As the year draws to an end, I thought it would be fitting to look back on some of what we’ve accomplished on this blog during the last 12 months. I say “we” because beyond the oftentimes spirited conversations and insightful analysis we get into in the comments section of individual posts, many of you have contributed your own time and effort to a variety of series throughout the year, such as Classic Movies and Script Reading & Analysis, and your ongoing support of Daily Dialogue. Then there are the articles you think readers would find of interest you forward my way via email or Twitter. Everyday those engagements between myself and the GITS community happen gratifies me because honestly, that was one reason why I started this blog in the first place: To create an online point of intersection between writers amidst the comings and goings of their lives, and the Hollywood movie and TV business.

Another one of my goals: To provide daily insight, information and analysis about the writing craft, and the business of Hollywood. This is one of the aspects of the site that makes it unusual as it’s part-educational, part-news, part-entertainment, part-inspirational, and always there. Every day, multiple times per day. People ask me why I post 6 items or more per day and it’s because it’s an extension of how I’ve been writing for years. I’ll work for a few hours, then take a break to check what’s going on in the world of movies and TV. Then back to writing, followed by another tour of news online. The number and timing of posts mimics my own work habits and my guess was there are others who enjoy having a blog that tracks what’s going on in Hollywood, and the world of storytelling and creative thinking, posting interesting and helpful items each day. Given site traffic and the continuing growth of Twitter followers (@GoIntoTheStory), looks like my guess was right!

A third goal for the site: Aggregate resources for writers. If you scroll down the left side of the home page, you will find a column titled ARCHIVES. Each of those links underneath (there are about 80 of them) is a specific subject area related to writing and the creative life. In combination, there are literally thousands of posts in Archives. Here are some new series we added or completed in 2014:

30 Things About Screenwriting: Posts reflecting on the craft, providing a distilled, yet pretty comprehensive take on screenwriting theory and practice.

70s Movies, 80s Movies, and 90s Movies: Members of the GITS community have provided written overviews of their favorite classic movies from these three decades. We are in the midst of doing 60s Movies in January with an eye toward the 50s and 40s later in 2015. All this to encourage writers to Watch Movies – and with an analytical eye.

An Argument Against Screenplay Formulas: A five-part series exploring the problems screenplay formulas create for professional Hollywood screenwriters and generally how formulas can lead to formulaic writing.

Free Screenwriting Resources: 31 subject areas covered by hundreds of blog posts, a great place to start using Go Into The Story as a free online resource.

GITS Script Reading & Analysis: We brought back this series in an effort to get writers to Read Scripts and it has been a most successful effort. In fact, you can go here – Movie Script Scene-By-Scene Breakdowns – and download PDFs of several breakdowns of contemporary movies, each generated by a member of the GITS community. A terrific resource for delving into a script’s narrative structure.

PDF Script Download – Free and Legal: We are now up to almost 100 PDF versions of movie scripts, each of them sanctioned and made public by studios, financiers, and production companies. Again: Read Scripts.

Screenwriting Twitter Rants: One of the nice things about being on Twitter is it’s a social media screenwriters enjoy. And occasionally, they will go off on a rant about the craft and/or business. Rather than watch that collective wisdom go down Twitter’s rabbit hole, I reached out to these tweet-ranting writers and am now hosting their efforts on the site.

So-Called Screenwriting ‘Rules’: I kick-started 2014 with a 15-part series on these supposed screenwriting ‘rules’ to try to provide something of a definitive response from the perspective of professional screenwriters who by and large not only hate this restrictive way of thinking, we also break these ‘rules’ over and over and over again. The series goes into depth on multiple subjects and the response to it was great.

