DZ-114: Climaxes in Challengers — Transcript

The tennis is sex metaphor is really kicking off.

The balls are coming at my face, you know. They smack the ball at each other furiously, vengefully, looking wildly alive. I mean, you give that to an actual actor and not me, and we could put it behind a paywall. Hi, I'm Mel Killingsworth.

And I'm Chaz Fisher.

Welcome to Draft Zero.

A podcast where emerging screenwriters, filmmakers, et cetera, try to work out what makes great screenplays work. And you will have heard that intrepid, I would say leader, when he's feeling generous, he says we're 50-50 of the podcast. But when he's being accurate, he's more like 60% of the podcast. We are missing Stu. Stu is on set, on show rather. And the fact that we have struggled to come together. We've got lots of ideas for which episode is coming next, but it's actually left open a nice little window for Mel and I to come together on, do a one shot as Mel and Stu did while I was similarly unavailable on Fight Club. And just like that entry on Fight Club, I'm hoping that this one shot actually sits really neatly with the work that we've just done and the work that we're about to do. So what's this one shot on? We are doing Challengers, directed by Luca, I'm going to butcher his last name, Guaranino.

That's it.

Written by, and this is going to be important because we copped a bit of flack for not having read a script in a recent episode that we did. And we are reading the script, which is written by Justin Kuritsky. So, why are we doing this film? So we've just come off a great big run, as most regular listeners will know, on tools, craft tools for filmmakers, in particular writers, to communicate directly to the audience. And this film came up as a potential example for one of those. And then we're also trying to put together an episode on subtext. And I also thought the ending of this film being largely silent.

Largely dialogless. There's so much grunting.

Ah!

So much noise. Yes. Okay. And a very loud soundtrack and, uh, you know, the odd thwack of a ball.

Speaking of subtext.

So I was, I kept on this movie. I watched it on a plane. Uh, I've now watched it, I think three times. And the ending of the film has buried into my brain. The rest of the film is perfectly enjoyable, but the ending has buried into my brain in a way that I struggled to understand or that's not the right word i struggle to choose a meaning for the ending and the ending is so laden with meaning so what i thought we would do is break down the final scene of the film we might read the screenplay that we have we might also describe the beats as we see them from watching the film and they're very similar there's a couple of crucial differences i would say and then we'll have to by nature of trying to understand what those beats mean discuss what's happened earlier in the film but really try and describe how the filmmakers lead up to that ending and then what do we think the filmmakers have clearly communicated like without a doubt communicated and then what are they deliberately leaving open, mel is grinning at me i'm glad.

Sometimes i'm glad this is an audio.

Medium because then i can't i'm not.

Giving as much away. I'm not an actor for a reason.

Any initial comments, Mel, before I throw you under the bus and ask you to summarize the plot of Challenges?

Not really. I think I have a couple of questions and we've really deliberately, I had to clarify one or two things about what you were trying to get at. But other than that, I think we've mostly deliberately not, a lot of times in the before, in the lead up, we have a lot of discussion about what we think and about an outline. We have not done that intentionally. So, I'm very excited to go along for this ride along with the audience.

And I'm sure this is going to be one of those episodes where certain members of the audience that have a very clear understanding of what the film means to them will just be screaming into their headphones going, Chaz, you idiot, this is what it means. It could not be more obvious.

But that's part of the fun for me. When I listen to podcasts, I do this.

Okay. So, Mel, can you summarize the plot of challenges for us?

Three hot sports people use sports instead of sex and use sex instead of communicating with each other, basically. Yeah.

Art's got his coach, Tashi Donaldson, who also is his wife. I'm playing for both of us, Tashi. I think maybe we're disturbed by the fact that she could have been in a salon like me. When we were teenagers. When we were teenagers. Hey, I love you. I know.

So we've got Patrick and Art and Tashi. And Patrick and Art are competitors and friends growing up in the tennis scene. And then they go and see this other young player named Tashi, and they both really have the hots for her. Honestly, again, this is really playing with that line of both. And Tashi really enjoys playing with that. There's also a lot of very intentional subtext about her saying the script, saying them saying that they are in a relationship. And eventually Tosh marries Art and Patrick is sort of on the down slope of his career Toshi tears her knee is unable to continue playing tennis and then Toshi starts trying to get both of them to play better tennis so they're both sort of failing they meet at this tournament, and they finally both make it to the final uh the night before tashi goes uh and sleeps with patrick and says you've got to throw the game you've got to let art win tomorrow this is going to bolster his confidence he's finally going to be able to move on you're already there you'll both be able to you know move on compete bigger you.

Can go back to my hotel the money just came I am not here to fuck you, Patrick. You're not? No. Well? I want you to lose tomorrow. I'm aware of that. I'm asking you to lose tomorrow. Fuck off. He's doing really well this week. He's ready to come back. He's ready to make a shot at the open. And if he wins tomorrow, he'll know he can do it. He needs this. He needs this? Yes. What about what I need? I can't believe you did this, Dan. I mean... The fucking thing won't be one thing, but this, this is unforgivable. I'm just being incredibly fucking kind to the both of you right now. Okay? I'm taking such good care of my little white boys. No. No fucking way. Drive me back to my fucking hotel. Drive the fucking car, Patrick. And you know what the most frustrating part of this is? Because, you know, it really drives me crazy. You did come here to fuck me, but you're so full of shit that you won't even admit that to yourself. If it's the only way to get you to throw the fucking match, then sure. Go fuck yourself. You absolute loser. I'm the loser. Yeah, you are. Look at you.

Now, I've told this in chronological order. The film essentially structures the entire thing around the tournament and then shows us in flashbacks them meeting and them becoming friends and then lovers and then falling out. And it sort of sprinkles that in, but for our purposes, it's not really important because the end scene is the furthest point chronologically in all of their relationships that we ever see.

