeah, absolutely.

So I'm going to draw an interesting distinction here because I think you're right. I think she is in control of the telling of the narrative, but I don't think she is really that in control of the filmmaking per se, right? I don't think she's going to do the Fight Club moment where it's like, hold up, rewind, and you kind of have that kind of metatextual stuff. This is my impression, right? That she's in control in the telling of the narrative, and the part of the kind of like- more unadorned style and part of that more presentational style where the camera's just sitting there and she's looking at more directly on is to indicate the fact that she's just telling the story that the camera isn't something that she has control over she doesn't have control of the camera and the editing or the sound or any of that stuff her control is limiting to the presentation of the information to the audience it's a subtle thing but there is like like a Deadpool could have been a film that we did for this and Deadpool clearly has control over the kind of filmmaking like the metatextual like the textual elements of the story I mean he certainly had in the comics right and they translated that to the the film so.

If you put Deadpool at like a 10 and Fight Club at maybe like a 9 or a 10 would you put High Fidelity maybe like a 7 oh.

In terms of control like.

Where you know loosely in terms of the levers right that In terms of control. Specific lever in terms of control. Yeah. I think that's a very fair distinction, a good distinction.

I think it's useful because I think you'll see there's like a flip side to that in kind of like the inverse to that in Abbott Elementary. And I think it's kind of interesting because Fleabag kind of plays with that, which we've already talked a little bit about in Fight Club, but we'll unpack that a little bit more.

But I think, Stu, your question about whom are they talking to? Like, who does the audience, us as the viewer being eyeballed and spoken to by Rob, who do we represent? Because if we represented the audience of the TV show High Fidelity, then she would have the control over those things because she knows she's in a TV show. I think because she is not controlling those things, it changes who we are as her audience.

Yeah, I agree.

It makes us just an individual person being told her story and she is in control of her story and in what order she wants to present it, but she's not aware that she's in a TV show.

Yeah, I think she's the internal... Narrator i have a very strong internal narrator very visual i can completely disappear emma notes it she'll be like where are you and i will have to moment because i my mind i is so vivid that i do not actually recall what i'm saying like sometimes it's why i nearly walk into things and stuff like that right and so she to me in high fidelity is absolutely representing that moment of kind of like drifting off and completely narrating something and the way that that bend bounces to, flashbacks etc etc right or you know and and that's often why some of those kind of pieces to camera lead into little moments of flashback right not always but it does seem they set up a little bit of a you know the flashback may be very small or it might be you know like we're going to go and summarize her relationship with whoever but it does feel like that is what it's kind of do and we are the we're inside her mind it's kind of like a a herman's head or an inside out without having those characters cutting into that, right?

Well, there is definitely a different relationship between Rob and us and Rob and every other character. You know, similarly to what we identified in Veronica Mars, Veronica in the voiceover episode, Veronica shares in voiceover things that she would never share with other characters in world. And Rob here in High Fidelity is doing the same thing and it seems so obvious to say it's dramatizing the internal but it's doing so in a way that I think I'm trying to imagine what this story would look like without the breaking the fourth wall and I still think it would be great and I still think it would be interesting but we would not get the access to Rob's internal journey in anywhere near the same way because of this narration and how she's sharing her emotional present and her internal narration with us.

Or the nature of her kind of relationship dysfunction.

Well, that's, yeah, that's bang on because the best bit of setup that this does from a craft perspective. So, we've got, Mel, you've already talked about, you know, it opens with her breaking the fourth wall in an emotional present and we've got the breakup. up. It then cuts to a year later and she has a call with her brother and she lies to her brother about going on a date. And then she talks to us telling us, I could go on a date. And then it immediately cuts. And we now know later at the end of the episode that she's actually deliberately not told us what happens in the intervening time, which is she bumps into Mac on the street. But from us as the audience, it immediately cuts to her going on a date and talking to us saying, I'm not ready.

I could have a date if I wanted to. Because I'm fine. I'm totally fine. I'm not fine. I'm not ready. This is fucked.

So it's so in the emotional present that like it's going back to what you guys identified in Fight Club is it's teaching us how reliable Rob is as a narrator. And what you guys have talked about in other episodes is how much it's demonstrating to us how much Rob is lying to herself. self. She's not lying to us. She's not saying I'm okay to go on a date because she wants to mislead us. She's lying to herself that I'm okay to go on a date. And then she realizes.

Oh, oops. Yeah. But I think when we talk about what is the effect on the audience, I think that is really a good segue because we've all been there. We've all thought that we, oh yeah. And it's not just that that we're telling our friends this, or just telling someone this. We really think that, okay, sure. And then later we go, oh, I was lying to myself. Obviously, sometimes when we lie to ourselves, it's to make we know. But sometimes we look back and go, no, I was definitely attempting to convince myself by just saying I was fine and not actually being fine. So I think the identification is twofold. We do identify with Rob because we do these things, especially those of us who have like a running internal monologue and or love lists. But also it really does help us empathize with her. The fact that it's putting us in her point of view so much, including when her point of view is in fact mistaken.

Yeah. And following straight on from that scene, she says she's not ready for the date. The date is not going well. And she tries to sneak out of the date. And as she's trying to sneak out of the date, she's left the bar. She's talking to us, acknowledging that it's a dick move. And throughout the first episode, So, she often refers to herself disparagingly.

In retrospect, we were both.

I like that so early on in the episode, within, I don't know, five minutes tops, they're using the fourth wall to say, you know, we're in an emotional present. She's sharing vulnerable things with us. She's lying to herself and then acknowledging when she's lying to herself, sharing it with us. She's much more closed off, you know, with Clyde and even with Mac and then later on with her employees at the record store. than she is with us.

So question then becomes, if she's not talking to the audience, if we're saying that she's kind of talking to a part of herself, what does she want from this part of herself, right? Fight Club, Jack was absolving himself of responsibility, which is somewhat similar to, I think, overall Fleabag, but certainly not the episode we're looking at, right? What does she want from, why is she talking? What is compelling to her to talk? I mean, I think it's understanding.

Right?

I think so. So I think what you said earlier kind of hit on it. It almost sounds like she's talking to a therapist.

Right?

She's trying to work herself out in some ways. Like it's the reason a lot of people write in their diary or self-talk or do have a running monologue or encourage that. Like she's trying to understand and explain herself and in doing so maybe hopefully help herself.

And that's kind of why it probably works as a piece to camera in the moment, because it's about the emotional presence. So it's both what leads her to make the decisions she does in the moment, and then also like her reflecting on those decisions after they've happened, right? Whereas a voiceover that's coming from the end of the film is usually about justifying the decisions of how did I end up here? How did I make up these bad decisions, right? Right. Not always. Like, I mean, spontaneous isn't as agenda driven with its voiceover, but a lot of voiceover can be like that. But it's different.

Even if it was voiceover- in the present tense, like in the moment, like close to thin red line, it would still be distancing in a way that this is not. Other than the fact that they've got a legacy from how the novel is narrated and how the film worked. The reason why breaking the fourth wall for this works differently than voiceover is because it is nearly always about informing us to what the emotional present is, whether that's a lie or not, you know, it is her emotional present.

Her current state or current reality. It might be a lie, but that doesn't make it not real.

Yeah.

All right. So, speaking of not real.

Reality.

Speaking of reality.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Should we go to Abbott Elementary?

Yes.

Abbott Elementary. Yes.

