Hey, this is John. Today's episode has even more swearing than usual, so if you're in a car with your kids, this is a standard warning about that.

Hello and welcome. My name is John August, and you're listening to Episode 667 of Script Notes, a podcast about screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters.

Most screenwriters dream of

getting their first movie produced. Today on the show, we are joined by a guest who just had his first

two movies produced and released this year. Justin Gritskis is a screenwriter behind both challengers

and the upcoming queer. He's also a novelist, a YouTuber, a playwright. Welcome, Justin.

Thank you so much for having me. It's a real honor to be on here. It's so nice to have you here. So I want to talk about this past year,

because a bunch of stuff has happened to last year, but clearly, the last year is only, like,

the tip of the iceberg, and there was a bunch of work that sort of went behind that, so I want to

get into the work that caught you here. I also want to talk about working with the director, sex on screen, because both of your movies are very sexy and notably more sexy than a lot of things we've seen recently, and kind of get a little granular with what's on the page, if that's okay.

Great. Yeah. And in our bonus segment, we're premium members. I want to talk about your videos because in addition to this screenwriter in front of us, you were kind of an early YouTube personality person.

You had a character you played.

I want to talk about sort of how that tied into the rest of you were doing or if it even does tie

into what you're doing.

Amazing.

Cool.

Let's do it.

Let's get some backstory on you because I'm just meeting you for the very first time.

You grew up here in Los Angeles?

Yeah, I grew up in the Valley, partially. You know, the first couple years of my life, I was in Encino, and then my parents split up,

and my dad moved to Santa Clarita.

So I spent a lot of time there, and then my mom kind of moved all around the west side.

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