(Season one spoiler below)

Podcast listeners looking for a new fix should seek out Scriptnotes, hosted by John August (the screenwriter of Go, Big Fish, and several other Tim Burton projects) and Craig Mazin (the screenwriter of The Hangover sequels and Identity Thief). Scriptnotes is not only a regularly entertaining podcast, but it provides a ton of insight into the screenwriting process in terms of not only how screenplays are written, but how they are developed. Regular guests on the show include Aline Brosh McKenna (The Devil Wears Prada) and Rawson Thurber (Dodgeball, We’re the Millers). Co-host Craig Mazin was also Ted Cruz’s college roommate and gets a lot of comedic milage out of talking frequently about what an “asshole” Cruz was in college.

This week, the podcast aired a live episode with Jason Bateman and Game of Thrones showrunners Dan Weiss and David Benioff. Turns out, Mazin — who also wrote Scary Movie 3 and Scary Movie 4 — had a small, but significant role in the development of the Game of Thrones pilot. As friends of Benioff and Weiss, Mazin was asked to watch the original pilot of Game of Thrones along with Scott Frank (the writer of Minority Report and Out of Sight) and offer his opinion.

It took Benioff and Weiss roughly four years to develop, write, and shoot the pilot, and as most people know, the original Game of Thrones pilot was not good, though it did include a death scene we never got to see.

The screening of the pilot did not go well. “Watching them watch that original pilot was one of the most painful experiences of my life,” Dan Weiss noted in the podcast. “As soon as it finished, Craig [Mazin] said, ‘You guys have a MASSIVE PROBLEM.’

“I was taking notes,” David Benioff added, “and I had this yellow legal pad, and I just remembered writing in ALL CAPS, ‘MASSIVE PROBLEM,’ and it’s all I could think about the rest of the night.”