Okay. Okay, so if the store has ten potatoes, right, and you take away two of them, how many potatoes would the store have left? Janine, what did I say about taking my potatoes from the lunchroom? But visual learning is so much better. Well, guess what? Now you have zero potatoes. I'm Janine Teagues. I've been teaching here at Abbott Elementary for a year now. The staff here is incredible. Finally feeling top of things. Cheesesteak. Cheesesteak. This is a classroom, not a hoagie stand. Hoagie. We had it on the board. I know this school is rough, but we make do. Looking for Ms. Coleman. Hello. What's up? I thought one of my colleagues here hired a stripper for me. Okay. I'm teaching a lesson on gravity. There have been three presidents since this one. Here's where I taped in the others. Hey, we're gonna have a good day. We do this because we're supposed to. This show ain't the money. I can make more work in the street easy. We're gonna have a good day.

So in the lead up to the discussions for this series of episodes, Sue, you have focused on the lever of diegetic to non-diegetic, to in-world to not in-world. And we started talking about mockumentaries where there is reasons to talk to the camera, but they are not talking to the audience. There's a realistic in-world reason why they are eyeballing someone. one. And it's not us as the audience of the TV show. And I just picked Abbott Elementary out of, you know, we were tossing around, you know, The Office and Parks and Rec, and it's just a recency bias. And it's my current soul bomb show for when you're like in a dark place and you need to be lifted out of that dark place. It's Abbott Elementary, which is, it follows the teachers and principal of a primary school in Philadelphia, a public primary school, which is important for the episode that we've chosen, which the episode we've chosen is Ad Attack, which is in season two, is it episode seven?

Yes.

And it's the reason why I picked it is because the fact that they are being filmed and followed by a camera crew becomes an important plot point in the actual show. So, in this particular episode, an attack ad from a charter school comes out and they're going, how did they get all this footage of us as teachers in this attack ad? And it turns out that they all just assumed that the crew, camera crew for the attack ad was the same camera crew as the mockumentary team.

Including the fact, which of course is amusing to anyone who works in film and has worked, that they signed release forms.

To be clear, this camera crew trespassed, right? Well, actually I let them in. Okay, but they used your likeness without consent. Yeah, well, we did sign these. But they misrepresented what they were doing? Well, they did say they were coming to get footage of us, which they did. Yeah. Okay, so what I'm seeing here is you guys just failed to pay attention to what was happening. You have absolutely no case. And in fact, according to this, you might each owe Legendary Charters $200 for crew fees.

They're like, oh, can't we take that? And they're like, no, I signed the forms. We thought, you know, because they thought the producer just asked him to sign more forms. You get to a point where you're just like, yeah, you're signing your life away all the time. So they're like, oh, we could just have them take the foot. but no, they have legal rights to all of this footage in every way. Here's all of the paperwork that you signed.

Yeah. And it has that amazing line from Ava that we'll accept.

How did we even get this footage? Yeah. A camera crew came in. I thought it was one of them. Oh, like y'all can tell these moderately attractive white men with beards apart. What's even under there?

Oh, soundies.

Damn, I get myself confused with other people all the time.

Well, didn't we post it on Discord, that picture of Jason Alexander looking exactly like you? Hey, hey, hey.

Not exactly. He's got a little bit more hair on front with that incredible criminal minds white hair. anyway.

So just to add to the summary that the the main characters are there's a quintet of classroom teachers so janine's the lead and she's kind of really the point of view character she started teaching with the very beginning of the series and so this is her second or third year now and then greg with whom there's a unresolved romantic tension barb who is the like very experienced kind of super teacher that everyone respects.

And who.

Are the other miss shementi the um kind of philadelphia cliche philadelphia.

And italian cliche bless.

Melissa and their and their principals ava right whose idea is to do the documentary so in the pilot because i watched the pilot to hear the setup and then i watched um the the attack episode it's ava's idea to bring the documentary crew to kind of bring attention to the plights of being a inner city public school and it kind of works because ava as we'll see out is kind of a tone deaf principal she's very kind of just i mean i'm not even sure she means well um, there's kind of like a narcissism to her particularly set up in the pilot about it and so that's why she's brought so they've even set up an in-story world reason for why the documentary crew is there, right? And also why they have so much access.

And there's three, I guess, styles. I don't know about styles is the right word, but- Modes? Yeah. So there's the traditional mockumentary. The bulk of the narrative is a camera crew following around and the characters somewhat behaving as if there's not a camera there to an extent, as much as they can. And then they have pieces deliberately to camera where they've been sat down often by themselves to give an interview and Then there are these separate moments where, And there's so many laughs in them, but it's definitely going to be something that I'll focus on in my key learnings here, where the characters remember that they're being filmed, and then they look down the camera. And it's often not to say anything at all. It's just this silent acknowledgement that, oh, shit, this is being filmed.

So, like, I think that this episode is a great one to pick because it's got four really clear examples of all of those. But, Stu, did you have something before that?

Yeah, I'm leading with my thing about control, right? Do they have control over the story or over the narrative? And the answer is neither particularly. This is what makes this such an interesting form of, and I think maybe the appeal of it, is that the characters can obviously have control over what they say, but I get no sense of this feeling that they have control of how their story is being represented in terms of the filmmaking or otherwise, okay? And so that means like to have a hypothetical moment. And I can't remember if it even happens in this episode, but like where a character has a breakdown and runs off, the camera is in this story is completely within the rules of the world to like, I'm going to be intrusive and following them, follow them into the bathroom where they're having a breakdown. I don't think this happens in an episode, but it's an example of something. Whereas I think in High Fidelity, if she was like, I'm out, nope. And doesn't want the camera to follow her, it wouldn't. I think Fleabag is interesting because I think there is possibilities it would, right? That their camera is a little bit, because I think Fleabag psychology is a little bit more intrusive thoughts. And so I think the fact that the camera crew here has a degree of autonomy over the storytelling just gives us access to the characters more differently. And it's an ensemble. That also helps. We're getting multiple point of views of the characters, right? The whole attack ad metaphor is about the fact that they have no control over their representation, right? Because these other the crew make you know makes them look worse uh than they actually are and i think i'm gonna say it now much probably to the embarrassment of my parents both my parents are public high school teachers and you know teachers work incredibly hard and it's nice to see a show that um recognizes that and kind of does it so endearingly as much as it's like oh let's do a mockumentary and make laughs of it i don't think it's ever um belittling the profession or most of the teachers i think I think it belittles Ava a little bit, but even then, not really.

Yeah, but it's belittling principals. Yes. And as I'm the son of a high school principal, and I think that is a-okay to belittle principals.

Correct.

So, we've got the different instances of when the character's talking to camera or not. What do you think they want? What do you think the characters want? Want when they're doing the performance pieces, like the two camera interviews and they know they're being interviewed and they're not just in the midst of their day-to-day work life as against those moments where they... Are kind of drawn to look down the barrel.

Well i think so i'll give you my four examples because i think they all want something slightly different so the the episode opens with gregory side-eyeing the camera with a smirk because he's he's knows what is going on within the scene and he's like this is philly it also ends with him looking at the camera so it opens and closes and And Gregory is the character that wants some sympathy. And this is interesting, right? Because if we're assuming it's a mockumentary, then he wants it from the audience. But I think he also, within universe, clearly wants it from the crew. Like, you guys have been following me for years now. You see how this is, right? Then we've got the testimonial. So Janine wants to put her best foot forward. She wants to talk about the school. She's always, always pitching and trying to get things for the school and what they need. You've got ava's protestation of like oh we thought the camera crew was you right like she's trying to claim her innocence and and and also it's a little bit of explaining herself right like this is this is what happened ah and then the fourth instance which i think is hilarious is you've got a student who breaks the fourth wall and talks to the cameras like oh i'm leaving i I can do what I want.

Joshua, how could you? I didn't. My mom did, you dork. Damn. I'm leaving. I can talk all I want now.