And that was just the new stuff. The year also saw a continuation of ongoing series like: 2013 Spec Script Sales Analysis, 30 Days of Screenplays [2014], A Story Idea Each Day for a Month (2014), Daily Dialogue 2014, Scene-Writing Exercises [2014] among others. Plus I conducted and posted nearly 30 more interviews with screenwriters over the course of the year including Aaron Guzikowski (Prisoners), Brian Duffield (Insurgent), Lisa Joy (Reminiscence, Westworld), Mickey Fisher (“Extant”), Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber (The Fault in Our Stars), every 2013 Nicholl Fellowship winner and a bunch of Black List screenwriters.

Now for some end-of-year thank yous!

A special note of gratitude to Wendy Jane Cohen who has contributed a huge amount of research on a number of blog-related projects as well as writing the weekly Declare Your Independents posts, and just generally providing support for much of what goes on with GITS. Wendy is an incredible hard worker, smart, resourceful. I so appreciate her efforts.

Also a big tip of the hat to Jason Cuthbert who has been managing the weekly Great Character series for going on 2 years now. He does a terrific job and I learn something every week from his insightful posts. Thanks, Jason!

I want to give a shout-out to the Black List team: Terry Huang, Megan Helpern and Kate Hagen, a great group who have been essential to the inner workings of all things Black List. I am happy to report, they also know how to party!

Uber-Thanks to Dino Sijamic who somehow manages to watch over the operation of this blog’s technical functionality even though his main gig is CTO of the Black List. I’ve gotten to know Dino over the years, just an excellent all-around guy – and I’m not just saying that because he bought me this T-shirt:

Finally there is this young fellow by the name of Franklin Leonard. You may have heard of him. There is a multitude of reasons why I thank my lucky [virtual] stars for being inspired to launch this blog back in 2008. Getting to work with and know Franklin is right at the top of that list. I’ve met a lot of people in Hollywood in the nearly three decades I’ve been in this business and there have been only a few who I would call visionaries. Franklin is one of them. What you’re seeing transpire with the Black List is just the beginning of what I suspect will be a remarkable, even transformational… I was going to say ‘organization,’ but really what is happening under Franklin’s leadership, it feels more like a movement. Thank God, it’s movies he’s most passionate about (well, excepting soccer, of course) because the world of cinema desperately needs people like Franklin to continue supporting quality storytellers and storytelling.

Beyond the whole Harvard-smart, unique-vision, supremely well-connected thing, Franklin is a truly decent human being… and maybe at the end of the day, that’s the most important thing of all. I consider it an honor that Franklin invited Go Into The Story to become the official screenwriting blog of the Black List… but it is a privilege on a personal level to be able to call him a friend.

People often ask me how I manage to maintain the blog when I’m doing so much else in my life: I continue to write screenplays, I am a visiting lecturer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I teach dozens of online classes and workshops through Screenwriting Master Class which I co-founded along with the wonderfully talented Tom Benedek back in 2011. The honest answer to the question is this: I don’t know. Over the 7+ years of its existence, the blog has become this kind of thing, an integral part of my life and daily routine. Frankly I wish I had more time to focus on the blogging because I’d be doing a lot more movie and script analysis, and using posts to explore my take on character-based screenwriting.

But as I prepare to move into 2015, I refuse to engage with the why-can’t-there-be-40-hours-each-day conundrum. Instead let’s focus on the positives, specifically the lives of writers this blog has touched. The many who have emailed, sent me actual handwritten letters, or called me to express gratitude after having achieved a success in their writing life. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at this point when I discover that nearly every Nicholl winner or Black List writer I interview follows Go Into The Story. And that is a kind of bottom line: If what we do around here, day after day, week after week, can translate into writers making progress, whether it’s finishing their very first feature length screenplay or selling a multimillion dollar spec script, as some have done, that inspires me to keep doing what I’m doing.

With that, I’ve whipped up a special batch of Creative Juju and I’m sending it out to everyone who reads this blog. You may check in every day. Maybe once a week. Or whenever your Internet journeys happen to bring you by. You may be an active commenter or you prefer to lurk. No matter. I thank each and every one of you for passing this way. May 2015 be your most creative and productive year yet!

