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Mystery Man: Subterranean Cinema |
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 My friend, Don, over at Simply Scripts stumbled across a website called Subterranean Cinema, which offers a handful of ultra-rare oh-my-God-I-didn’t-know-they-wrote-that screenplays, along with vintage film clips from Martin Scorsese, Lenny Bruce, and David Lynch, and unearthed soundtrack cuts from classic horror flicks. So I went on journey. I read all of the screenplays. You won’t believe what I discovered. The first is the script for Noble Rot, a project the late John Belushi was working on literally up until the day he died. Continue reading ...
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David Brind: Finding the Truth in Dare |
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 When I was in eighth grade, I made every attempt possible to work dialogue from the film Heathers (by Daniel Waters) into my conversations. Needless to say, “f**k me gently with a chainsaw” wasn’t exactly meant to be coming out of the mouth of a 13-year-old boy. But I didn’t care -- it gave me great pleasure. Earlier that year, I may have tried to work an exchange between Warren Beatty and Madonna into recess and summer camp chats: Q: “Whose side are you on anyway?” A: “The side I’m always on, mine.” Continue reading ... [Explicit language/mature themes] |
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Fridays With Hitchcock: Psycho |
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 Most people identify Hitchcock with Psycho, even though it is nothing like any of his other films. This is probably the combination of Hitchcock becoming very famous from his popular TV show and Psycho being his biggest hit ever (which really says something -- his first US film, Rebecca, won the Best Picture Oscar back in 1940). At the time, low-budget horror films made by people like William Castle were popular, and Hitchcock thought it would be fun to make one. The plan was to make it cheap, using the crew from his TV show, between seasons, and the backlot at Universal. I believe he also used his own money and kept the budget under $1 million. The film is based on the best-seller by Robert Bloch, who, along with Richard Matheson, is one of the great horror novelists, and I believe Hitchcock spent $100k for the rights (10 percent of the budget!). The screenplay is by Joseph Stefano, who created The Outer Limits TV show. Continue reading ...
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Steve Faber: Mining for Real Comedy in a Techno-Virtual Lexicon Pit |
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 Words are important to all writers; to the poet who rhymes, imperative, to the dramatist who seeks to exude pathos, vital, and to the comedic writer essential (if only to satisfy that shop-worn canard regarding “funny sounding consonants, like 'k'" a canard usually is uttered by someone who not only isn’t funny but someone who inadvertently makes it a point to let truly funny people know he or she is part of a vast global conspiracy of unfunny people. It is now widely known that Hitler, between bouts of invading countries, would wax endlessly about the “funny-sounding consonants ... like J, for example"). Continue reading ... |
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Showrunners Speak Out: The State of Scripted Television |
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 Are the writers and creators of
television dramas feeling a bit threatened these days? You bet they are, and it's
not just from a case of ill-felt paranoia. Under the gun to cut costs in the
heyday of reality shows, they're all waiting to see the outcome of NBC's
bold move to fill five prime-time hours each week with Jay
Leno's new show. Throughout the TCA this year, the issue came up again and
again and John Wells and other writer-creators have expressed dismay to
outrage over NBC's experiment. Peter Tolan, co-creator and executive producer with
Denis Leary of Rescue Me, was particularly colorful in his thoughts
on the peacock network's strategy. Continue reading ...
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Fridays With Hitchcock: The Birds |
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 I first saw The Birds on TV (probably NBC's Monday Night At The MoviesWith Victor Bozeman) when I was a kid and it scared the crap out of me. It really messed me up. The thing about this film is that it doesn't just give you nightmares -- when you are wide awake and walking home from school, there are birds on the telephone lines on your street waiting to attack you! Birds are everywhere! What made it even more frightening for me is that the movie takes place in Bodega Bay and my family went camping at least once a month a few miles north of Bodega Bay, so we always drove through town and often stopped to fill up the old Ford Econoline at the gas station and to have a bowl of clam chowder at The Tides Restaurant (they make it Manhattan-style and with big pieces of bacon and fried onions). Continue reading ... |
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