And he is just, I mean, he's clearly the class clown. He's got an audience. It's not just us. For him, it's the camera crew, you know? So he's trying to get that bit of attention and, you know, I'll be on film. I'll be, you know, immortalized forever, you know, the same way that if you're filming outside, you have everyone driving down the street, you know, honking or trying to jump in front of the camera or annoying news reporters or whatever right like let me have my my five seconds notice how funny i am and i think so what they want is all contextual and i think changes um depending on the character and depending on what they're doing but it uses all of these different techniques not just different characters and different wants to sort of move that lever depending on how they're addressing what they're saying as well.

I'm just going to insert myself here just because my ADHD brain says go before I've forgotten it. I think what's interesting about this is a metaphor which tied, like, not a metaphor, but coming to the agenda, what does the person talking? The filmmakers have an agenda.

Right?

As in the documentary crew, I do think is trying to make this school look good. Like, it's trying to be warts and all, but there's a humanist quality to what they're doing. And that is shown up in contrast to the Attack ad, where the schools are called legendary. I think it's not Tariq. I can't remember the name. Draymond, maybe?

Yeah, Draymond.

The CEO of the other schools. It reveals that basically he's trying to poach Barbara, the best teacher. He's the only one that she looks good. And he's trying to, in a way, get her to come to the school. So obviously the agenda is don't send your kids to Abbott, send them to us. But also I think there's a more subtle thing going on about where he wants Barbara to come and work with him. And I think if you're doing a mockumentary, thinking about the point of view of the camera crew is really useful.

Yeah. Right?

Right? I think you kind of got to have a point of view about what is their agenda here. What is it that they want?

You've mentioned the pieces to camera. I mean, Draymond does have his own pieces to camera. We've got the class clown. We've got the opening where Ava is talking about that interview where she's going to get all of her ex's stuff out of her apartment.

Janine's getting all of her ex's stuff out of the apartment.

Thank you. Janine is.

Tariq is in town. So I asked him to grab the rest of his stuff. I decided that when your relationship is 100% over, your ex shouldn't be keeping like 90% of his things at your place. His Pokemon plush toy, Charmeleon, he said it was the only thing that understood him. Dragon Ball Z, Gundam figures, Attack on Titan, a lot of anime. Wait, I think the last one was manga. He would always get sad when I confused the two.

And in those pieces to camera what i love about them is that they allow the characters to say things to the camera that they've got a different relationship with the camera crew than they have with their workplace and that when they're alone they will say things differently to the camera crew then they'll say when they're around their colleagues and it's still performative but but But that is Janine lying to herself because then the whole episode arc is about her, like, potentially slowly getting re-entangled with her ex and everyone trying to stop her from doing that. But then you've also got those wonderful characters like Ava is part of the jokes that she gets is because she says exactly the same thing in her to camera pieces as she would around her colleagues. She has no filter and acts just as unprofessionally in or just as Ava-ish in all contexts. Those beats where they eyeball the camera, I was trying to like group them all together. together and they're always, again, like in High Fidelity, they're prompting the audience to go, what are they feeling? And I could imagine in the screenplay, I haven't read any of the scripts, but I could imagine, you know, it would be go answer camera and then just after it, you could say whatever the emotion that that character is feeling, whether it's embarrassment or regret or Or did you just fucking see that or whatever it is, because it's so clearly takes a moment for us to go. As soon as they look at us, it makes us go, why are they looking at us? What, what do they want from us? And it's nearly always a measure of, yeah, it's some kind of emotions that they're different. Often it, you know, it's might be embarrassment about Ava or another character, or it will be embarrassment about something that they just did or were caught doing, but it's about being understood. And it allows us access in a professional workplace setting for people who are being observed by a camera crew. It still gives us access to what's going on inside.

Yeah, I think that it is. And I think it's about being seen. I think it's a big, like, if you had to really boil it down, like you have, you know, high fidelity is about understanding and being understood. And Abbott Elementary is about being understood and being scene.

Specifically. There was one line in this particular episode that I enjoyed. It was simple punchline humor, but it stood out to me because Miss Chimenti, they were asking her, how did she get Draymond's phone number?

I did it. I found the dirty rat in charge of legendary charters. Melissa Schlemente comes through again. How'd you do it? Oh, I've got my ways. I Googled it. But I like to maintain that air of dark mystery.

She then, I mean, it's a funny joke. It's good for character. But I'm interested that they had so many different ways of doing that joke. They could have cut to footage that they had where she was unaware that they're watching her Google it. That would still give the same joke, but it would be undermining her. Whereas her doing it to camera and being proud of it. And she's not proud that she found the phone number. She's proud of how her colleagues see and fear her and think of her as this like underworld mobster kind of character.

And I'm going to jump to the opening of speaking of other little clever things, the opening of episodes one and two of season three, right? Because effectively there is a time jump. It basically starts in the present and then does it five months earlier. And then there is a reveal of an exchange between Jeffrey and Janine, where the way they do it is they have Ava lead the camera crew. She leads the camera crew into a security closet and loads up security camera footage, and they're filming the security camera footage being played back of this kind of moment, this confrontation that the camera crew didn't have access to. Janine?

Yeah, no, we're fine. It's just nothing weird. Oh, hell yeah, something weird is going on between Gregory and Janine. They ain't tell you. Well, lucky for y'all, my hidden cameras picked up everything. Y'all gonna love this. Hey. Hey. That was a fun hang the other night, right? It was. I really liked that place. Me too.

And I thought that was just a great found footage solution to the problem of we want to have a moment of intimacy between these characters, right? Of actual genuine kind of them revealing their private selves, which I don't think they would have done, but found a really good way to do on camera because there is an awareness of the characters that they are being filmed. And I think that moment would have played differently. And by making it a security camera footage, and we completely believe that Ava's like, oh yeah, of course one, she's got cameras, but two, that she's like held onto this for five months that kind of fills us in. It's a very clever diegetic solution to the problem, Which I think the show navigates very well, which is there's a degree of awareness of the crew with the cameras being around, right? That there is an element of. Not performativeness there's obviously moments that they kind of get relaxed and i don't know if the show does it but the idea that maybe from episode one in season one to episode 10 the cast seemed to get more and more relaxed but i that particular moment between jeffrey and janine i don't think i would have bought would have happened as it did if the crew was in that room it was a solution for it yeah.

I can't wait till you read the thing that i wrote about the season three finale i have to watch the season three finale before you i.

Have to watch three seasons Watch it.

And there's a whole thing because I love what the season three finale specifically does, Stu, with what you're just talking about.

This show mel you made the comment in uh in our pre-chat about like this show doesn't feel revolutionary it feels like a sitcom with characters and telling x number of jokes and having space for ad breaks and previous two first two seasons had 22 episodes and you know the mockumentary format has been done before but it does feel i think quite revolutionary in that this is one of the first ones where they, it's not every episode, but where they are like deliberately talking to the crew. So in this episode and in the episode you're talking about, Stu, season three, episode one, it starts out with Ava laughing at them because they got robbed and then the camera crew asks her to tell them the story.

You want me to tell you what happened to you? All right, tell the people. So they got robbed because they thought it'd be cute to walk around West Philly at night with all this camera equipment. Hell, I'd have helped rob you if I was there. Anyway, here we are five months later because that's how long it takes for three people with art degrees to save up for new cameras. Welcome back. It's career day today. Unfortunately.

That interaction with they are aware that a documentary is being made of them. And your example of how do we get access to that janine and greg moment without them feeling like they're being watched and also narratively accounting for the time jump and allowing them to just you know create some new relationships as they come into a new season is genius like that ava's got yet another diegetic camera that some characters aware of others are not and then i just love the coverage of it because she's got cameras on each of them and the the mockumentary crew camera is panning for coverage between the tv screens depending on who it wants to be whose face they want to be looking at it's.