Yeah. So not only does it, is it structured? I don't think it's so much structured around the tournament is it opens on this final moment. I'd, I'd forgotten that it does this, but the film opens, not the script, the script opens very much with a, with a very, very kind of cool cheaty description. Uh the the script opens with set one a donaldson zero zero peaswig zero zero exterior tennis court in la rochelle late afternoon in new rochelle sorry late afternoon and then it describes the three players and uh a lot of their backstory for example art donaldson 33 wasp good looking is the biggest star in man's tennis that the u.s has seen in a generation his shocking presence at this This rinky-dink tournament is the sole reason why the modest venue is packed with locals, tourists, and anyone living in the vicinity of New Rochelle who's even remotely interested in tennis. So the script starts with the match at the beginning and introducing us to the players. And then the actual film... Opens with this closing moment which is Art soaring over the net to smash a lob back down at Patrick. So that's the that's the opening shot of the film and it's also where the film ends too. Now I I want to add I guess a few additions to your backstory because yes it's structured around so we watch the match play out we keep coming back to the match and we keep getting more of their backstory to layer in the the communication or like drop in the these little nuggets that add to the drama of what's going on uh on court so importantly Tashi and Patrick were actually in a relationship when she injured her knee but his kind of focus on his own career at that point led them to breaking up. Art then asks her to be his coach which she agrees and that's when their relationship starts and then there's some really big time jumps wherein they get married. He wins three Grand Slam tennis tournaments all that's off screen it's talked about. He becomes a superstar tennis player and Patrick really is I know he's ranked like 100 and something there's some joke about where he's ranked in the in the world.

Well those big tournaments usually have spots for 128 players so if you're ranked in the top 100 then you instantly get a spot but everyone else has to play a sort of tournament before the tournament okay some years i make it some years i don't um if i win this thing in new rochelle the ranking will be high for the Open. So you'll get a spot? I'll get a spot in the qualifiers. Uh, okay. I told you tennis is boring.

And so he's had a really tough time of it. He's living in his car. When he shows up at the tournament, he doesn't have money for a motel. And Tashi has supposedly put art in this tournament, which is supposed to be an easy win for him to build some confidence ahead of the US Open, which is the only Grand Slam tournament he hasn't won. Now, Patrick at some point in the film accuses Tashi of knowing that Patrick was playing in that tournament and deliberately entering Art into the tournament.

Art can't see us together. He already thinks I'd plan this to humiliate him. Didn't you? Not this part.

And one of the nice ambiguities of this film is that it never really says one way or another whether that's true or not. There's lots of moments throughout the tournament. um patrick approaches tashi and asks her to be his coach the for the following season and i noted that he gives her her phone number and she's like no way in hell walks away but puts the phone number in her pocket so there's there's all this sort of nice juicy back and forth they're they're saying one thing but really meaning the other and right near the end of the film leading up into this final scene is uh this final i guess point scene what are we calling it.

Yeah i mean it's a point.

It's nice that the climax of the movie is actually at the end of the movie like to me the movie climaxes at the point where it cuts to black which is awesome yeah.

And and yes luca very intentionally doesn't show any climaxes in his.

Films essentially not not even in peaches.

Climaxes between two people.

Maybe or.

Three people is maybe more accurate then.

Yeah, I remember you watched this well before me. I think you saw this in cinemas and you came out saying, this film is not horny. Everyone's calling it horny.

No, no, no, no, no, no. It is horny. No, no, no. This film is horny. Everyone is saying that this film is sexual and the sexiest film. And I'm like, it's not. There is no sex. It's very horny. The whole thing is just horny and no really nothing. The whole film, I don't know. it's two and a half hours.

Of uh trent.

Resner edging us.

Basically you are not wrong i mean we we had the comment off mike where for those of you who've got the script we've we'll post a link in the show notes it's dated in the title 2004 there's no not much version information on the front page but it's pretty close to what we've got here and we're on page 125 top of page 125 scene 98 it's the final scene of the film so we've got page 125 126 half of 128 so we've got three and a half pages three.

And a half pages and it takes 11 11 minutes.

Of screen time I 11 minutes Yeah.

Because and so now I think we'll start to tip our hand a little bit because this was your call. And I was like, great, I'll read the script. I was I was not planning on rewatching the film. I'm like, I'm just going to read the script and see what I get out of that because I was quite curious. And then you read the script before I did. And you just messaged the chat and you said, wow, this is very different. And I said, hope is it. So I read the pages. I read the script. And then I went back and I went to watch the end of the film side by side with my script before I say it. I said, what is different? Because as I was reading it, I thought, well, this sounds pretty close to me, but it has been a few months. I saw it in cinemas, which was definitely in 2024, at least in Australia, but it has been a few months. And i'm sitting there reading and it would sometimes take a minute to get through two lines of action and they're not in dense action it's just the way of editing and i'm going line by line by line by where and i'm like it's not different yes it's really not so i think it's What's the most fascinating to me is, why do you think it is different? And I just want to hear that spelled out because you said, no, it changes the entire meaning of the film. And this fascinates me. Really, I don't think it does. I do think that it, I think the change is significant for two reasons, but I don't think it changes the meaning of the film. But I'm really interested in what you think And we have not talked about this offhand So hit me with it.

Alright well I think this is good I think we'll start with my Uh, joy at the ending, my joy of not understanding the ending as it is on screen. And then I'll read what the ending is on the page. And then we can probably break down that final scene a bit more to try and discern what they've deliberately told us very clearly, unequivocally as filmmakers, what the ending means, and then what they've deliberately left open. How about that?

Real quick before we do that, my question is, do you watch tennis at all? I don't actually know.

We've only actually no i do actually watch quite a lot of tennis okay.

Great because i think it's really interesting and one of my points is literally about sport and about tennis and i think a couple of the changes that are made are explicitly because the screenplay isn't quite specific enough with its tennis and its terminology and around the ending.

I mean there's only in these last two and three three pages there's only two things that i would say are fundamentally different between the script and the film a lot of what's different about the film is as you say it's just execution like one line of action we sit in that line of action in slow motion 18 different angles and in slow motion and then they repeat it yeah three or four times yeah i uh yeah so i'm not i'm not and please justin and luca should you ever listen to this i am not critical of either your script or the film you made I enjoyed both very much I'm just fascinated so in that final point Patrick has promised Tatashi to lose to throw the game to give Art confidence um we can go back another thing that's not in the in the script overtly is it's really unclear and I like how unclear it is whether Tatashi sleeps with Patrick the night before the final to convince him to throw the game or just because she wants to sleep with him um and i think they've done that really well could.

Be both could be one or the other could be kind of neither and she just feels like fucking art over.

It i a lot.

Of these things are left like multiple uh multiple things even before the final scene are left open to multiple interpretations it's like humanity is complex or something.

Yeah and look it's good because they even they even call it out you know um tashi says they're they're in post-coital, I almost said post-prandial, giving away my enjoyment of my dinner, but the post-coital glow in the car and Tashi asks.

