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Scriptnotes · John August and Craig Mazin

726 - So you’ve been nominated for an Oscar

February 24, 2026·1 hr 12 min·5 clips
Alessandro argues that luck — not talent — is what separates Oscar nominees from equally creative peers, comparing careers to a Monopoly game where someone rolls double six three times.
The agenda is concrete. A short film has picked up awards and an Oscar nomination, and John August wants to talk about the part after the congratulations. Natalie Mustiata and Alessandra Singh are listeners already, which gives the conversation a casual charge. They came from visual arts, spent a lot of time talking about film, then made one without taking the usual film school route. That matters because the short is not treated like a shiny object. It is treated as something they made with taste, control, and a recognizable voice. John separates two kinds of proof: proof of concept and proof of execution. The second one is what people can see in a room. Then the lane question gets practical. If the next pitch feels connected to what people liked in the short, the nomination can help. If it feels like a hard swerve, it probably muddies the signal. John's animated gnome example lands because it is silly without becoming a rule. The guests get the risk. They have plenty of ideas, but the ones they are taking out share qualities with the short. Tone becomes strategy. Their work lives near the place where the ridiculous and the horrific rub up against each other, which gives them a way to explain their taste without making it sound like branding homework. The conversation closes on black and white. What could seem like a throwback constraint becomes a choice, and a pretty seductive one.

As heard by us

A practical look at turning an Oscar nomination into a next step.

The Oscar nomination is the hook, but the episode is really about what comes after it. John talks with Natalie Mustiata and Alessandra Singh about how a breakout short can work as proof of concept and proof of execution, and how it can show the kind of project a filmmaker is…

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Why you'd press play

You want a practical map for the awkward afterglow of an Oscar nomination.

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