Very playful with the format in.

Ways that.

A lot of things like the office once it's sort of set up it sort of stays a lot of the time within that that sort of, you know, space that it's established in the first few episodes, whereas this Abbott Elementary does get a little bit more playful with it.

With the form, yeah. I mean, my feeling is that the office, the documentary, I think the English office isn't as playful, but I think the English office actually leans a little bit more into the documentary aspect that the American office does. The American office becomes a little bit like, oh, it's just a conceit, whereas I think what they kind of have, Now, I mean, maybe it's just the limited season thing with the English office. I don't know.

It's like the crash zooms in Succession, like they faded away throughout the show.

Yeah, the mockumentary element of the America in the Office ended up being the interviews, right? That's like what they held the most to with the punchlines and those kinds of the characters commenting on stuff and getting humor out of it, as opposed to let's kind of lean into a little bit more into the reality of what it would be like to have a crew here. And I think the metaness of them allowing this other crew to come in and they just signed a bunch of forms, it completely tracks. It completely tracks when you get people to sign forms and even that season three opening where we find out that the camera crew had their gear stolen. You know, that line about art students. People who work in the arts have to save up for five months buying new cameras. There's like, you know, you talked about the fact that there was like, do they interact with the crew? I feel that they do.

Right?

That there is just a degree of it. But it's not that the crew is commenting on them, but I feel like there is a little bit of a sense, Ava, particularly in that moment that we talked about in the security office where she kind of like waves the crew over. There's a degree of interactivity there with the crew.

I think in terms of that question of who are the characters communicating with when they're looking down the barrel of the camera is very different when they're doing those interview performance moments where they are, I'm being interviewed and I know that whom I'm talking to is an audience of whatever this documentary is going to be. They're not talking to the camera crew, but separately, you know, they do have a relationship when they're looking at the camera, when they're looking at the camera crew and the audience is different.

Agreed.

This episode of Draw Zero is brought to you by Arc Studio Pro, a modern, fresh app for the screenwriting world. Which of course has industry standard formatting, which, That's the bare minimum, but exciting for us Australians, it has it for both US letter and A4. Crazy. And it also lets you cheat the margins, which is one of my favourite little features. But it has advanced tools for storytellers that are actually easy to use. You can seamlessly move between drag and drop beat cards into a treatment and into a screenplay and back and forth at any time. and you can color code your beats. Super useful whether you want to tag your beats for characters, narrative point of view, thematic sections, or however you want. We got to use all of that on a project where we took it back to cards and then from cards to outline and from outline to pages. The development process was intuitive and powerful. All the while, it was the best remote collaboration experience we've had in screenwriting software, and we've tried a lot. I loved looking at a line of dialogue that Chaz had edited edited, going to the edit history and changing it back to the line that I wrote. We used the software to present to our producer and script editor at each of those stages, at boards, at outline, and then at pages, who could then leave comments in the app, which is both useful and terrifying. And we could reply to those comments, tag each other to throw each other under the bus, or we could tick them as resolved. It really is as easy to use as Google Docs. And this development workflow has worked so well that Chaz has decided he doesn't need me anymore. And he's using it on a solo project because it's not just from collaboration. And I know I'll be using it on one of my own projects because the development workflow really is that intuitive. We've noticed Arc Studio Pro is being constantly updated and the development team is super approachable and responsive. They've now introduced the new notes feature, which facilitates that collecting of all your scraps of ideas and allowing you to get into the flow of free writing and figuring all your structure all within one spot. Arc Studio Pro. Join the thousands of screenwriters from amateurs to pros and everyone in between who've already made the leap. Arc Studio offers a completely free plan because starting to screenwrite shouldn't cost you anything. But you can also Also, get $30 off the pro plan if you want some of these pro features. If you visit the link in the show notes or go to arcstudio.com slash draft zero. That's draft zero without a hyphen. And now for the third hour of a screenwriting podcast.

Are we done with Abbott Elementary?

Yeah.

Shall we bag the flay?

You know that feeling when a guy you like sends you a text at two o'clock on a Tuesday night asking if he can come and find you? And then you open the door to him like you've always forgotten he's coming over. Oh. Hi. Hey. Oh my God, definitely not. That does nothing for you. What? These are my clothes, boo. I've been wearing these all day. It's really not that bad, it's really not that bad. Oh, what are you doing? You got them all by the balls, cause I'm waterfalls. How did you meet? She used to be our godmother. But then their parents split up. Mum died. You really are very good looking. Thank you. Very. Thank you. Very. Thank you. It's been really nice to spend the day with a normal family. The only thing harder than having to tell your super high-powered perfect anorexic rich super sister that you've run out of money is having to ask her to bail you out, i'm just gonna ask her it's gonna come do you need to borrow money no.

Fleabag yeah so essentially if we've got uh high fidelity establishing its conceit and abbott elementary having fun and playing with its conceit this is the episode where fleabag Fleabag smashes its conceit looks into the fourth wall and breaks it with a hammer.

Oh, I think it breaks her.

We probably need to remind people of where we're at if they haven't watched the show. And if they have watched the show, this is a little bit spoilerific. But I mean, watching this again, I was like, man, Fleabag really is one of the best written shows I have seen. Like every line is so good. So, yeah. I do. How do we even begin to summarize it? Cause it's really, what's interesting is season one was based on her stage show and season two was not right. And so season one, our point of view character is Fleabag. And in a way it's a little bit of high fidelity because it's like the story of her broken relationships, but her broken relationships are also with her sister and her father, her father, her mom's died and she's, and he's her father has remarried her gone mother and all those things are broken relationships. And then there's basically a past storyline around Boo, her best friend, that has died. And what we learn in season one is that Fleabag had an affair with Boo's boyfriend. And that led-

To Boo having a traffic accident.

Yes. It's not suicide. Yes. Boo ends up kind of- They even have an argument, don't they? And then it leads it into it. I'm not sure exactly. But ultimately, the point is Fleabag feels responsible for Boo's death. That's season one. Season 2 is structured around the impending wedding of Fleabag's godmother to Fleabag's father And in the process of that meeting, they're going to get married by this sexy priest Played by Andrew Scott Do.

You prefer weddings or funerals? Weddings His arms I think there's something humbling about funerals Really? Yeah, it's good to dwell on the next life You really think there's a next life? What do you believe? Worm food Why? Why what? His neck Why would you believe in something awful, when you can believe in something wonderful? Don't make me an optimist, you will ruin my life. Have you been to many funerals? A couple. His neck. And you never felt them go somewhere? No, they were already gone. His beautiful neck. What? You just said his beautiful neck. No, I said that they were already gone. Okay. Weird.

His neck.

His neck.

His beautiful neck.

His beautiful neck. His arms.

His beautiful everything. Andrew Scott. And, like, that's important. But there's also a little bit of a B-plot, which is Fleabag. Her sister had a miscarriage, and Fleabag lied to protect her sister and say that the miscarriage was her own. Right so that's kind of the past thing we're in the middle episode we're talking about episode four so we're smack bang in the middle of season two which is kind of where we're coming in where her relationship with the priest is a little bit more cemented they're very flirty they're clearly into each other but we're also going to be getting something about the past like boo comes back into this so i'll say my thesis is what is interesting about this show and i've been i've been saying it throughout this episode but i think what is interesting in that fleabag is ultimately having what i would kind of call intrusive thoughts this is her internal dialogue but she's having these moments like the joke about the neck where she just can't keep on commenting on his neck she can't help herself from having these kinds of thoughts and her impulsiveness is actually what gets her in trouble anyway and this voiceover builds to the fact that a the priest sees what she's doing right which is a bit of a moment but there's a whole sequence of flashbacks in the middle and the flashbacks are built into it where we see these little moments moments moments moments and then we go into a bit of a retelling of the funeral of fleabag's mother and that there is no fourth wall breaking in that flashback because the fourth wall break is actually it's kind of like not a fourth wall break it's that the the flashback itself is intruded upon fleabag.