How am I supposed to know if you're gonna do it? You won't.

So she's on the edge of her seat, literally as well, watching how this plays out. So the end of the film, Art leaps up to smash and win a point. And to be clear, it's not the point to win the game. All right. It's the first point of the tiebreaker. Okay. There's going to be quite a few points to decide who's going to win the game after that point. Art leaps up. He is going to absolutely pulverize this ball and Patrick sees Art and Art has like overjumped and he's going over the net and he's coming down literally on top of Patrick and Patrick drops his racket, catches Art, Patrick wraps him up and then they stay in that embrace and they hold each other, grip each other. And then in the silence of that uh embrace, we cut to tashi and she screams come on in a positive way not in a negative way is that do you do you disagree with my description of what's happened on screen it's.

Really crucial to me that he hits the ball.

Okay and.

Here's he does hit the ball.

And it lands.

On patrick's side of the net because this is one of my main points.

Okay, so Art wins the points. Okay.

This is one of the main points for me is he hits the ball, but in the act of falling, he also hits the net.

Yeah, so he's going to lose the point.

Which would default the point, right. And to me, it's that that is really important, and we can come back to this later if you want to continue with your point, but because of what is written, and how it's very, very difficult to actually execute that directorially and visually, I think that him hitting the ball and then hitting the net executes it in a slightly different way. So I do think it's quite important he hits the ball and the ball hits on Patrick's side of the net. Other than that, yep, absolutely.

So Art would have won the point had he not overjumped and then come down on the other side of the net.

Comes down on his side of the net, but like in Patrick's arms and touching the net, yep.

So that ending really kind of threw me in a positive way. I'm like, what was this all about, right? It cuts then, right? It cuts on that final moment where we don't know the result of the fucking tennis match, right? But what we do know is that Art and Patrick are embracing for the first time since before Art and Tashi got married, before Art became a superstar, in a long time. And they're holding each other, like, quite passionately. And Tashi is excited to see this. is cheering this on that's.

What it cuts on.

Yeah so they're embracing yeah then.

It shows tashi she says come on then.

It cuts to black yeah oh.

Yeah she's loving it.

So i was kind of like what does this mean is this just saying that their love was the point of this film that that she was kind of, in between them is it about all three of them coming together in some way is that what it's about and i and i struggle to pass what it's about given what led up to it so i came into this episode wanting to understand because one of the future uh episodes we're talking about doing is hero's choice uh and another was subtext you know they're not there's a couple of lines in there i think fuck off is one of the few lines in the actual bits of dialogue between the three of them so, it could have been about subtext but i think it's it's different to all that i think uh writer and director have a very clear idea of what they're trying to say but they're not i mean for a film that is so unsubtle uh in its execution like we'll probably play some excerpts where the that the soundtrack is just thumping it's just overwhelming deliberately so but do you want me to read out what just the ending is in the script yes.

Read out the ending and then i'm curious what back when you very first said i said how did you think it was going to end so i read the ending and then.

I'm curious to hear.

What you were thinking as this was happening.

Yeah in the film patrick pounces on the return and they rally it's clear immediately that both of them are playing their best tennis in years the best tennis of their lives they smack the ball at each other furiously vengefully looking wildly alive. As they trade blows, we settle on Tashi, her head swiveling back and forth between the two of them. Gradually, her look of anxiety turns into one of exhilaration. Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack. She grits her teeth and clenches her fists, playing as Art, playing as Patrick, playing as the ball itself. Thwack, thwack, thwack. The ball goes into the net, but we stay on Tashi. We don't know who won the point, even as the crowd cheers and Tashi leaps to her feet. Tashi, come on, cut to black. So none of the embrace is in there. And we know who won the point.

No, we don't.

You and I, we just said, Art hits the net.

Art hits the net. He hits the ball down. Okay. And this is where I'm saying it's rather impossible visually to properly execute. We don't know who won the point, right? Like while actually showing the end of the point. if even even the ball hitting on one side of the net even if you do it in a close-up the moment you then show the characters on either side of the net people are going to argue about that right so i actually think that from a writing standpoint it's very easy to say you don't know who won the point from a visual standpoint it's very hard to execute i think the way that it's executed you can argue who won the point you can argue patrick won because the ball hits before he touches the net. You can argue that he defaults it because he touches the net, but he doesn't come over it and he doesn't touch it with his racket. And so I actually think that you can still argue you don't know who won the point, but that it's very, very difficult either way to be conclusive about something like that in tennis. I think that part of this, especially with the way that he hits the ball while he's up in the air and then comes down and hits the net is a directorial solve for a writing problem where it's very easy to write this on the page and very difficult to portray that without some sort of um dialogue or you know explanation which obviously you don't want to do here but.

I i don't feel that that was the challenge being set to luca oh you know we need to show on camera somewhere where we don't know who wins the point.

I don't think that's the only reason he did it. However, I do think, and it's one of the only other changes in this scene, is there is a little bit of lack of specificity around the tennis. One of the only other changes in the scene is when the umpire says 40 all instead of deuce, because you don't say that. You don't say 40 all, you say deuce when you've tied the game there. And this is why I was asking you about tennis, like with the point scoring it's one of the few other things that's changed in the scene the point scoring on screen is slightly different than he's he's written it in the script so that you can get to that ending in a in a more progressive way etc and so i think that i'm not saying that's the only reason luca chose to do this because i think there's a couple of other reasons but i do think that it is um a much more elegant visual presentation of what's written on the page that you have it happen this way but.

There's a big difference between they could have just stayed on Tashi, right? Because the script is saying stays on Tashi. Literally, it does say the ball goes into the net, but we stay on Tashi. We don't know who won the point, even as the crowd cheers and Tashi leaps to her feet. The point that the script is making is that Tashi, it doesn't matter who she's cheering for. She's basically cheering for tennis or both of them.

Yeah. What I'm curious about is why you said this changes everything about the entire film. I'm curious.

Look, I may have been, you know, in true Chaz style, over-emphasizing.

No, none of us are ever melodramatic or over-emphasizing.

