Scott Myers

Daily dialogue — March 15, 2009

“I know you like me. I know it. For the last year or two, you’ve been pretending like you hate me. I love you very much. I love you as much as I love anybody, as much as I love myself. And in a few years when I haven’

“21 Great Films to Put the Recession in Perspective”

h/t to Jeff Messerman for sending me the link to “Hey, Things Could Be Worse: 21 Great Films to Put the Recession in Perspective” at AV Club.com. Here are the movies: 1. The Grapes of Wrath (1940) 2. Umberto D. (1952) 3. Land Without Bread (1932) 4. Los

Interview: Scott Frank

Here’s a nice written interview with screenwriter Scott Frank. One of the top screenwriters in Hwood today, Frank’s credits include Little Man Tate (1991), Malice (1993), Get Shorty (1995), Out of Sight (1998), Minority Report (2002), The Interpreter (2005), and Marley & Me (2008). The list is impressive

R.I.P.: Tullio Pinelli (1908–2009)

The longtime screenwriter for Federico Fellini Tullio Pinelli has died at the age of 100 according to the New York Times: Mr. Pinelli, who helped write more than 70 films, had been a lawyer in Turin, his hometown, where he also wrote plays. Not until his late 30s did he

Friday Movie Reviews

The Last House on the Left (Universal) Daily Variety (Dennis Harvey) Hollywood Reporter (Michael Rechtshaffen) Los Angeles Times (Mark Olsen) New York Times (Jeannette Catsoulis) Miss March (F0x) Daily Variety (John Anderson) Hollywood Reporter (Kirk Honeycutt) Los Angeles Times (Glenn Whipp) New York Times (Rachel Saltz) Race to Witch Mountain

“Watchmen” scribe David Hayter writes a letter

Screenwriter David Hayter writes an open letter to any and all fans of Watchmen (which he co-wrote): This is a movie made by fans, for fans. Hundreds of people put in years of their lives to make this movie happen, and every one of them was insanely committed to

Great Scene: “Citizen Kane”

A common screenwriting form nowadays is what is usually called a “series of scenes.” Sometimes referred to as a montage, a series of scenes can be an effective way to signify a transition of time in compressed fashion. An effective series of scenes involves at least two key elements: * Each

How They Write A Script: J.F. Lawton

Screenwriter J.F. Lawton has numerous writing credits including Pretty Woman (1990), Under Siege (1992), Blankman (1994), Chain Reaction (1996), and the TV series “V.I.P.” (1998–2002). In a “Written By” interview (August, 2001, not available online) with writer Marsha Scarbrough, Lawton compares martial arts and writing. Do

“Forrest Gump in One Minute, One Take”

A few years back, our company sold a show called “Jake’s Movie” to MTV. Premise: Each week, a group of really amateur filmmakers burst into a different workplace environment and, using the employees, the offices, and whatever stuff they find lying around, produce a short version of one of

Who is Lee De Forest?

On this day in 1923, Dr. Lee De Forest demonstrated “phonofilm,” the first sound-on-film technology. From his Wikipedia entry, we see Hwood movie studios were already in full bloom re their bastardly business practices, even back in the early 20s: In 1919, De Forest filed the first patent

Bumping Around The Blogs

Mystery Man on Film gets a gold star this week for providing a link to a screenwriter’s ‘Holy Grail’: The transcript of five days worth of story meetings between George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Larry Kasdan about what would become Raiders of the Lost Ark, the first Indiana Jones

Movie Story Type: Bio-pic

A “bio-pic” is a biographical movie of a person’s life. The person can be well known such as Patton (1970) and Ali (2001), or an unknown like Erin Brockovich (2000) and My Left Foot (1989). They can cover every genre: historical dramas (Marie Antoinette (1936), Braveheart (1995), comedies

Documentary: “Dreams on Spec”

We’ve already featured an excerpt with screenwriter Stephen E. de Souza, but here’s a chance to watch for free (courtesy of SnagFilms) the entire documentary on screenwriting Dreams on Spec (2007). Written and directed by Daniel Snyder, here’s the IMDB summary of the movie: “Dreams on Spec”

Screenwriting 101 — Alexander Payne

“I don’t think you can have drama without comedy and vice versa. I mean you can. You can watch Peter Sellers in The Party and have a great time, but that is a different type of comedy. The comedy that [co-writer] Jim Taylor and I do, we find

Daily dialogue — March 11, 2009

“I don’t know what you’re referring to, but maybe if certain older, wiser people hadn’t acted like such little babies, and gotten so mushy, then everything would be ok… and I think certain older people, like you, and your colleague, shouldn’t be leching after their students,

Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work: Set a deadline

Dumb Little Writing Tricks That Work: Set a Deadline Nothing like the fear of being publicly humiliated to motivate you to write. There are a lot of find things to motivate a writer to write. The desire to craft a wonderful story… The fantasy of writing a million dollar spec

Possibly THE dream screenwriting gig

Recently we featured this interview with screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen. Today LA Times columnist Patrick Goldstein weighs in on his blog “The Big Picture” with this in-depth piece on the fascinating relationship between Kamen and French director Luc Besson — and a dream screenwriting gig. Some excerpts: If this were

Pitch sale: “Last Man”

According to Daily Variety, New Regency (in conjunction with 20th Century Fox) coughs up seven figures to snare futuristic action pitch “Last Man” from screenwriter-director David Ayer: In the pic, a hardened captain assigned to protect an outpost on a distant planet must lead a group of young, inexperienced

Hollywood Tales

“The screenplay is the most fragile art form there is, the one with the most perilous journey from cocoon to butterfly. A novelist, a singer, a sculptor — they can just do it and it’s done. I know that’s a mighty simplification, but when a screenwriter ‘does it,’ it’

John Milius speaks out

h/t to Jeff Messerman for forwarding this CNN article featuring screenwriter John Milius. We’ve featured a video interview with Milius here, and Daily Dialogue for several movies for which Milius received writing credit including The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, Clear and Present Danger, and Apocalypse

Spec script sale: “Untitled Chris McCoy Project”

DreamWorks picks up untitled comedy spec from writer Chris McCoy: Script is the second to be set up for McCoy, whose “Get Back” is being produced by Anonymous Content. He worked on Francis Coppola’s short story magazine Zoetrope: All Story, and his first novel, “Scurvy Goonda,” will be published

On writing

“I write one page of masterpiece to 99 pages of shit.”  — Ernest Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald

Writing Question: Mac or PC?

If there is a stereotype of a screenwriter, I guess part of the list of ‘typical’ attributes would be that they use a Mac. Isn’t that the not so subtle subtext of the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads: Creative types use a Mac? How about

Update: “Watchmen”

Well, unlike some speculation, it looks like Watchmen is not going to be a flop: Superhero blockbuster “Watchmen” dominated the weekend box office by grossing an estimated $55.7 million, scoring the biggest opening of any film this year. The movie cost an estimated $150M which means it needs to

Video Interview: Diablo Cody

An interview on “The Jimmy Kimmel Show” with screenwriter Diablo Cody about her Showtime TV series “The United States of Tara.” More with Cody in a June 30, 2008 appearance “immediately following a relaxed screening of Juno at the New Beverly Cinema” with an equally ‘relaxed’ Q&A session.