Without further ado… juju!

My 2015 writing mantra: “Aspire to inspire.”

Onward!

Reader question in comments from mrchristf01:

Scott,

Thank you for the post.

I didn’t really get what you were talking about until I saw the line:

“Yu uses every weapon that’s available against Jen but none
are any match for the Green Destiny.”

Then it hit me: it’s like show, don’t tell in novel writing.

My own reading of this script would never have told me that. Thanks for pointing it out.

From a review of some of the other scripts on your site, I would say the same concept about the differences between types of scripts [shooting script, selling script, etc.] is necessary to understand the script-in-hand. This leads me to a few questions.

Is there any way to annotate which type of script is posted on your site?

Is a ‘selling script’ the same as a ‘spec script’?

mrchrisf01, you picked up on the subtext of my post: there is a selling script and a shooting script. Sometimes they end up being one and the same. For example, if you read a Coen brothers’ script, what they write reflects pretty precisely what they shoot. Being writer-directors helps in that regard because they have an inner knowledge of what they mean by their scene description.

Re my point about Crouching Tiger: It may have been fine for the minimal description of the fight scene relative to production because they knew they would work out all of those moves in rehearsal, then refine during shooting. That is a shooting script also known as a production draft.

If, however, you were writing a selling script – which is in effect what a spec script is and, frankly, any draft up to the point of active pre-production – you have to do more. Find that delicate balance between enough description to evoke images and mood in a reader sufficient so they experience the movie you envision, but not so much that it bogs down the read or includes content extraneous to the forward movement of the narrative.

There is no simple calculation or formula for knowing how to do this. You simply have to read movie scripts. Lots of them. Then you write scripts. Lots of them. You try out things. You write too much. Then too little. You get feedback. In the end, much of this boils down to the development of your own writing style. And by the way, different genres play out differently on this front. Action scripts will almost by definition have a lot more action description than, say, a character-based drama.

Again the single biggest key in my view: Read movie scripts. You just start to ‘get’ it after a while.

As to knowing if a script is a selling or shooting draft: In the world of online scripts, it’s really the wild, wild West, you’re never sure what you’re going to get. In general, I recommend focusing first on spec scripts that sell or make the Black List. Those represent the closest to what we want to be writing, at least stylistically, when we write a spec or even a writing assignment – again before pre-production. But it’s also helpful to read production drafts in order to compare them to the movie as that helps you to discover that balance between writing too little / too much, and always to write visually.

For more on selling script / shooting script, check out this Business of Screenwriting post I did on the subject.

Final point: Scene description is a critical component of the craft if for no other reason than the fact a majority of the words we write in most screenplays is not dialogue, but action. How we handle that aspect of the script-writing process is key. To that end, I will be offering a new Craft course through Screenwriting Master Class in May 2015 called Scene Description Spotlight. Look for more information on that soon.

Once again, Vulture does screenwriters a solid:

Over the next few weeks, Vulture will speak to the screenwriters behind 2014’s most acclaimed movies about the scenes they found most difficult to crack. Which pivotal sequences underwent the biggest transformations on their way from script to screen?

In this article, Graham Moore (2011 Black List) discusses a key scene toward the end of the movie:

The scene that I must have done 30 drafts of was the final scene between Alan and Joan, when she comes to visit him. On the page, it’s a massive dramatic moment where Joan and Alan haven’t seen each other in years and have so much that they want to say to each other. Alan is going through this hormonal therapy to chemically castrate him, and I love the idea that we learn about that through her eyes. We are horrified with Joan as we learn what’s happening to him.

One thing we talked about a lot was the level of anger in the scene. In my first version, Alan was much angrier about the persecution he was facing and was quite bitter to Joan. Along the way we came up with a version where Alan was simply more sad and resigned about what was happening to him. He wasn’t fighting it because there was nothing he could do, and he just wanted to be left alone with his machine. There’s a lovely moment where Benedict reaches out and touches the machine, and you realize how much he’s able to communicate as an actor with just that touch. This is my first film, and moments like those were a constant learning process for me, because my instinct was always to put it all on the page and give people dialogue to express everything. When we went through rehearsal, I realized what all these actors could do with simply a look, so we pulled out a lot of dialogue and let the actors just be there in the moment.

