I pledged $10 to Zach Braff’s kickstarter campaign this week. I pledged money to his film, despite the fact that lots of independent filmmakers and screenwriters have been moaning about him using his celebrity status to crowd-fund his film, Wish I Was Here. Personally, I think their complaints are misguided and there is a lot we [...]

Choosing your next project, be it a spec screenplay, a TV pilot or a television spec, should not only be a creative decision; it should, in a perfect, business-savvy world, represent a strategic decision as well. This is a choice that my clients contemplate on a regular basis, struggling to balance passion with strategy, prolific [...]

To kick things off, I’d like to talk a little bit about the world of comic books and graphic novels, and why Hollywood producers like them so much. With its combination of words and visuals in one attractive package, a comic book can be a great sales tool when pitching your project to movie studios [...]

With this week’s starting up of the Festival de Cannes film festival season is said to be in. But with at last count over 4,000 film festivals every year it’s always festival season. Some festivals disappear, never to return, while new ones are popping up all the time. Pick any theme or a film-loving community [...]

As a sci fi screenwriter, I’m fascinated with understanding what the current market is looking for in terms of science fiction spec scripts. This question is usually on my mind in some form or another: When it comes to breaking into the spec market as a sci fi screenwriter, what does it take? To begin [...]

Isn’t that every writer’s greatest fear? Producer Anne Marie Gillen recently posed this question to our Mastermind Group: ”What keeps you awake at night?What are those nasty thoughts that keep playing around in your head?  The shoulda-coulda-woulda?” It stimulated such an open and honest discussion about our communal fears and insecurities that we entrepreneurial artists all share but rarely [...]

You’re writing on spec and the world’s your oyster. So should you be writing a feature film screenplay or a television show pilot script? One of the not-so-great things about writing on spec is that it’s unpaid, so after all that hard work you may never earn a single cent from it. There’s also the [...]

Editor’s Note: From the archives of Script Magazine, we give you a 2002 piece from William Martell that is still relevant today. A few days ago I had dinner with a group of screenwriters, including my friend Bob, who just made his first sale to Linda Obst at Paramount. By the end of this year there will [...]

I’ve nothing against directors. The men and women who make magic with movie cameras have much to offer the civilized world. Skill, talent, vision. Some have an uncanny knack with those sometimes prickly artists we like to call actors. Others are technical wizards who find their primal purpose standing at the center of production chaos. [...]