So, let's share with the audience, our audience, hello audience, why this episode in particular out of all of Fleabag. Because we could have just done the opening episode of Fleabag and that would be probably have replaced High Fidelity as a wonderful example of fourth wall breaking. It is one character talking directly to us. It's nearly always in the moment that she's talking to us. Her moments where she breaks the fourth wall is always usually commenting on what is happening at that moment. She's usually telling us that she's lying or sometimes just looking at us to make us laugh. She's involving us in her perspective of the world around us and letting us in on the jokes that she sees. And it's so incredibly funny. But I think the reason we wanted to do this episode in particular is where her asides start to intrude on her life. They're not separate from what is going on with the other characters. And I had thought it was one moment, but it's actually three moments.

It's three, and I'm going to argue that it's four. Okay. And possibly five. So. All right.

Should we start talking through these moments? Because I feel like the reason why we're picking this episode is because it does what High Fidelity does. And then it, like you said, Mel, it smashes it. It just uses it to, to me, it profoundly changed my relationship with Fleabag. So it had a profound narrative effect from the Phoebe Waller-Bridge intends as the writer and showrunner and performer that is separate. It's not what Fleabag intends. Fleabag does not want. What is happening to her relationship with us.

Well uh so this episode actually it's fascinating it starts the exact same way that abbott elementary starts which is fleabag kind of giving a sideways smirk to the camera and then for the for the first bit of it it follows on exactly as all the rest of the episodes to this point have have followed on um until the main smash that we get uh which is hot priest and it does have some lead up so fleabag and hot priest are in the cafe and they're talking and so.

You run do you run this place on your own no i opened it with a friend oh cool right so you No, she... she, er... She what? What? What? She... she what? She... He's a bit annoying, actually. What is that? What? That thing that you're doing. It's like you disappear. What? What are you not telling me? Nothing. Tell me what's going on. I don't need to hear it. Nothing. Tell me. Come on. No. No, you told me. Nothing. Nothing. Stop being so churchy. I'm not being churchy. I'm just trying to get to know you. I don't want that.

Before that, she comments on his neck to us.

Yeah.

And he's like, what did you say? He doesn't acknowledge the camera, but he acknowledges that he has heard what she has said to us. And so that's confrontational because we're like, oh, when she speaks to camera, are the people hearing it?

I actually think, though, and I want to jump back. I think that this had set up in the episode prior that follows through because in the episode prior, they're in the rectory talking and a painting falls off the wall. She says something about, I don't believe in God and a painting falls off the wall. And the priest says, oh, I love when he does that. So we're getting something as a response, which that has a follow up in this episode as well, where at the very end where another huge painting then falls, which tying those together makes me think that the first setup is actually episode prior when the painting falls off the wall. You might not think anything of it because it's just a moment. And then you get the hot priest going, who are you talking to? So these are like cracks in the fourth wall that are sort of appearing. You've got a small crack. You've got a bigger crack. And then she goes, what? Nothing. She's very confused. And then he turns and he barrels. He's like, who? What? And he's barreling, but like clearly searching, like his eyes are sort of going back and forth and his head is searching. And you just see this complete look of utter shock on her face because it's clear that this is not just the only time someone else has looked at, quote unquote, us, the audience, Beryl, but this is a new thing for her. It's not like, oh, this has happened before, we just haven't seen it. This is completely new for her. That hot priest is breaking that and is speaking... Essentially to us even though he's not 100 sure what's going on.

I will challenge that because in that cafe scene and it was emma pointed this out so she as as i mentioned talking about uh high fidelity the camera in fleabag is a little bit more like fleabag looking to the corner or something that's slightly out of place but she when she barrels the camera so there's a shot when she looks directly down at the camera and it's andrew scott that turns over his shoulder and goes what What are you looking at? And then we kind of cut to an angle that's basically 90 degrees from that. It's a right angle. And we see him glance at the spot where the camera just was. So I don't think that moment is to indicate that he isn't thinking of it as a camera. He's just noticing that she is looking somewhere in the distance. The where do you go?

Where did you go? Yep.

She is looking somewhere at the distance and speaking sometimes aloud and sometimes speaking not. Yeah. Right. I think there's a deliberate ambiguity there about whether or not she's talking it or thinking it, but she is clearly doing a stew and kind of wandering off and staring into the distance.

But they do it twice in that cafe moment.

Yeah, it's twice in the cafe.

So there's one moment, Sue, that you've just talked about where she looks away, he follows his gaze, the camera cuts to a different angle, but then there's a follow-up to that where she does it again and she looks straight down and he follows her gaze and looks down the barrel at us. And he's not looking at us because he doesn't see what she's seeing. The filmmakers made a choice in a visual escalation.

Yeah.

That the first one is him looking where she's looking and going, what's going on there? And the second one feels even more violent and even more intrusive because he looks at us.

Yeah, great.

Yeah. And I think if we look at them as the second and third, and the first one is when they're walking outside on the street, the first one could be written off as, you know, sometimes we think we're talking to ourselves or like, oh, did I say that out loud? So the first one, and then the second one escalates and the third escalates really hard. Though I also, I have a question. I talked about the painting, which happens, there's a painting that happens in the episode prior and then at the very end of this episode, which definitely also feels like a fourth wall break. And I don't, obviously this is an audio medium, so I can't really, but there is a, in a flashback there's a flashback where i think that boo barrels the camera and it's just a look it's in a shot and it's really interesting because nothing comes of it and boo is alone in the frame and it's one of those things where it's a wide enough shot and it's a short enough moment and also sometimes if you watch things every once in a while you'll watch something where especially if you're working with kids or especially if the camera's moving, sometimes actors will glance across the barrel of the frame. But I think it's, I think especially the fact that it appears in this episode that. Feels very intentional. It does actually feel to me like Boo is the only other person who truly saw, even every once in a while, what Fleabag saw before Hot Priest. And it's just, it's a visual cue. It's a brief moment. And it could be written off, but I think the fact that it was chosen to be left in here, I think is very telling.

I want to ask you guys a question and I want to lead on from so we just had the the cafe moments and there was a moment that i saw in this rewatch through this lens that i don't think i really paid much attention to so the priest leaves and then fleabag is walking just down a a nondescript suburban london street and she looks behind her at the camera and then picks up her pace and the camera stays still and she disappears peers around a corner. And I'm suddenly felt like I'm being run away from. She feels threatened by me. And Sue, you've talked about how in the flashbacks to her mom's funeral, and it's really the only time across the two seasons where we've really dug into her relationship with her mom. Like you said, the first season was more about Fleabag coming to terms with her feelings of responsibility for Boo. And that flashback is prompted to my mind from the priest interrogating her relationship with us, noticing it. So, what did it feel like to you guys when suddenly her relationship to us has always been playful, it's kept us involved in this narrative, it's made us feel like we know more than anyone else, we're in on the joke, and then suddenly she's feeling I.

Feel like it's her losing control, right? And I think the camera following up behind is that we thought she had control over the narrative.

Right?