For the rest of the article, go here. Kudos to Vulture for this annual series which puts the spotlight on screenwriters.

Irena Brignull (screenplay), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (novel)

A pilot crashes in the desert and meets a little boy from a distant planet.

IMDb

On December 18, studio executive Jeff Willis went on a Twitter rant about writers legally protecting their stories. Reprinted in its entirety by permission.

Today, let’s talk about copyright. What it is, what it isn’t, and what you should and shouldn’t be worried about.

DISCLAIMER: Nothing on the internet can replace sound, specific legal advice. Always get input from an attorney before taking legal action.

For more information or answers to specific questions, you can always check out the USCO’s website: http://www.copyright.gov

They’ve got a great bunch of resources, including a helpful FAQ and several circulars about specific issues if you’ve got questions.

The most important thing to understand is that copyright is legal protection for original works fixed in a tangible medium of expression.

In normal person speak, that means copyright protects the execution of an idea, not the underlying idea itself.

— Jeff Willis (@jwillis81) December 19, 2014

Things that can be copyrighted: screenplays, novels, short stories, song lyrics, poems, architectural plans, etc.

Things that cannot be copyrighted: ideas, story concepts, titles, facts or other publicly available information, etc.

Copyright covers unpublished works. You can register a book that hasn’t been published, or a script that hasn’t sold.

With copyright infringement, one of the most common misconceptions is that if someone writes or makes something similar to yours…

… it’s automatically IP theft. But that’s only true if someone has stolen the *execution* of your idea in addition to the idea itself.

It’s not infringement if you see something similar and think, “Hey, they took my idea for a buddy cop movie set on a space station!”…

… especially if the similarities end there and the other work has significantly different characters, plot points, dialogue, etc.

You cannot copyright the title of your screenplay. Some titles can be trademarked if they’re widely known/branded, and the use of titles…

… in the industry is governed by the Title Registration Bureau of the MPAA. But those are topics for another day.

The two most important things to remember about a title are that (1) a title is not generally unique to or protectible by you…

… and (2) let the prodco worry about changing it if need be. Use the title you want to use until they tell you it needs to be changed.

The next somewhat-ambiguous thing about copyright protection is when it takes effect.

Technically, something’s copyrighted the minute you put it into fixed form. Like as soon as you write it down or type it.

But for cases of infringement, it all comes down to what you can prove. And the best way to prove you wrote something…

… is to *register* your copyright with the United States Copyright Office, which acts as an independent, objective third party…

… that can produce court-accepted evidence that you registered/owned that property first.

The WGA Script Registry also offers a registration service, but there are some significant differences. They are:

1. The Script Registry merely records a “date of creation” while the USCO establishes legal ownership.

The legal ownership established by the USCO is what you need to sue for statutory damages.

Without being able to sue for statutory damages, you can only sue for actual damages, which – when it comes to IP – are often very minimal.

Statutory damages are typically a large lump sum per work, to account for potential losses, while actual damages are actual existing losses.

2. The Script Registry’s record expires after five years. USCO registration lasts until 70 years after you die.

The WGA Script Registry is $20 and the USCO is $35 (through their online registration service).

If you ask me, an extra $15 seems like a bargain for a whole lifetime +70 years of protection versus only five years with the WGA.

The WGA is great for a whole lot of reasons. Their Script Registry isn’t one of them.

— Jeff Willis (@jwillis81) December 19, 2014

Another sadly popular issue with copyright is the so-called “Poor Man’s Copyright,” which is the persistent myth that mailing a copy…

Poor Man’s Copyright is a myth. It does not work. It won’t hold up in court. Don’t try it.

