I get asked this question all the time: How (and where) should I pitch my TV show? As the Pitch Prep Coach for the National Association of Television Program Executives (NATPE)’s PitchCon and repeatedly getting up to bat myself as one of the qualified producers in the NBC/Universal partnership with the Independent Film and Television [...]
Way back when The Shawshank Redemption was barely hanging on in theaters, squeaking out some pretty meager box office, and still years before it was regarded as one of the greatest American movies of the last thirty years, Academy and Guild members were not yet able to rely on screeners as a way to keep up with [...]
I owe much to James Bond. Or to be more accurate, 007’s inventor, author Ian Fleming. I was twelve years old and not much of a reader when I discovered my father’s collection of Fleming paperbacks on a shelf in our converted garage. After the first fifty pages I found myself treble-hooked by the heady [...]
I was on my way from lunch to meeting at Paramount when my agent at the time called to inquire if I’d be interested in meeting a particular movie star to discuss a picture he had in mind. My agent said it was a passion project for the actor, but with solid commercial prospects in [...]
In January 2012, the movie Red Tails opened nationwide to some pretty decent business. It was a long time in the making. And I’d noticed that a lot of press surrounding the movie had to do with the difficulty George Lucas had getting it produced and into theaters. Some time ago I did read a [...]
I can’t say this any simpler. This is about the worst script note I ever received. Was it an unfortunate situation to be in? Hardly. It came from the mouth of a movie studio president. I was behind the doors of his Citizen-Kane-sized office, comfortably parked on his couch, at the end of a legal [...]
I’m a lying liar. I admit the lie and that I’ve been lying the lie for some years now. I feel the need to confess. So here goes nothin’. But first, a little history. It was my one and only honeymoon. Hawaii (cliché alert). My spanking new wife and I were in a popular little [...]
Gary Ross, writer-director of films such as Seabiscuit and Pleasantville, invited me to join in a round-table luncheon with Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey. The congressman had shown interest in meeting with movie-making word-merchants to discuss a subject plaguing that particular news quarter: Violence in Movies. The tragic events of Columbine were still in the rearview [...]
I’m a big Michael Douglas fan. Have been since I was a boy and he was playing Karl Malden’s sidekick in The Streets of San Francisco. So I thought it was pretty cool when my agent asked if I’d be interested in writing a movie for his company. At the time, Michael Douglas was producing [...]