But this ending, as is on the page, is all about Tashi, whereas the ending of the embrace, even though it cuts back to her before it cuts to Black, suddenly that embrace is such a monumental shift in Patrick and Art's relationship over a decade, or a decade at least that i that i'm left on that point and i think it's cool that tush is still cheering it on but she's not in the in the script she's cheering on tennis and and she's cheering on that it's it's still irrelevant whom she's cheering on but to me in this moment of the embrace she's actually cheering on these two reuniting and look the film is uh in its uh uh, press before, while it was in theaters, there was a lot of talk about the, the threesome scene, uh, just to try and get more people, I think, to go to a seasoned air in a threesome. Um, and, but in that scene, she's talking about not wanting to Yoko Ono them, not wanting to break up their friendship. And it turns out that she does.

She doesn't mean their friendship. She means their relationship. And I think that that's a really crucial difference because I think that the the three of and this is where i think it's very interesting i see the shift in their relationship come earlier in this scene the embrace was inevitable and i think that at some point at some point the producers or luca or somebody decided you know what we have to be more explicit about it because to me by the time we got to this scene by the time this by the time this 11 minutes started, you know, two hours or whatever into the film, there was zero doubt in my mind that the three of them end up together. Permanently i don't know one night stand i don't know playing tennis and you know fucking each other on the side i don't know but by the time this scene starts to me the script is really clear that that's where it's going and i do think that they finally decided it was too subtle which none of the rest of the film is and that therefore they needed this embrace partly because some people were going to miss the subtext or not get it. But also, if the rest of the film is as unsubtle as it absolutely is, and then you have this last moment being subtle, I feel like you can play a lot of things very subtly, or you can play things in metaphor. But at some point, if you haven't done that for two hours, and then suddenly you do that, it's a little bit like.

I mean, just to go how the execution of the film is more unsubtle than it is on the script in the scene from the night before where Tashi and Patrick are seducing each other and sleeping with one another while they make their deal to throw the match. In the script, it's just in the car. Whereas on film, it's in a borderline tornado.

Are you going to hit me again?

They had to bring some wind machines in. It was a lot of work to make that scene over the top. Yeah.

And not only that, they are in the car sheltering from this violent wind in front of a huge billboard of Art and Tashi that is in the end like ripped by the wind. So there's a lot of deliberate overt commentary in there.

On the other hand as well, in the steam room, in the script, we see, or I think it's Artstick, one of them.

Surely it's Patrick, because there was a lot of commentary about Art asking him to put it away.

Yeah, in theory, in the script, we see it. I will note, the script has churros in it, which is a very specific thing to specify. It doesn't have the glistening sweaty Coke bottles being sucked down by both of them, but it does have the churros. So, like, the script knows what it's doing between the two of them as well as the three of them, for sure.

Okay, so the big difference, I think, coming into this final scene for you and I, as we were watching it, is you were expecting them to end up together, whereas I was expecting them to explode apart.

All three of them?

Yeah.

Like, you expected Tashi to...

To somehow blow this up, yeah. Because they were all making terrible decisions about their relationship. So Art and Tashi's relationship had largely become based on his success as a tennis player and that they both knew that and were like both openly talking about that.

We've been doing this together. We've always been doing this together. I'm your coach. Okay, I work for you. Coach me then. I am coaching you. I'm playing for both of us, Tashi. I know that. If you don't win tomorrow I'll leave you, i'm serious does that help you.

So basically how has it changed the meaning of the film it doesn't change the meaning of the film it would have changed the questions i would have been asking myself coming out of watching it so i would have been like oh it's deliberately making me go tashi is excited about one of them winning the point even.

If we hadn't even if it had ended the way that it ended in the script where we say on her face we hear the ball hit the net.

And we don't okay yeah because someone has won the point and she's screaming come on and i'm going oh it's telling us she's chosen one of them but it's not telling us who it is that's very interesting so that's what i would have got coming out of the script whereas coming out of the film i got still not a lot of clarity as to what the film was trying to say to me but you know maybe that's just my uh vanilla cis male, coming out here that i just did not see them i did not see it as inevitable that they were all gonna get together that that's what this was building to i.

Just i think maybe it's i i saw um a quote after it was a play on the quote about you know everything's about power except sex and The quote was, everything is about tennis, except tennis, which is about sex. And the tropes that this film is playing with, it's incredibly, incredibly, you know, fanfic-y. There's enemies to lovers, and the closest thing to love is hate. And they're hate-fucking each other except with tennis and all of that sort of thing. And I thought that the tropes were so... And I think maybe it is that, A, I'm quite steeped in a lot of these tropes intentionally. And it's one of the most interesting things to me about fanfic is I think that it mostly works when you have established characters, because if you write something that is only fanfic or only tropes, it doesn't really work. Unless you do something like challengers because like everything's so over the top, the score. So you could take two and a half pages and turn it into 11 pages and you've got the point of view shots from the tennis ball and you've got all these other things like something like that where you take these tropes and you blow them up to their biggest proportions. That does work. And for me, again, I'm always rooting in so many film and TV shows for people to end up in threesomes or polyamory situations. And I think that it's really interesting because for years and years and years, people were always rooting for something, any show to end up gay canon. And shows would put metaphors in and shows would whatever. And like there's still people who think gabrielle and xena were just best friends you know at the end of this whole thing and so for so long people were looking for that and it never happened and now the the quote-unquote next frontiers especially in television but also in films is that in popular media people are are rooting for finally someone to just say you know there's a threesome there's a polyamorous ending there's a you know happy polycule or foursome or open relationship or whatever that ends that way happily and that works whether or not it continues that way happily again like with this film is a very different question and so I'm always just really interested in in breaking that threshold particularly in like pop popcorn cinema network television all that sort of thing and so I think yes I came into this film with that preset probably. I didn't know that much about it. I try to go into films without it, but like you said, with the threesome angle and all of the press that they were doing around it, as well as just the three of them all being incredibly attractive, bisexual reading, you know, especially if you do musical theater, good Lord, actors, you kind of can't help it. And so I was probably had a predilection towards that, let's say. But for me, by the time that last scene started, I'm like, oh absolutely this is a the whole thing is just one giant visual metaphor okay.

So the so the screening version worked for you would the version as it's written on the page have delivered that polyamorous ending for you.