Copyright protection for unpublished works is available from the USCO regardless of your nationality or the location where it was written.

For published works there are criteria to follow, but unpublished works (like spec screenplays) can be registered by anyone worldwide.

Notice of copyright – that fancy little (c) symbol – is not required to show evidence of copyright protection.

You don’t need to put a copyright notice on your screenplay cover page (or anywhere else).

The effective date of copyright registration is when the USCO received all necessary materials, regardless of how long it took to process.

If you sent everything on January 1st and didn’t get a confirmation until September 30th, the registration date will be as of January 1st.

One of the toughest questions about copyright registration is when to register your work.

Copyright only covers what’s already been written, so if you copyright something and then rewrite it, the new stuff isn’t protected.

So it makes sense to register only once the script is pretty much as done as it’s going to get (without someone paying you to revise it).

Personally, if you’re going to register the copyright to your script, I’d recommend just before you send it for read requests.

If you’re worried about registering your script copyright it before you even seek feedback, you need to find more trustworthy readers.

It’s a waste of money to register knowing that significant changes to the script are likely coming right around the corner.

Which brings me to the last point I want to make about copyright, which is the irrational fear that Hollywood is going to steal your work.

The honest truth is that it costs a reputable company far less to actually buy a script than to get caught stealing one.

A company’s reputation and insurance premiums are worth far more than even WGA minimum, which makes theft a bad business decision.

The best thing you can do to protect your work when sending it out is to make sure that you’re sending it to places with a good reputation.

— Jeff Willis (@jwillis81) December 19, 2014

If a company seems sketchy or if you do your research and find that they have a track record of rights disputes, don’t send it to them.

You can do far more to fend off copyright infringement with simple due diligence than you ever could with fancy legal maneuvering.

I’ll get into submission releases in a future series, but for now just know that a legit prodco isn’t out to screw you and steal your stuff.

Just protect your work with the USCO when it’s in as close to final form as you can get, and do your research before sending it out.

Those two simple steps will take care of 99% of the potential IP theft concerns out there.

For more information on copyright, I highly recommend you visit http://www.copyright.gov/ and familiarize yourself with the specifics.

And, as always, ask an attorney (in this case one that specializes in IP) if you have any specific or nuanced questions about copyright.

Copyright isn’t as scary as it seems. In most cases, when dealing with professional writers and professional companies, it’s a non-issue.

Protect your work, understand your rights, and conduct yourself responsibly w/ legitimate individuals and companies. That’s all you can do.

— Jeff Willis (@jwillis81) December 19, 2014

Jeff Willis has spent the past decade working in studio business affairs and production management. He started his career as an assistant at Beacon Pictures (BRING IT ON, AIR FORCE ONE), then moved on to work with startup production companies Our Stories Films (WHO’S YOUR CADDY, JUMPING THE BROOM) and Troika Pictures (THE CALL). He’s been with The Weinstein Company (DJANGO UNCHAINED, SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK) for the past four years and currently serves as their Vice President of Business Affairs & Production Administration. Jeff is also a screenwriter; his first produced feature (THE RIGHT GIRL, written with Bob Saenz (@bobsnz)) is in post-production and due to air on Pixl TV and ABC Family in the coming months.

You may follow Jeff on Twitter: @jwillis81.

You may read all of the Screenwriting Twitter Rants here.

“While working on Big Fish, I got very Method: I’d stare at a mirror until I could get myself crying, and then I would start writing. It was literally days of just staring at a mirror and crying, but it works–something about that process captures the right feeling. And by getting myself to the point of crying, it helped me get other people to that point. I had done it before with another project, a horror movie, so the process for that was to get myself terrified and then write. A lot of writers will play music while they’re writing, or they’ll have a scent that reminds them of the movie’s world and smelling gets them back into it. Anything’s fair game as long as it works.”

