Push and pull—strength and submission—who has “the power” when your story begins? It shouldn’t be your protagonist! At least, not for long… Often a story begins with the protagonist falling or having already fallen victim to Powers Beyond His or Her Control (call it Fate, if you will). In fact, stories can only begin when [...]
It doesn’t matter if you’ve written one script, half a script, or one hundred scripts: writing Act II is tough. It’s a slog. It’s a job. It’s a challenge, to prevent that notorious “Act II sag”—to generate enough obstacles, reversals, sub-plots, character development, sharp dialogue, and the like, to carry the story through from beginning [...]
Scorsese’s Hugo (based on the book by Brian Selznick) joins the ranks of Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables and Voltaire’s Candide, other stories with Deist messages, as a profound piece of film literature about our un-accidental places in this world.
You’ve got a great idea for a movie — in the biz, that’s called the “spark.” But wait! Before you take that spark and start writing the script, before you choose a main character, before you even start story outlining, take the time to research your story’s dramatic environment — called “world-of-story” — that will [...]
If you ever need to find a screenwriter on a Thursday night in July, check out the second floor of the Writers Guild of America West office building in Los Angeles, California, and you can take your pick from about hundred: male, female, young, less young, tall or less tall.
Would your significant other leave you if he or she read your stuff? It’s just another day at the office for these three gentlemen… For an audience of anxious screenwriter-hopefuls, respected Hollywood veteran Daniel Petrie Jr. (Beverly Hills Cop) returned July 8th, 2010, to moderate a panel comprised of Hollywood’s hottest horror scribes: Scott Kosar (Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2003, The Machinist, The Crazies), Wesley Strick (Arachnophobia, Scorsese’s Cape Fear, Nightmare on Elm Street 2010), and Stephen Susco (The Grudge, The Grudge 2).
Through an event series from Logliners.com, studio execs were treated to a table reading for Grain, about “a struggling American photojournalist in the middle of a messy separation who goes on the road with an aging Mexican matador to document Baja’s gritty world of minor league bullfighting.”
Written and directed by Michele and Kieran Mulroney and starring Jeff Daniels as Richard, a fantastically failed author staying in wintry Montauk, Paper Man brings into question ideas of purpose, companionship, and… appropriateness.
When it comes to horror icons, what Freddy Krueger has going for him that no other creature can claim – not Jason, not Michael Myers, not Alien – is that he’s creative.