Well it's really hard to figure that out because obviously i already had you know that experience i think it's. Easier to read a script and have something in your mind be changed by the visual as opposed to the other way around because you've had this whole one experience however i will say having read the script i think so because there are so many verbal cues towards it like there's so many there's clearly an attraction between art and patrick there's clearly tashi manipulating them which can come across as just something she's doing over the front but but really plays in the fact that she knows that there's all this stuff between the two of them as opposed to just between her and them there's the um the scene when they first meet and they're quite young is is fairly similar to how it reads on screen and um they're like yeah we're we're in an open relationship we don't live together but uh she says i'm not a homewrecker right she's talking about not wanting to break them up and they're basically like well join us instead you know there is some other metaphors like there's not like i said there's not the coke bottles but the time they meet like patrick is like smoking and like stubs out his cigarette when she leaves which is this very sort of you know this the visuals are there that the churros are in the script there's a couple of other um things that i highlighted that i'd have to go back and look that i'm like i think the script knows what it's doing. I think the script is clearly signaling that there's something between the three of them okay.

So you're to you you'll read throughout the the messages throughout the script and the film were so kind of aligned and strong that it still carried you through that ending even if we were just holding on Tashi.

I think it's stronger the way it ends I think it really strengthens that read for me the fact that they come together but I think for me it's about I say halfway through but when I say halfway through I mean like halfway through the 11 minutes the mood clearly shifts um when when Patrick signals when he does the like fingers thing which again speaking of like absolute you know metaphors and the entire vibe shifts and they're literally going at each other. For me, I think that's pretty clear. And it happens in the script as well.

Yeah, yeah.

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 colour 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 going to the edit history and changing it back to the line that I wrote. We use 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 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 arcstudiopro.com slash draft zero. That's draft zero without a hyphen. And now for the third hour of a screenwriting podcast. Except this episode is like 90 minutes. All the better for it.

There's only one other change in the preceding scene that I'd like to highlight. Because again, it's one that focus on a character change. But otherwise, the script is a very accurate rendition of what happens on screen. It's just on screen, each line takes like half a page. The big shift is Patrick double faults. We've now known that he's promised Tashi to throw the match and he's double faulted. It's match point and he's now faulted on his first serve. So if he could throw the match at this point and it's at this point that he chooses to tell Art that last night he fucked Art's wife.

This is the top of 126.

Yeah. So because they've done this earlier, so when they were teenagers and Patrick is in a relationship with Tashi, he and Art are playing tennis and Art's like Okay.

How about this? If the two of you slept together, do a normal serve. Art, I'm not asking you to tell me I'm just saying if you fucked, serve like me. Like you? Yeah, You know you have a tick, right? Before you throw the ball up, you place it in the exact center of the neck of the racket. Okay, fine, yeah, do that. You fucked.

Patrick goes into his service motion again but this time he does Art's service motion just like they were when they were 17 so the script is even re-emphasizing that what Patrick is doing is like this is not subtext this is text even though there's no dialogue there's absolute clarity here in this moment that Patrick is communicating to Art that he's fuck Tashi. And then it says, thwack, it's a clean, unreturnable ace. Art doesn't even move for it. He just stands there. Now, I'd say a subtle difference there is it just shows art. The film focuses on art not moving. We don't know it's a clean, unreturnable ace. So it goes back to Deuce. Neither man moves. They stare at each other across the net like gunslingers in a western. Tashi looks back and forth between both of them, no idea what's going on. Art looks over at Tashi them back at Patrick, Patrick nods. Now at this moment, Anna had also seen the film on the plane, but we were rewatching it again last night and Anna's like, oh, does he nod? And then Patrick nods. So Art has sought Tashi's confirmation and it has been confirmed not by Tashi, but by Patrick being a sleazebag once again.

I've got to say, they stare at each other across the net like gunslingers in a Western. I mean, hot.

Yes right yeah like.

It's clearly moved into that sort of you know homosexual.

Standoff and and heightened so the script is doing a little bit of what ends up on screen but Luca takes it and turns it up to 11. Art then says his one line of the scene which is fuck off, Patrick smiles the umpire calls a code violation there's some grumbles in the crowd Patrick moves over for his next serve Art doesn't move now actually there's one additional moment that they've added on screen, the umpire says Art, and then Art in the film says, and this is not in the script, says he can just serve. So Art is giving away the point. And then the umpire says you have to get into position. So Art then moves into position. And then what happens on the page is Patrick goes into Art's service motion once again, thwack, another ace, game to wait. That's on the page. What actually happens in the script is that Patrick underarms the ball over, doesn't hit an ace, underarms the ball over.

Hit something that I could return, but intentionally.

Yeah, and Art doesn't hit it, right? Again, intentionally. So, what they've done with that moment is they've, beats so what they don't have in there on the page is in the moment where it says art keeps looking at tashi he actually on screen he stops looking at tashi and looks down and starts dribbling sweat in slow motion over the camera lens but it's a very long beat.

I think i think the first beat of that art moves over for the return again i think that's something if you don't follow tennis you're not quite clear what's just happened that he's let him serve that and so i think that's a point but when he says he can just serve and he hits that underarm yeah that is just immediately you're so clear and so you're right it's giving him those extra character beats and he's basically saying catch up we're gonna we're going to come to even ground like you catch up with me and we're gonna start completely even completely fresh and and go for it yeah and absolutely go at it which is which is great um and i think yes that's on the page but i think those tiny changes make it clearer well.

I think there's a big difference between patrick serving aces that art can't return and art just saying bring it.

Not that he doesn't even try he doesn't even go for he just stands there and watches it which yeah anyway.

I'm just saying that they've they've taken that was another beat for me where they've actually given on the screen art more decision making because at this point in the scene patrick has made the decision that he's actually going to start playing.

Right and.

And art has also made the decision that he's going to start playing but he needs patrick to catch up.

And i do i do think that's important if you are going to establish that the three that they are all somewhat equal with each other you know and i think that that helps really clarify it within the the visuals of the film.

And the rest of it plays out kind of as is, like Art sends a ball screaming right at Patrick like he's trying to take his head off, Patrick has to dodge it, that happens. Art smiles, so does Patrick, right? Those are all in slow-mo, it takes a long time, but they are both like into what is about to happen. The tennis is sex metaphor is really kicking off.

The balls are coming at my face, you know, yeah. They smack the ball at each other furiously vengefully looking wildly alive I mean you give that to an actual actor and not me and that you you could put that in you know some you we could put it behind a paywall yeah.

And they actually did some pretty I I thought quite you know sport now the coverage of sport is so incredible like television coverage of sport that they actually did a really good job for a hollywood movie to make it feel tense and actually do something that hadn't felt before so they did the the ball cam um and then the under the court stuff was pretty amazing as well like.