In terms of the way it's presented, the way she's telling it. We understand characters through how she sees them, right? And she explains them to us, right? I don't think we really like Fleabag's point of view at all. And that moment when he recognizes that the camera's there, we're like, oh, maybe she doesn't have as much control at all. And that moment where it's basically stalking her. It feels like something out of a horror film, right? The kind of handheld POV shot in her, quicking pace, glancing over her shoulder and stuff like that, makes it feel kind of intrusive. And that's when it does have these kind of flash cuts to the flashback that are somewhat intrusive. It reminded me of a Yoko Ono experimental film from the 60s called Rape, where it's a camera just following a woman for like 70 minutes. I haven't watched the whole 70 minutes because it's not an easy watch. It's effectively just a stalker. So I'm feeling that she's lost control and that she is a little bit more powerless.

I took the opposite point of view. Not that she's lost control, but that she has actually managed to run away for a moment from her intrusive thoughts. And this, I think for me, it's almost a paired scene with the end in the confessional. When she enters the confessional, she does not break the fourth wall once.

Keep going. I've stolen things. I've had a lot of sex outside marriage. And once or twice inside someone else's. There's been a spot of sodomy. There's been much masturbation, a bit of violence, and of course the endless fucking blasphemy. And? And? Go on. And... I... I can't... It's okay, go on. Frightened. Of what? Forgetting things. People. Forgetting people. And I'm ashamed of not knowing what I'm... What you want? It's okay not to know what you want. No, I know what I want. I know exactly what I want. Right now. What's that? It's bad. It's okay. I want someone to tell me what to wear in the morning. OK, well, I think there are people who can... No, I want someone to tell me what to wear every morning. I want someone to tell me what to eat, what to like, what to hate, what to rage about, what to listen to, what band to like, what to buy tickets for, what to joke about, what not to joke about. I want someone to tell me what to believe in, who to vote for and who to love and how to tell them. I just think I want someone to tell me how to live my life, Father, because so far I think I've been getting it wrong. But I know that's why people want people like you in their lives, because you just tell them how to do it. You just tell them what to do and what they'll get out at the end of it. Even though I don't believe your bullshit, and I know that scientifically nothing that I do makes any difference in the end anyway, I'm still scared. Why am I still scared?

She never breaks fourth wall she's and it's a several minute scene if i recall correctly she never breaks the fourth wall she's avoiding us she's avoiding her thoughts she's completely consumed with her concentrating on the priest and i think that whether for better or for worse both of these instances are her managing to get away from her intrusive thoughts at least for a moment it's something that she doesn't want to have to think about so she runs away from it and manages to not think about it and it's in the confessional it's something she wants to say okay you know what i want this thing and if i let this conscience or if i look at it or think about it for a moment i'm going to lose my nerve or i'm going to uh lose the feeling the everything that I want to be getting from this moment. And so I think that those moments are almost paired to me. The function is different, but the effect is quite similar in terms of like, I'm actually just ignoring this right now, which it's interesting, right? The control is, is it good if we just like push away our thoughts and I can't hear you. So the terminology is quite fluid. Maybe some would say, well, she has lost control, even if she's not thinking about it. the ability to think about it and face it is control. But I think that both of them are certainly showing that. Facing it or not is what she's in control of at the moment well.

You guys both are using the term intrusive thoughts and i i love that because that word inherently suggests not her control they are intruding they're not invited or prompted by but.

If she's not eyeballing them right if she's not looking them slash us in the eye.

I i agree with your analysis about what it means when we are not having the asides when she's not breaking the fourth wall that it's showing her i guess more present. But in the first season, it felt like she was very much in control of whenever she wanted to look at us and what she wanted us to know and not know. You're talking about control of the narrative. So, not only is she the step up from high fidelity, you know, on the spectrum where high fidelity is a seven, what makes Fleabag higher up that spectrum is to your point, Stu, you she's placing the camera she's placing us and it will often switch very quickly she always knows where we are she's putting us where she wants us to be whereas i feel that with rob in high fidelity the camera where we are located when she talks to us doesn't move very much and she doesn't appear to be placing us with the same amount of precision um and so here it just feels like she's losing control of it the thing that made me really gasp when I watched this episode for the first time when I when I first saw it is if the hot priest can see it everyone else can see it and no one's noticed, And if the hot priest can see her and she's just disappearing into her mind or whatever, I suddenly felt, oh my God, am I Fleabag's mental illness? What my experience was.

That feels like three very large questions piled on top of each other wearing a trench coat.

You're my mental illness, if that makes you feel any better.

I am Stu's mental illness. I think there's a difference, right, between seeing and understanding. So if you're saying that the hot priest doing this proves that everyone else sees it and just shrugs it off then i do think there's either it's because they don't quote unquote see fleabag they don't understand her or they don't have intrusive thoughts and they sort of write off the fact that she does well.

He doesn't understand it he keeps asking where are you going what what are you.

But But he's trying to understand.

Right? Yes, yeah.

As opposed to, and I'll argue that by the finale, he does.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know. So I watched this last night and Anna and I went on a bit of a YouTube rabbit hole afterwards and saw Phoebe Waller-Bridge's opening from SNL.

Fleabag came from a very personal place for me. It began as a way to get Andrew Scott to dress up as a priest and tell me that he loves me. It took me six years and two seasons to achieve it, but I did it. Yeah, I don't care about awards. I just want gay men to love me. I called the character Priest in the script, but everyone started calling him Hot Priest. Obviously, Andrew is hot, but this priest character caused such a hornstorm. Andrew and I were trying to figure out what it was about him that was driving women so mental. And we boiled it down and realized it was because he was doing this one thing. Listening.

Yep, he listens. He tries to understand. He knows what she wants. I mean, and then he tells her to kneel. So, you know, there's that. But yeah, absolutely. He listens in a way that nobody else in her life other than Boo has done.

Yeah. Which goes to your point that if the, whether or not Boo barreling is intentional or not, But if it was, it speaks to that, that she was the only other person who may see Fleabag communing with us.

Boo's all flashback. I haven't rewatched the first season, but we only ever see Blue in Fleabag's memory. So it feels like, yeah, it's a representation of their closeness. Yeah. So I agree with that. It's just I don't think it's Boo. If we were somehow there was a prequel series, Fleabag is zero. I'm not sure Boo would be looking at the camera.

But I think I think the idea is that whether it's in her memory or not, or whether the fact that like Fleabag still clearly had some mental issues and was haunted by guilt. The flashback that we get to Boo is while Fleabag is sleeping with her boyfriend and Boo doesn't know it.

Right.

And Fleabag is haunted by guilt for what she's done. And Boo did understand her. So even if the idea is that it's still, you know, Fleabag's impression of Boo, understanding her and knowing her intrusive thoughts about like, I'm cheating on you with your boyfriend. You're like, why would I do this? I'm a terrible person. I think that's still representative of that. And in some similar ways, I think some people would argue, I'm not sure I would, that the painting falling, for example, is God breaking the fourth wall to the priest. Ways to tweak it with the painting and with Boo breaking it even in Mm-hmm.

So, Stu, you've made the observation, I'm not sure if you've made it in this recording, that Fleabag only talks to us when she wants something of us. And there's one final moment in this episode where we've come out of the flashback. It does a really impressive match cut of Fleabag sitting on her parents' bed in sunlight to Fleabag sitting in a church pew at night. And Fleabag looks at us just before she kneels down to pray. And I'm wondering, what do you guys...

How do we interpret that moment?

Yes.

Look at me, I'm about to pray.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. The episode also ends with Fleabag looking at us and not saying anything.

Mm-hmm.

