Curiosity didn’t kill the cat. …it made it buy a movie ticket! Hollywood Studios seem trapped between two goals: replicating their franchises and creating clones of other studios’ hits. As I am writing this we are in the Twilight Zone (not Rod Serling’s, but Summit’s).  I get the sense that the studios are all trying [...]

Question: What kind of feedback should I seek after the first draft is done? You got to the end of your first draft! Congratulations.  You just gave birth! Er, thanks…  Is my child any good?  I hope it’s a genius.  Maybe it’s an idiot?  How can I find out? Truthfully, a first draft is probably [...]

Pen Densham, co-founder of Trilogy Entertainment Group, considers himself a triple-hyphenate: a writer – producer – & director.  He and his partner John Watson have been Oscar Nominated twice, have produced 15 features and over 300 hours of television. He writes for both TV and feature films and is personally responsible for reviving ‘The Outer [...]

Who’d have thought a bunch of flowers could bring on a life long orgasm? No – not that kind of orgasm. I mean a creative “climax” in a story. Way back in the Jurassic history of our company, John Watson – my Trilogy partner – and I started our company by making short films. Really [...]

Whenever I hit an empty hole in my writing, I try to think of it as just an undiscovered area. Not that it is the end. I do not use myself up in a frontal assault, but change direction, grab a cup of tea, or take a walk and let my brain hop around and give me ideas and solutions in an uncritical, patchwork quilt approach. Ideas from other parts of a story can ricochet around and solve several issues at once.

In creating a fast-paced adventure, we often have little time to flesh out our characters, let alone take the time to sculpt out a love relationship that is supposed to profoundly affect the protagonists. I remember, as a little kid, squirming in movies when the hero and his love interest go through their bonding process. That icky moon-eyed slow stuff. Concession time!

My bird guy mentioned the time he found himself in an inspired frenzy, writing a play that eventually got produced. He wrote the first act in a three-hour gusher. After lunch? My bird guy lifted his hands like fluttering wings, “empty.” The flow had gone. It took him another year to write the second act.

We frequently depress ourselves when we look at what others have completed and compare it with the vague little spirits of ideas that we are trying to piece together. When we see a completed film, book, or artwork, it can seem like some overwhelmingly successful vessel, loaded with powerful exotic goods.

I remember driving to work and listening to a PBS radio item about an Orphans and Foundlings home in England where they’d discovered letters a hundred years old or more, written by women when they abandoned their children on the doorstep. I thought: What does a woman say to a child at that time?