The the making of's on uh which i think are on youtube uh and if they ever if i assume physical release if that still happens of of how they shot that was very cool So.

Those are the two major differences. And maybe, you know, now I'm feeling shamefully straight and vanilla because maybe it changed the entire film for me because I wasn't expecting it. And then I wanted to read the script and find, I guess, more of that, the writer communicating to us exactly what's happening. And to find that it wasn't that moment that for me was making me, driving all my questions coming out of the film about what the film was about was just not in the script.

Well, and I guess that's what I want to know. I do try to... I try a lot of times when I'm watching a film to let go of most of my expectations of where is this story going and let it surprise me. But I can't help sometimes think, oh, this is where this is going. Oh, I bet they're going to do that. Oh, I wonder if they're going to go A or B. So what did you, going into this 11 minutes, what did you think was going to happen?

I didn't think it was going to end well for Art.

Okay.

He had just been such a sad sack for the entire movie that I would have felt robbed if it had ended that he had the victory and then went on to win the US Open and he and Tashi lived happily ever after. That was like, that's not happening. They kind of make it obvious that Art at least knew that Tashi left the hotel room because she comes back to the hotel room and he's in a different bed than when she left him. So i i didn't think that she and patrick were going to get together i just thought it was all going to explode that they were all going to hate each other essentially as well i thought the opposite of what you you knew was going to happen well.

I wouldn't say i knew that that was going to happen i would say that either it was going to end that way or they were all going to implode like either they were it was going to be all three of them or none of them would ever speak like sort of thing but maybe they would have one last you know.

Yeah so look the i also don't know we don't know if this is the shooting script they may have rewritten the shooting script so this is not to like say justin did not do the things that we're saying that he should have done but this script is very close to what is on screen a.

Lot of the other scenes are as well my guess is that this is probably the last version.

Yeah and and it is still really great like you know the the descriptions that we've read out is almost that perfect amount of just writing what happens with a little bit of flavor that that has allowed the other filmmakers to really run wild with it.

Are we going to talk about the... Meta subtext which is that justin's partner.

Wrote.

The other famous film about a.

Three about about three people.

All in love with very about a love triangle basically which is also interesting.

Sure because yeah i.

Didn't know that going into this.

That within a year that these two highly successful film so we're talking about is it celine song and past lives yeah yeah.

I didn't know that going into the film but i i knew that reading the script um which i just think cannot help but color it that they were both so huge and both about variations on a theme.

Yeah and both happen to be male male female uh three-way relationships um are they both working this out through their art in two wildly different ways who knows um i would part of i think part of the reason why i thought everything was going to explode is you know part of me was colored by the the the press around the film because justin and all of his interviews said he was inspired by um serena williams getting uh losing a point for being coached from the from the box and so i was just waiting for Tashi to coach one of them from the box and get and that for that to happen so.

Yeah I think we obviously bring ourselves to ourselves in the weird corners of the internet and or script readings that we do into everything we watch.

Well then let me try and and and wrap this up into a more, I guess, tangible Draft Zero fashion because we've gone over the interactions of the scene because really like right up until that final point, The interactions, even though they are largely dialogue-less, are super clear. Patrick tells Art that he screwed Tashi again. Art confirms this silently with both Tashi and Patrick. Art, I feel like, initially is angry with the fuck off and the code violation, feels betrayed. But then both of them clearly decide to play for real. And to play for everything and there is a line in there um that we haven't read out in the script um which is in between but just before the tie break starts so art has given away those two points they're about to play again and it says art looks over at tashi who is looking at patrick tashi feels art's eyes on her and looks over at her husband he can see now that she understands exactly what's happening i really like that because that's all about the characters and even if the person reading it doesn't understand exactly what's happening then that's still an accurate thing that people can play and then it goes to both men look at each other across the net and in underline let's really play now and all of that comes across so loud and clear in the script and it goes right up to the end so let me ask you some questions about the the ending do you think that art or tashi or patrick make a choice in that final moment i.

Think tashi had made her choice before.

Which was which.

Was whomever lived up to her expectations of them she would move forward with whether that was one or both or none.

Yeah of them which is the decision she made at the beginning yes in the in the three-way scene she's like yes whoever wins tomorrow i'll go go out with right.

And and for her now winning has shifted slightly it's not just whoever wins the match it's whoever like actually plays up to.

What.

They can do so she she made that decision before this match and she like it could she could leave with neither of them one of them both of them.

Okay but how does that gel with her the night before telling one of them to throw the match because okay okay just i i'm not trying to no no.

No this is where i think it's fascinating it gets really complicated right is because i think she wants she's convincing patrick right you could win this either way throw the match and move on how he does that and i think that she actually doesn't want him to. Right i think that she wants him to choose for her it's like if you would choose tennis over having over having me then that's the only thing that makes you worthy of having me because it's always been her thing like yeah when she injured herself and was unable to play like that that took everything away so i think she actually doesn't want to and then when patrick gets mad and starts playing i think she knows that whether i don't know that she knows that patrick will tell art i had second wife but if if art realizes that patrick's trying to throw it or if art realizes that patrick's up patashi or if patrick just gets mad because he's actually or sorry if art gets mad because he's actually being beat by patrick either way if art steps up and does what he does which is respond in this animalistic i'm gonna win it all i'm actually back sort of way then she'll. Move forward with him as well so i think tashi's made her choice previously to the thing i think patrick makes the choice that in the moment feels great for him which is like i'm gonna tell you that i fucked your wife and i'm gonna try to win anyway and i'm going to you know he he's a delightful sleaze the entire time and i think art makes the choice i think that that's what's really strengthened like that that bit that you read out that's changed where he lets patrick win those two points and or you know he lets the one go he tells the umpire let him serve he says get equal with me so i can beat you yeah.

Art makes a choice to let him back into the match for them both to play but in that final embrace is he choosing something or is that just being overwhelmed.

The final embrace is interesting because the final embrace is art getting carried away and coming up over the net to attempt to win the point because that's how in it he is and patrick responding just on instinct like if your competitor's basically about to fall on you it is complete instinct to catch him right you're whether or not it's to preserve yourself whether or not it's to keep him from breaking his neck whether or not it's just because like i don't know what else to do but like yeah and put my hands up and stop you that moment is so instinctive, and i know that it's played out in slow-mo but in reality it happens in a split second and i don't think that you can say that that him falling on him and him catching him is making a choice then they stand at the net and hold each other for a moment that's a choice and that is i think a simultaneous choice by both of them yeah like or it's not even necessarily a simultaneous it's a simultaneous acknowledgement of what's happened in the last five minutes.