If they're her intrusive thoughts, I think that it's asking not just for understanding, but for forgiveness. And I've also seen the argument that the fourth wall break is her talking to Boo, you know, the way that some people talk to loved ones who have passed, you know, whether you go to the gravesite or whether you talk out loud or whether you do it in your head. And that's not a theory that I fully subscribe to. I do think it's interesting, but I don't subscribe to it. But I do think that if she will never be able to get forgiveness from Boo, and she's attempting to be able to forgive herself. And I think whether it's intrusive thoughts, whether you think that there is, you know, some unknown unseen audience that she understands is there the same way that, you know, sometimes people write autobiographies or, or whatnot. I think that she's looking for forgiveness.

I think that I'm going to build off that because you're right. That I've said, not just about fleabag, but that all the episodes, the characters talk to the audience when they want something. I think that is affected by how much control they have over that telling. And I think what is interesting about what the characters say in the Abbott Elementary reflects the fact that they know they are talking to the camera. They know they're talking to a documentary crew that is going to inform how they say and how they want to present themselves. There's a consciousness to it. Similarly, High Fidelity is there is a consciousness of what she is saying, even if it is an internal narrator that she has control over the story that she is being told. Fleabag is interesting because I think early on, she definitely wants us to think better of her, right? But then if we come to this realization that part of her intrusive thoughts, to use the term that we've been using, comes from trauma, one that she's a character that's impulsive, but then that has created a situation of trauma that she's wanting forgiveness. Then what she wants from the audience isn't anywhere near as conscious of what the other characters in the other films and shows that we've looked at, including the voiceover episodes. Episodes right she is acting just as impulsively and that reflects more of a deeper you know to use the terminology it's a need not a want right so she's got a need for forgiveness and part of like even her commenting on like look at his arms about the priest at the beginning look at his neck is about like forgive me he is really hot you know i can't help myself can i right he's kind of that's That's a need, not a conscious want. So I think, you know, when characters speak when they want something is also characters speak when they need something. I mean, it's such a weird dictaming, you know, need versus want. I like it because you can basically inject it with your own shit. She isn't pursuing a conscious agenda in the same way that I think Jack in Fight Club is. Right. I think it's a more subconscious agenda. gender and that's reflected by her control and this moment in particular where she's kind of beginning to lose control makes us reflect and changes particularly for the final sequences what we think of her and then how we kind of portray that and look the fact that she's kind of impulsive and speaks her mind to the audience is kind of what makes her humor like fun and transgressive right.

All right. A couple of questions. I agree that her asides are impulsive and a reflection of intrusive thoughts, but I don't think we are her. I feel that she's performative and she's sharing them with someone outside herself. I don't think it's Deadpool level where she knows she's in a TV show, but the fact that she places us at different physical locations around the room so that she has to physically turn to look at us makes me, I don't know.

I do think she wants an external forgiveness. She's trying to forgive herself, but I think she believes she can't do it without someone. And I think that it is a slightly more ethereal someone. Yeah, I don't believe she knows, oh, I'm in a TV show and I'm asking the audience. But I do think that there is some metatextual sleight of hand that's going on there of us being representative of her desperately seeking other people in her life to validate her.

Yeah. And that moment where she looks at us before she gets down to pray, I felt very strongly that she was asking for us not to judge her because she's like an atheist and, you know, has been playing, you know, back and forth about religion and stuff with a hot priest for three episodes. And, you know, suddenly feeling compelled to pray. And she looks at us asking something of us.

Yeah. I mean, I think it has a different effect. I mean, who is the audience in the staged version of this? And you've seen it, Mel, but we've seen soliloquies in shows before, right? There's a long history of soliloquy. Are they talking to the audience?

Yeah. And in that, it's much more of a, let me tell you this story that happened. And she doesn't say, you, the hundred audience people assembled here tonight. But it feels very much like, oh, I'm at a party and I'm telling a story. And let me tell you this story. Oh, my God, you won't believe. You know, some people in a stage play, even if it's a one person show, they're talking, you know, to the back wall. She's looking at the audience members as she talks in a lot of the scenes. So it's more of a. Stand-up type of presentation than some.

One person.

Plays are for sure.

There's a really excellent analysis that it's only a 10 minute youtube video of someone doing a compare and contrast between the stage show and various moments from season one and some of them are just she's obviously done that stage show for years and got great success and the delivery is identical and it's fascinating but he made the observation that just like what you said that because fleabag is narrating what is happening, then has the gags as its commentary. It's like she's telling everyone a story. Whereas when we're seeing the action and she's only talking to us directly in these asides, then it's a very different feeling about when the audience is involved. The audience of the stage shows up is involved a hundred percent of the time because she's telling us a story and she's aware that she's telling us a story.

It's also told in hindsight, by nature of it. We're watching Fleabag on stage as this character telling this story from that point in time backwards, whereas on the show, they're very much more in the moment. And that actually is more similar to high fidelity and that kind of like, I'm writing a book at the moment. Like, I am in the emotional present. So, it's a shift of that kind of emotional presence, which is a really cool term. We should use it more often.

Yeah. And I do think, you know, leading, hopefully segwaying somewhat into our key learnings is that I feel that breaking the fourth wall is a much more emotional tool than voiceover. Like that to me is the big distinction that I've seen. I think voiceover has a wider array of uses that it could be applied to. Like we particularly identified from when in time the voiceover is coming can have like a huge impact narratively. But in this, it's always about bringing us deeply inside. Like, Stu, you and I, we've often talked about, like, our major challenge in film and television is dramatizing the internal, externalizing the internal. And that's what breaking the fourth wall, at least in these three examples, clearly is.

So, why do people not do it more?

I think it can be seen as a narrative cheat. I think we don't always want the audience to know everything the narrator does. I think it can be hard to write and certainly to deliver in a way that makes sense. I think there's a lot of reasons not to as well as reasons to.

Like not knowing what's going on in people's heads. Yes. Creates mystery, creates drama, creates questions. And I don't think these, in all three of these, it's not trying to hide what the characters are feeling. It's doing quite the opposite. It really wants us to be involved in the character's emotional state.

But there's an irony in particularly Fleabag and High Fidelity. Mockumentary is slightly different. An irony between what they're expressing about their emotions and what they're feeling, right? And even High Fidelity has a degree of irony between her thinking that she's a dick and what she's actually doing in these few moments. I'm like, you're putting up healthy boundaries. You've just been socialized to think that you need, you know, in a particular way. I don't know if that's where it ends up going, but that's what I kind of felt in these few moments. Like, oh, I'm such a dick for ghosting him in the bar. And I'm like, well, if you feel unsafe, do it. I'm kind of interested in that kind of irony. And so, it feels like if you've got a kind of very emotional irony, Breaking the Fourth Wall would be a good choice to do it as opposed to voiceover, which I do think we talked about. We never did it, but we talked about the Thin Red Line, you know, or Tree of Life. Those voiceovers are incredibly emotional and reflective, but they're not about the emotional present. I just use the word reflective. And I don't think Fleabag's voiceover is that reflective. Right, you may make grand statements about his sister or godmother or whatever, but it's not like, inside man is a war, a war against nature.

It is, like these particular episodes in the second season of Fleabag, it is about revealing to us that she has been lying to herself. Those intrusive thoughts are a defense mechanism that gets broken down. It's like, if I can make fun of the world, I am safer. And Hot Priest, by listening to her, breaks down her barriers and she is, you know, deeply hurt and it uncovers that.

All right. So, what are our top five takeaways from this episode?

We each get five. I'm just- Oh, I love a list.

It's high fidelity.

You're like, that's number one.