— John August (FilmCraft | Screenwriting, P. 43)

TRINITY: Hello, Neo.
NEO: How do you know that name?
TRINITY: I know a lot about you.
NEO: Who are you?
TRINITY: My name is Trinity.
NEO: Trinity? The Trinity? That cracked the I.R.S. D-Base?
TRINITY: That was a long time ago.
NEO: Gee-zus.
TRINITY: What?
NEO: I just thought… you were a guy.
TRINITY: Most guys do.
NEO: That was you on my computer. How did you do that?
TRINITY: Right now, all I can tell you is that you are in danger. I brought you here to warn you.
NEO: What?
TRINITY: They’re watching you, Neo.
NEO: Who is?
TRINITY: Please, just listen. I know why you’re here, Neo. I know what you’ve been doing. I know why you hardly sleep, why you live alone, and night after night you sit at your computer. You’re looking for him. I know because once I was looking for the same thing. And when he found me, he told me I wasn’t really looking for him, I was looking for an answer. It’s the question that drives us. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did.
NEO: What is the Matrix?
TRINITY: The answer is out there, Neo. It’s looking for you and it will find you, if you want it to.

— The Matrix (1999), written by Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Party. Today’s suggestion by Will King.

Trivia: In the first 45 minutes of the film, Neo (Keanu Reeves) has 80 lines. 44 of these lines are questions, just over half of his total dialogue, averaging at roughly one question per minute.

Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Will: “It was the party scene in The Matrix that was the inciting incident that sends Neo on his hero’s journey.

Indeed and Trinity’s lines here fit the very idea that it is the inner Need of the Protagonist that drives their Want: “It’s the question that drives us. It’s the question that brought you here. You know the question, just as I did… The answer is out there, Neo. It’s looking for you and it will find you, if you want it to.”

Neo doesn’t have a mere character flaw, rather he exists in a profound state of Disunity… between the inauthentic life he’s been living and the potential to become who he is at some foundational level, as yet unrealized. Hence the Universe intersects him with Trinity and she provides the Call To Adventure here at the party.

This scene represents the first major Plotline point in Neo’s journey. And like all good Calls, he has a choice. Indeed, Neo has several choices in the movie including the red pill or the blue pill. They all speak to inevitable pull of his metamorphosis… to become The One.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one rule about a first draft and it’s this: “Get the damn thing done!”

Easy to say. Hard to do.

That’s why I created the Pages I: The First Draft writing workshop, a structured online environment – 10 weeks, 10 lectures, 10 writing assignments – to empower a writer to get from FADE IN to FADE OUT.

If you have a story you’ve pretty well developed and could benefit from:

* Weekly due dates to compel you to knock out script pages

* Lectures to steer you through the writing process

* Feedback and support from a community of fellow writers

* Analysis of your pages from a professional screenwriter and educator

* Teleconferences to drill down in your story and the craft of screenwriting

I have found the approach we use in the workshop, breaking down each weekly assignment to 10 pages or so, basically one or two sequences, makes the writing much more manageable. That in combination with several other factors make the success rate in my writing workshops – writers actually completing their scripts – quite high.

Some testimonials from writers who have participated in the workshop:

“Having read almost every screenwriting book out there, none can hold a penny to Scott’s approach of story driven by character, which can not only have you confident in your writing abilities, but can also solve the worst case of writers block (as it did for me).” — Aarthi Jayaraman

“A great experience. I didn’t just get a 99 page first draft out of it, I got all the notes, comments and ideas to start my second draft.” — Michael Waters

“I would highly recommend the Pages I course. I was hesitant to spend the money, but Scott Myers is a fantastic instructor:  knowledgeable, encouraging, genuine, funny, and generous. The class set up and size is optimal. And although, personally, I was unsure how much I would get from the peer feedback – I found that incredibly rewarding as well.” — Stacey Fernengel

Consider enrolling in the upcoming Pages I workshop. Instructor: Yours truly.

It begins next Monday, January 5th.

