Scott Myers - Go Into The Story (Page 1341)

The story behind script coverage: Comments

Continuing our analysis of the “ICM Story Department — Coverage Packet,” today we consider the final part of the “How To Do Script Coverage” introduction: Comments. 1) STRUCTURE — Your comments should begin with a summary paragraph, briefly listing all the strengths and weaknesses you are going to address in the body

Spec Market Scorecard

Jason Scoggins at the blog Life On The Bubble has a new spec market scoreboard post. This one analyzes sales from January — mid June 2009. Some interesting stats: Overall Spec Numbers: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun* Total Specs (Total) 28 60 77 46 40 16 267 Sales (Total) 3

Daily Variety slanguage

Variety has been around for a long time, as a weekly since 1905 and the Daily Variety since 1933. Over the years, Variety has covered all facets of the entertainment business. It’s also developed or concretized many of the ‘slang’ phrases used in Hwood about movies, TV, music, production,

On writing

“I see the notion of talent as quite irrelevant. I see instead perseverance, application, industry, assiduity, will, will, will, desire, desire, desire.” — Gordon Lish

The story behind script coverage: Synopsis

Continuing with our analysis of the “ICM Story Department — Coverage Packet,” today we look at Synopsis: 1) TELL A STORY — After reading the script, take a moment to decide what the story was essentially about. Your synopsis should not try to reproduce every detail; just the facts which the reader

Dinner for Five: Kevin Smith, Stan Lee, J.J. Abrams

An episode of “Dinner for Five”: Season 4, Episode 9 with Kevin Smith, Jason Lee, Stan Lee, Mark Hamill and JJ Abrams discuss “Alias,” MI3, Tom Cruise, Star Wars, Comics, “Lost,” Regarding Henry, The Incredibles, Mallrats, screenwriting, Batman, Joker, Chasing Amy, Enemy of the State, and Clerks. Part One Part

Video interview — Kevin Smith

Screenwriter-director Kevin Smith is always good for a quote, one of the more colorful scribes in the business. His credits include Clerks (1994), Chasing Amy (1997), and Dogma (1999). Today a double dip. First about 14 minutes of an interview in which Smith, among other things, confronts head-on

The studios’ baseline operating principle: Fear

This is why studio execs operate out of fear: “John Lesher, Brad Weston out at Paramount”: An executive earthquake rocked Paramount Pictures’ Melrose lot Friday afternoon as chairman and CEO Brad Grey fired Paramount Film Group president John Lesher and production president Brad Weston. Why fear? Because studio regimes typically

The story behind script coverage: Character Breakdowns

Picking up on the “ICM Story Department — Coverage Packet,” let’s continue our analysis of the first part of the doc, “How To Do Script Coverage.” Yesterday we covered Loglines. Today let’s look at Character Breakdowns. The maximum amount of character breakdowns is six. If there are less than

Written interview — Harold Ramis

Year One opens this weekend providing a good opportunity to delve into this interview with screenwriter-director Harold Ramis. Evidently I’m a huge fan of Ramis because in little over a year, I’ve featured a bunch of his movies in Daily Dialogue including Animal House, Groundhog Day, Caddyshack,

The story behind script coverage: Loglines

This document has made the rounds and it doesn’t have a copyright, so I figured why not dig into it. And what is “it”? It is the “ICM Story Department — Coverage Packet,” basically the agency’s manual for training readers how to prepare script coverage. Long-time GITS readers

Friday Movie Reviews

The Proposal (Buena Vista) Daily Variety (Brian Lowry) Hollywood Reporter (Kevin Lally) Los Angeles Times (Betsy Sharkey) New York Times (Manohla Dargis) Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount) — June 24 Daily Variety (Jordan Mintzer) Hollywood Reporter (Ray Bennett) Whatever Works Daily Variety (Ronnie Scheib) Hollywood Reporter (Frank Scheck) Los Angeles

Great Scene: “Double Indemnity”

Great dialogue often makes a great scene. And some of the best dialogue in Hwood movie history exists in older movies — like this one Double Indemnity (1944), currently the #47 most popular film on the IMDB.com top 250 list. This scene occurs early in the movie where Walter Neff

Daily dialogue — June 19, 2009

“I know a guy who walks into a bank with a little glass bottle. He tells everyone it’s nitroglycerine. He scores some money off the teller, walks out. On his way out, the bottle breaks, he slips on it and knocks himself out. The “nitro” was Canola oil. I

Scene by scene breakdown: “Shakespeare in Love”

It’s bad enough I fulminate about the importance of reading scripts and watching movies. Now I’m going to add another suggestion to your Screenwriting To Do list: Scene-by-scene breakdowns. What is a scene-by-scene breakdown? Just what it sounds like: You breakdown a script you

“The Best Architecture in the ‘Star Wars’ Galaxy”

This is fun: The six installments of the Star Wars movies are studded with fantastical architecture, which is no surprise since creator George Lucas is a huge architecture buff, and even designed his new School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. But it’s easy to forget

Josh Friedman talks about “Sarah Connor Chronicles”

Josh Friedman is a film and TV writer whose credits include The War of the Worlds (2005) and The Black Dahlia (2006). For the last few years, he’s been busy as the show runner for “Teminator: the Sarah Connor Chronicles”, overseeing 31 episodes… until Fox canceled it. Friedman is

Daily dialogue — June 18, 2009

“You ever read the bible, Dan? I read it one time. I was eight years old. My daddy just got hisself killed over a shot of whiskey and my mama said “we’re going back East to start over”. So she gave me a bible, sat me down in the

Movie debut: “Life is Hot in Cracktown”

Received a note from actor and GITS reader Edoardo Ballerini. He’s got a new indie movie coming out called Life is Hot in Cracktown. Opens June 26th in LA. Here’s the trailer:

“Is it possible to spontaneously die of despair?”

I received a rather frantic email from screenwriter, blogger — Acerbic Bubblegum — and GITS reader Caitlin. Her email read: Sorry to bug you, but I was hoping for some sage advice… Having just read this news, should I die of despair on the spot, or no? For the full context, I

Pitch sale: “Conjuring”

After a bidding war, Summit Entertainment secures paranormal thriller “Conjuring” from writers Chad Hayes and Carey Hayes: Deal comes with life rights to the Perron family, whose experiences in their Rhode Island home informs the film, and Ed and Lorraine Warren, experts in paranormal activities who investigated and battled the

Pitch sale: “Untitled Brian Koppelman & David Levien Project”

Paramount has bought an untitled project from writers Brian Koppelman and David Levien: Paramount has put its chips down on an untitled pitch about the world of online casinos based in Costa Rica. Leonardo DiCaprio is attached to star and produce through his Appian Way shingle. Writers are repped by

“Digital-TV link has a Katalyst”

Variety article about a Katalyst web project “I Pledge” transitioning into a pilot for TV network CW: Originally uploaded as “The Presidential Pledge,” Katalyst teamed up with MySpace to feature celebrities pledging to volunteer their service to charitable causes in 2009. As a TV show, “I Pledge” will follow those

Screenwriting 101 — Velina Hasu Houston

“As an artist, I feel it is important to take what I have learned and feed my energies back into new writers, to encourage their creative vision and help them in their journeys from idea to script. Of course, I have been fortunate to mentor screenwriting students who represent some

Pitch sale: “Honey Pot”

Paramount nabs action-comedy pitch “Honey Pot” from writer Liz Meriwether: The wish-fulfillment plotline involves two women in the world of international espionage. “It’s an action comedy about what happens when a bunch of hot funny women get their ‘Bourne’ on,” said Meriwether. “It’s like ‘He’s