Takeaways. Number one, I can break the fourth wall. I think I really like the idea that not every moment has to fit what the world rules are. You can have tiny, cheeky little things like the moment with Boo, the moment in High Fidelity with the music's diegetic, you know, the moment where the student breaks the fourth wall in Abbott Elementary, which doesn't really happen very often. You can still have a little bit more formal, as in form, fun with something like this than you can in a sort of otherwise strict sitcom setup. So that would be one. I think two, anytime you could get Andrew Scott to, you know, star in your thing, that's probably great. You should take advantage of that. Three, I think like you don't always have to be clear enough. About it, right? You don't have to, the painting falling from the wall may or may not be God, may or may not be talking to us, may or may not be talking to hot priest, may or may not be talking to, we were saying, who is Fleabag talking to? We don't necessarily know. That's fine. You don't need to. You don't need to spell every last thing out when you break the fourth wall. Like with some other things, it's much clearer who's being talked to. I also really liked the fact that But Fleabag in particular uses a lot of J-cuts. Once it's established, it's breaking the fourth wall. Sometimes you think there is, and then actually you realize it sounds like a voiceover, and then it's not. And it allows you to play with that formally a little bit more.

For those who don't know, a J-cut means sound starts, and then we cut to the picture, which the sound belongs to. It's a J because it's sound, then the line.

Is- You hear me talking, even though you're looking at a visual of a cute cat. And then it cuts to me looking at the cute cat while in the middle of my sentence. And I think playing with that formally in a place where you're breaking the fourth wall means sometimes you don't know, am I being talked to? Is a third person being talked to? Who's being talked to here? So it creates a little bit more fun of that. And I think as well, the idea of control is really fascinating. So that five for me is when we're talking about how much control does the person speaking have over their narrative? And where is that lever in terms of that was was a really great takeaway between all of these and Fight Club and, and sometimes even every once in a while, like you're slamming the lever one way in one episode, and you know, back up to 11 in the next episode.

I think that last one answers your question, Stu, as to why don't we break the fourth wall more often. We don't want, for the most part, in most stories, we don't want our characters in charge of the narrative. We want an element of the narrative happening to them.

Which is a little bit different, because I would say soliloquy is far more common in theatre. Even modern theatre seems to have a win. I mean, maybe it's just because, you know, they're, quote unquote, breaking a leg, to actually use the source of the terminology. You know, there's always part of the performance is projecting a performance for an audience, right? Yeah. I mean, not always. I mean, there are people that have far more experience in theatre than me, such as yourself, and then there are going to be people that are even more experienced than you in terms of theatre and go, well, no, in modern theatre and blah, blah, blah, and Brechtian, whatever styles that you don't really address. But you know what I mean. I would say most theater and I've done immersive theater where you walk around in an environment and the actors are performing the scenes meters from you and you can kind of walk around there is a degree of kind of immersive theater that still is aware that it's performing for an audience that I think isn't necessarily an inherent part of the medium of cinema I.

Think I've spoken about this in in a different episode but one of the most powerful theatrical experiences I've ever had was in, there's an official, you know, proper professional production, but friends of mine staged it and it was a three-hander, but they deliberately put the stage between two sets of tiered seating in the audience. So, the audience is constantly, we're watching the show. On the other side of the show is audience. So, it was constantly reminding us that we're watching a show in that Brechtian thing, but it was- it made us feel like the show was very transgressive as well. It was a retelling of a- as one of the Greek players. So, lots of, you know, eating each other's children and whatnot. So, it made you feel even more uncomfortable than just watching something that makes you feel uncomfortable is watching something that makes you feel uncomfortable and knowing that you're in turn being watched having that experience so i i think that to me answers the question as to why we don't break the fourth wall all the time yeah because.

It's harder to do in such a way that it's like how do they not have the control of this it'd be interesting and maybe people can list as examples of films or shows where multiple characters have pieces to camera that are not.

In documentaries the examples.

I'm reaching to with characters that can talk directly to the audience, they're all found footage. In a broad sense, I know found footage is more narrow now, but I actually, for me, found footage should actually be defined more. I mean, it's the found part that people react to, but, you know, mockumentary, I guess. So, do you have a top five, Chas, takeaways from this episode or any other episodes?

Top five. I learned early on in this episode that those levers that I thought it were all locked at one end are still very relevant. I think all of these are incredibly consistent with who the audience is. Mel, you said they don't spell it out. They don't. We have no idea who Phoebe Waller-Bridge thinks or knows Fleabag is talking to, but it is incredibly consistent. I think establishing that relationship, like who Rob in High Fidelity is talking to, how the characters in Abbott react differently, depending whether they're talking to who us as a mockumentary audience or the camera crew or each other, whether they know they're being surveilled or not, like who they're talking to is very important. The lesson, you know, it wasn't so much from this episode, but rather your guys' last episode on Fight Club. How much control of the narrative are you giving to the character? And it was nice to see how much the differences between Fleabag and High Fidelity are directorial and visual as much as anything else. Uh, portraying the differences in, in who is control of the narrative. Um, and finally the big one, like you said, Sue, not to steal your, your observation, but the, the big difference between breaking the fourth wall on other things is just that. Emotional present that there's not really a better tool for clearly communicating the emotional present of a character and i mean i think again why does it not happen more often you know we we look at portrait of a lady on fire and that ending where they're looking at each other across the theater and i would much rather just be watching them in silence knowing what they're thinking rather than actually hearing one or other of them talking to us about the turmoil of their emotions. So they are different experiences.

Yeah. Like, do you ever not stop talking? Like, that would be your feeling in that moment. You start to become irritated by the character. And the fact that Fleabag is slightly annoying is kind of part of the reason that she- One, the episodes are only half an hour.

Rob's annoying as well. Yeah. Rob knows that they're annoying. Yeah.

Okay. So my top five takeaways for this episode, let's see if I can get to five. One is obviously the control of the narrative ended up proving a really useful tool, but the way that then that relates to how the character speaks, that's kind of two observation two that I think is really useful. This idea that on the want versus need spectrum, the awareness that the character says of what they're saying is affected by how much control they have over the narrative, right? The more control over the narrative, the more that they're kind of speaking with at least a surface agenda. There may be a quote-unquote subtext to that, but whereas I think the less control they have, the more it's kind of reflective of their inner desire, maybe? I'm not articulating that particularly well, I'm sorry. So, three. The relationship, I suppose, four, between presence and the present is kind of really interesting. I think it's actually kind of a fun pun, emotional presence versus emotional present might be an idea that's worth unpacking. Five, let me, I had it, I had it, I should have written it down. Nope.

I've got, I've got a six. I'll give you your fifth is that I'm quite curious to see some of these scripts and how they write when the switch or does it say fleabag barrels or does it talk about Rob's headphones being diegetic and that sort of thing? I think especially again, when I was talking about like stuff like the J cut stuff, like the diegetic stuff about Boo, which I hadn't really noted before. Now, I'm really curious now to go back to those scripts and see some of these really specific moments, how they were written.

Yeah i mean you'd think for a screenwriting podcast we would have actually looked at the screenwriting oh well not all.

The scripts are available i'm pretty sure i tried to find that high fidelity script and.

Maybe this wasn't.

Looking in the right place but a lot of tv scripts aren't available unless they've been submitted for emmys.

Yep yep and i think the fleabag one that he's floating around is season two episode one that you actually otherwise have to buy the scriptures which i have had on my christmas list for like three years and it still Who hasn't gotten it for Christmas.

This might be the year.

Hopefully Emma will listen to that. Thanks as always to our amazing patrons who bring you more Draft Zero more often. In particular, Alexandra, Jen, Jesse, Laurie, Crob, Lily, Millay, Paolo, Randy, Sandra, Thees, and Thomas. And thanks to you both for holding the fort while I went away. Way, I was going to say this might be the conclusion for, you know, the talking directly to the audience series, but there could be one more and there could be musicals as well.

We're just going to go back to our normal programming of talking indirectly to the audience.

Thank you both so much.

My pleasure.

Bye.

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