Go here to learn more. Or if you have any questions feel free to email me.

Let me end with a some writer quotes about first drafts:

“First drafts are for learning what your story is about.”
— Bernard Malamud

“The first draft is nothing more than a starting point, so be wrong as fast as you can.”
— Andrew Stanton

“Then comes the great leap which is the first draft, I call it ‘the muscle draft,’ where you just muscle it out. You don’t worry about what you’re missing, you just get through it, get to the end.”
— Darren Aronofsky

“Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. That first draft is just spaghetti on the wall.”
— Dennis Lehane

“Sometimes you’re swinging your way through a first draft like a blind miner with a pick-axe. That’s OK. Get it done, nothing else matters.”
–Justin Marks

“The first draft, the first structure is really important… Do it fast, don’t get stuck.”
— Oliver Stone

“No matter what you write, good or bad, it’s an improvement to a blank page.”
— Chris Sparling

Why not start off the New Year by taking on a new screenplay? I look forward to the opportunity to work with and support you in knocking out that first draft!

In December 2013, we had a series called Classic 80s Movies Month in which I invited readers to select noteworthy movies from the decade of the eighties and provide a condensed overview of it. That resulted in this: A list of links to movies you should know about. Then in May 2014, we did the same thing for 90s movies. Here is a link to that archive.

Those series went so well, I thought why not do this for more decades? Over time, we will aggregate a decade by decade resource I can point people to who know they need to watch movies, but might not have an idea which ones.

So last September, we did the 70s. You can check out those archived posts here.

Let’s make January 60s Movies Month.

I’m looking for 22 volunteers to write guest posts to go live Monday through Friday in January each entry featuring a 60s movie you think screenwriters should know about and hopefully at some point watch. If more people volunteer, then we can expand the series into 31 posts.

Here is a template you can use for your guest post:

Movie Title

Year

Writers (screenwriters and any authors whose books were used as the basis for adaptation)

Lead Actors (Just the main ones)

Director

IMDb Plot Summary (You can find that directly under the Your Rating box. If you don’t feel the summary does the story justice, feel free to write up a logline of your own.)

Why I Think This Is A Classic 70s Movie (Feel free to write as much as you’d like up to a half-page or so.)

My Favorite Moment In The Movie

My Favorite Dialogue In the Movie (IMDB has a Quotes section for almost every movie, so you can find key dialogue in your movie’s site.)

Key Things You Should Look For When Watching This Movie

Please use this exact template to help me in the editing process.

If you need to look at some examples of previous posts, go here, here, or here and click on any link.

If you can find a YouTube clip from the film or its trailer, please include that URL.

When you are done with your guest post, you may simply copy and paste the content into an email to me or create a Word document and attach it to an email.

I will run the posts in the order I receive them.

If you are interested in doing a guest post, please indicate in Comments or send me an email with the movie you would like to cover.

For inspiration, here are some images from classic 60s movies:

Here’s your chance to feature a personal favorite from the decade of the 60s. And for every contributor, I will send a special gust of creative juju your way.

Click REPLY and see you in comments!

UPDATE: We already have 14 volunteers. I have put in bold those who have already sent their guest post to me.

Ipsita Barik – Rosemary’s Baby
Brandnewusedcar – Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
Steve Cook – The Blue Max
Felicity Flesher – The Music Man
JasperLamarCrab – 2001: A Space Odyssey
D.L. Gill – Zulu
Jeff Guenther – Cool Hand Luke
Kate Hagen – Repulsion
hoernsch – The Graduate
Zach Jansen – They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Will King – The Pink Panther
Jack McDonald – Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Daryl Powell – The Apartment
Michael Waters – Dr. No

Again, we’re looking for 22 volunteers. Since I got a late start on this project, we may not launch on January 5, that depends on how soon folks can get me their write-ups. We’ll play it by ear, but obviously, the sooner, the better.

Creative juju for each volunteer! KAWHOOOOOOSH!!!