Yeah. I think not to get, I mean, we did a whole, I think we've done two episodes now on distinguishing between choices and decisions. The reason why I don't think it's a choice in this final moment is that they're not presented with an option.

Right.

Right. They don't, like, end up in each other's arms, look at each other, and then embrace tighter, right? Like, they could have chosen to back away and then, like, commit to what's happening. It just happens and they- Yeah.

I think it's an acknowledgement. Yeah. Yeah.

So, do you think Tashi's cheering of come on is a choice?

Absolutely. I think that she's got her answer like she came in saying I need to see what something from both of you and she's seen it come on as an acknowledgement of what she already decided you know long ago so that the hug is an acknowledgement her saying come on is an acknowledgement.

Yeah okay so this is all going to building up to so the two other questions I want to ask is what do you think the characters are feeling in that final moment and then we're building up to these questions because it's such a subtle change between are we hanging on Tashi or are we seeing what's happening on court, right? And I think it has such big ramifications because we wouldn't even be talking about art and Patrick's choice if they'd shot what was on the page because we don't see anything. What do you think the characters are feeling? And then I'll want to build onto what do you think this makes the film say as a meaning or a theme? What is it? Yeah, That's what I'm trying to build towards because I came out of this going, this film seems to be so certain of itself and yet I'm uncertain as to what it's trying to say.

What do I think the characters feel like? One of the things that I really enjoyed about seeing the film in cinemas is that. Makes you feel like playing sport feels, where you're feeling a lot of things all at once. You are frustrated, you are angry, you are hyped, you are elated, everything hurts, and yet you somehow feel nothing. You know, you've got this adrenaline where you understand that you are going to, you know, have a giant bone bruise tomorrow and yet it's kind of at a distance and i think in that in that final moment the idea is that and all of those minutes of shooting kind of lead up to what the script has said which is let's play for real where they've just entered that zone you know and they also you you feel the history that you have with people you know they've they've played each other for so long they've loved each other for so long They know each other inside out. And that clearly comes into play. They know each other's tics. You know, literally the script calls out that they're doing this hand motion that they first established when they were 17. So you have this history and I think all of that roils up to a point where you're just a ball of feeling and you can't pick any one of them out. And i think it's really what's fascinating to me about sport movies and i know i'm kind of getting a little deeper than your question but sport is one of those things where you're always saying i could lose this at any moment which is exactly what happens to tashi when she does her knee which is what is happening to art in his career and i think so actors playing that sort of thing is is, always you're always going to be able to bring something really specific to the role and i think that these actors do that and so that last scene and and a lot of the tennis scenes leading up to it man when tashi did her knee you know there's so many emotions that are going through there and so i think her emotion watching them is a lot of this is what i have wanted and i'm getting it vicariously through the two of you all i wanted was to be able to play at my peak win or lose, have those things i can't have them anymore but now i can vicariously experience that through you which i haven't been able to do for a few months because you fuckers have just been throwing your talent away and so i think that's what they're feeling what do i think the movie is saying i think the movie is saying we don't really want to commit to what we're saying we just want to edge you for two hours and 20 minutes like really okay so do you think that it is deliberately open yes with the ending it's not.

Showing us who wins the match it's not showing us who ends together with who.

Absolutely it.

Does show them you know to use uh judith weston's emotional event analogy like this is an emotional nuclear bomb that that the film ends on where they have all come together right most of the movie is showing us them, Slowly, as all three sides of their triangle breaking apart, and suddenly it snaps back together. So there is definitely a move towards intimacy and reconnection in that moment that we don't know how it's going to play out.

Right. And it's way too complicated to expect. Like you've essentially had four relationships. You've got Tashi and Art, Tashi and Patrick, Patrick and Art, and then all three of them. And you've explored a lot of that and then suddenly you've had this giant cacophonous moment you know it took 11 minutes to go two and a half pages if they were to actually explore the rest of that we need an eight hour miniseries right and so i do think that it's playing the lady and the tiger with us it's going you can take out of this what you want to take out of it clearly i've taken what i wanted to take out of it you took a lot of interesting things out of it that last couple of moments really, I think, clarified that I think may or may not have been in the script, but clearly Luca Guadagnino wanted to be in the script, and so they are. And everyone else that I've talked to about this film, because I did ask several people in the lead up to doing this podcast, what did you think was going to happen in the final scene, and what do you think the ending of it means? Just out of curiosity. But I think it's absolutely being intentional not not obtuse that's.

Not the word.

And not even unclear it's really intentionally giving us the palette to paint our own ending it is.

Doing the.

Lady and the tiger and saying write your own mental fanfic go.

Well i think what we'll do when we do hero's choice which is i think it's going to be subtly different because this film doesn't have a single protagonist it quite deliberately has three you know maybe Tashi's closest to being has more point of view scenes than either of the other two potentially but I wouldn't want to put money down on it so you know and one of the uh Stu and I I think have similar but interesting reactions to the, Aussie horror film talked to me that we really enjoyed the movie, but feel that the film deliberately did not show us the character making their final choice to differing effects. And here they, what I think is interesting is that because it's not a choice, because like you said, it's this explosion of emotion and this buildup and this overwhelm. And, you know, I said before, you know, it's one of the few films that cuts on the climax, like that is a deliberate craft decision most other films would probably uh you know in in uh proper screen post-credits scene or something you know cut to 10 years later you could oh yeah you know um brutal well i'm.

So glad they didn't is.

What yeah i absolutely am but it is what makes this film i think quite unique, because um lindsey duran you know her bit all about rocky is that it's not about rocky winning or losing it's about him connecting with Adrian afterwards right and so even in Rocky the climax very near the end of the film but it's not the end of the film the match ends and then there's emotional character resolution whereas what this film does is it actually ends not at a character resolution but at a character climax and then ends without showing us how that climax plays out and before the plot has even resolved right the plot question of the film is who is going to win this fucking tennis match and it doesn't and i think and i think that's that's.

Absolutely why you can say that it's very intentional then because if some listener to the podcast writes me an.

Angry message um which.

You know you should sign up to become a patreon because.

Then you.

Can write me an angry message.

Um it.

Writes me an angry message and saying it's so obvious mel that you know tashi chose patrick because of his decision to it's so obvious that she chose art because I can't actually.

