John August: I Won’t Be Writing the Google Movie

By  · Published on January 21st, 2011

John August, one of the more creative screenwriting talents working today, is an avid blogger. The man hustles out his own work and then has time to help aspiring movie writers with their stream of questions that range from confidence boosters to idiosyncratic formatting for three people speaking at once while a dog is barking.

Seriously. How do you format that in a screenplay?

We all know that there’s a Google movie brewing out there. The garage-created mythos of the company (that so many companies share) is too big, and their presence on the planet is too huge not to look toward the big screen. The project is hunting around for writers, and apparently John August was one of them. In a culturally important blog entry, August explains briefly why he wasn’t chosen for the job and goes further into the nature of Google and evil.

It might seem small (and a quick story) but it highlights perfectly what some writers go through. Sometimes, even the most talented ones just aren’t right for the job in the producer’s eyes. Even if they have a great track record, their particular view of how the film should play out doesn’t line up, and the crickets start chirping.

Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.