Textually.

Whether with the film or with the script, which is really important, refute them. You can say all of this culminates in X, but textually it is very clear. Yeah, it essentially writes the first four acts and then as it peaks, just stops. It's a very intentional saying. We don't want anyone to be able to definitively say X.

And so maybe why I'm struggling with this, and I'm sure Stu would have some quip about my emotional regulation or dysfunction here, but maybe I'm so struggling to intellectualize what the film is about, whereas the film has very deliberately left us in the emotional turmoil and just gone, there is no reason. We just wanted, as you said, to edge you for two hours, bring you to climax, and then walk away.

Success. Well, yeah, bring you to the verge and then say, all right, go finish yourself off, really.

Okay. I hope listeners get something from this. I certainly think that for my learnings, my key learnings is this reiterates one of the, we did an episode long ago about the effect of not showing choices or decisions being made on screen. Like particularly, I think it was in the Game of Thrones, the Battle of the Bastards scene, that we didn't see a lot of the character decisions in that. And whether they happened on screen or off screen made a really big difference. So I think the ending of this film is an interesting reiteration of those choices versus decisions. I think that it's possibly one that we might reference when we come back and do subtext and hero's choices. is because, What I love about this is they're actually being very overtly textual in a lot of the dialogue scenes, like Tashi asks Patrick to throw the match. Patrick says, you came here to fuck me. Tashi fucks him. Tashi goes, how can I trust you? He says you can't, right? They're talking, there is no subtext there. But below all of that, even though they're talking about it expressly, you still don't know what decisions they made. Did Tashi fuck him because she wanted to fuck him? Did Tashi fuck him because you wanted him to lose the match? Did Tashi fucking to fuck with his head so that he loses the match?

We don't know why they made the choices.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Even though they're talking about why they're making the choices, we can't trust them because they're not good at communicating their feelings.

They play tennis instead.

Yeah.

They play tennis instead of communicating their feelings.

I think it's because they don't know. I mean, we've made jokes about each other, I think, when we were talking about Fleabag and us, like, not being aware of what our own emotions are. And I think that's like, this is a pretty amazing example of three characters who have so little emotional insight into their own motivations that that's what makes them fascinating to watch that, that you don't know if they're lying to each other or lying to themselves or, or actually being, uh, telling the truth. So that's pretty astonishing. and I guess yeah the the big one is that that structural decision to what if you ended on your climax and didn't resolve it afterwards what impact does that halfway.

Through the climax.

Yeah I just.

Looked it up by the way it is a two hour and 11 minute movie so it's a two hour movie with an 11.

Minute like yeah climax basically and then.

Cut to black.

Yeah uh what what did you learn from revisiting this exercise with very little pre-chat and very little lens other than Chaz saying, I want to look at the end and whoa, the end did not read the same way in the script.

I really do enjoy, and I made a joke before coming on here about I'm off to record an hour-long podcast about whether essentially two or three words in an action line changes the entire meaning of a film.

But- I still think it does.

I do get your point. I think, because I came into this saying, I don't think it really changes it. I think it makes it more explicit. However, Are those maybe two ways of saying the same thing? Because, again, when the rest of the movie is that explicit and...

Why be subtle with the end?

Yeah, and there's lots of other episodes we can do about directing on the page. But you pointing out the fact that we didn't see either of them at all in the last several shots of the film and only heard the ball hitting the net and we're only on Tashi. I do think then saying that it's not just that she's excited about it. Is it they're literally embracing where they've come to? Literally acknowledging, because I still do think that the whole scene in the lead up to the embrace is clear to us, the audience. But them embracing is them saying, we are recognizing this, everything that's just happened. And so, yeah, I do think that it is a really significant for the better change. And it's so minor in a scene that plays out beat for beat, almost exactly word for word, this way the script does. To be able to change something that small which you know is only going to give me more existential crises about agonizing over every line of my own script but it is it is it does show what those like very small rewrites and or directorial decisions have yeah.

I it makes me now comparing these two scenes it makes me wish they'd pushed it a little further and gone down the path that the Serena Williams-Botashi actually got actively involved because I love that it ends on her. I love that it ends on that. Her screaming in support of them embracing and playing the best tennis of their lives. But it was a lot of her just like looking back and forth, whereas everything in these final few pages, all the choices are with Patrick and Art.

I get what you're saying, but I do think that her being involved would read as her making a choice between them and that she's had to have made her choices before this scene because it would feel so awkward if she had to have the exact same type of moment with both of them and if she only had that coaching from the side moment with one of them i do think that that then gives someone you know coming on to write me an angry message a textual reason to say well obviously she picked patrick because she you know did this when he won a point or obviously she picked art because she yelled a piece of coaching advice to him And so I think that it might have been seen as weighting one side of the scale or the other.

Oh, well, thank you very much.

This was fun. This was fun. A little bit unusual, to be honest, for a Draft Zero episode, but I really enjoyed it.

In what way?

Well, in the way that mostly I just sat here and talked about feelings and fanfic and asked you, yeah, what did reading the script make you feel? As opposed to having done hours and hours of homework and breaking things down but it.

Is this not the perfect film for that kind of uh it is yeah.

Look we're method.

Podcasting and i do think this is going to be something that we refer back to in later episodes when we go when we talk about final choices in movies when we talk about subtext and um text and whether that is even a thing not to, buried the lead on the thesis for that hopefully upcoming episode.

Spoilers.

But thank you very much, Mel, for being up late on a Sunday night. And thank you, amazing listeners, in particular our patrons, who do bring you more Draft Zero more often, which is a miracle for such an infrequent podcast. But in particular to our top tier patrons, amazing thank you to Alexandra, Jen, Jesse, Krob, Lily, Malay, Paolo, Randy, Sandra, Thees, and Thomas. Thank you so much, guys. Really appreciate it. And everyone go away and find your own tennis equivalent so that you too can have sex in public with multiple partners.

Excellent.

I hope you all feel like arguing with either Stu or myself. About anything on this episode or anything in general. And you can find many ways of getting in touch with us at our website at draft-zero.com. At the website, you'll also find the show notes for this and all our other episodes. As well as links to support us and spread the word for free via a rating and review on Apple Podcasts. Very important for spreading the word. Or if you think that what we do here is worth a dollar or preferably more than a dollar, then you can also find links to our Patreon page to support us getting these episodes to you quicker. Thanks. And thanks for listening.