Scott Myers

Screenwriting 101: Jonathan Hensleigh

“Well made action pictures, the action sequences don’t exist in a vacuum. You don’t have enough time in the telling of the tale to have character scenes a lot of times. So you’ve got to have your character building during the physical action, which is hard to

Another sign of economic woes: The Oscars

MediaWeek reports that L’Oréal Paris has pulled ad dollars for this year’s Academy Awards television special slated for this Sunday, February 22nd: Besides losing a backer with deep pockets — since 2004, L’Oréal’s Academy Awards spend has added up to a cool $40.9 million, per TNS

Is my script big enough to be a movie, Part 9: The Ending

Part 9 of a ten-part series. DOES MY SCRIPT HAVE A BIG ENOUGH ENDING? How frustrating that is when a movie pumps you full of hope with its compelling Beginning, surprises you with twists and turns in the Middle, then peters out with a wimpy, diffuse Ending. Wimpy endings

Dialogue and slang

Slang. Depending upon your story’s character and their social, ethnic, or work situation, you can use slang to enliven that character’s dialogue. Take Juno for example: * Hey, shut your gob for a second, okay? * I am definitely up the spout. * You know like a woman with a bum

Hollywood Tales: Richard Jenkins

A special edition of Hollywood Tales as Richard Jenkins, long-time ‘character actor’ and star of The Visitor for which he has been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, weighs in with some gritty truths(?) about The Biz. Here Jenkins dishes on George Clooney in an exclusive video

Is my script big enough to be a movie, Part 8: The Middle

Part 8 of a ten-part series on “Is my script big enough to be a movie.” DOES MY SCRIPT HAVE A BIG ENOUGH MIDDLE? Many writers have trouble with their script’s middle part. Either they get confused and lost to the point where they drop the project out

“‘Chick flicks’ are really starting to click”

From Rachael Abramowitz in the LA Times (2/14/09): Last year kicked off with the wildly successful “ Sex and the City: The Movie” followed by “Mamma Mia!” in the summer and “Twilight” in the fall. The trend continued this year with “He’s Just Not That Into You,” last

On writing

“We open our mouths and out flow words whose ancestries we do not even know. We are walking lexicons. In a single sentence of idle chatter we preserve Latin, Anglo-Saxon, Norse: we carry a museum inside our heads, each day we commemorate peoples of whom we have never heard.

Is my script big enough to be a movie, Part 7: The Beginning

Following yesterday’s post, here’s another question to ask about how ‘big’ your script is. DOES MY SCRIPT HAVE A BIG ENOUGH BEGINNING? By the end of Act One (The Beginning), a reader not only should know where the story is headed, they have to be gripped by it.

Editing and screenwriting

Good article in the Daily Variety this week: “Editors cover tracks with digital tricks”. When Jean-Luc Godard pronounced, “Cinema is truth at 24 frames a second, and every cut is a lie,” he couldn’t possibly have imagined the tools 21st-century editors would have for bending reality. Thanks

“Pride Prejudice Zombies”

What if you took a Jane Austen novel and turned it into a zombie story? That appears to be the moment of creative insight that occurred to Seth Grahame-Smith who penned the novel “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies”: It is a truth commercially acknowledged that Jane Austen’s high-

Is my script big enough to be a movie, Part 6: Visual Style

Following up on the most recent post yesterday, here is another aspect to consider about how big your script is. DOES MY SCRIPT HAVE A BIG ENOUGH VISUAL STYLE? At their core, movies are a visual medium. Until The Jazz Singer debuted in 1927, movies existed quite well for three

“Character Arc”

A few weeks back, we took note here of a kerfuffle involving Mystery Man On Film’s dissection of the idea of “character arc”. For the record, I contend — and I think it’s a rather non-controversial view — that transformation is at the core of most movies, primarily the

Interview: Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer (The Dark Knight)

Here is an interview (actually an amalgamation of several Q&A sessions) with The Dark Knight co-writer Jonathan Nolan and David Goyer who received co-story by credit with the movie’s director Christopher Nolan (Jonathan’s brother and also co-writer of the movie’s screenplay). Here

Daily dialogue — February 14, 2009

“I have to believe in a world outside my own mind. I have to believe that my actions still have meaning, even if I can’t remember them. I have to believe that when my eyes are closed, the world’s still there. Do I believe the world’s still

Spec script sale: “The Adventurer’s Handbook”

In a bidding war, Universal swoops in to nab “The Adventurer’s Handbook” for seven figures. Script written by Jonah Hill, Matt Spicer and Max Winkler: “The Adventurer’s Handbook” is a comedy in which a quartet of pals go on a global adventure, inspired by the hardcore stories of

“The Caller” — opens in NYC today (2/13)

Actor and friend Edoardo Ballerini is in the movie The Caller which opens today in New York at the Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, Greenwich Village. The drama-thriller stars Frank Langella and Elliott Gould. The premise: An energy business exec is assisted by a private investigator in his

Is my script big enough to be a movie, Part 5: Stakes

My trip to DC and LA interrupted a series of posts: “Is my script big enough to be a movie?” The first four posts are: Does my script have a big enough story concept? Does my script have big enough characters? Does my script have big enough set pieces? Does

Friday movie reviews

Confessions of a Shopaholic (Buena Vista) Daily Variety (Todd McCarthy) Los Angeles Times (Betsy Sharkey) New York Times (Manohla Dargis) Friday the 13th (Warner Bros.) Daily Variety (Rob Nelson) Hollywood Reporter (Michael Rechtshaffen) Los Angeles Times (Mark Olsen) New York Times (Nathan Lee) The International (Sony) Daily Variety (Todd McCarthy)

AMC StoryMakers debuts tonight

We’ve already pimped this new AMC series featuring Peter Bart and Peter Guber, but here’s a reminder: Tonight the show premieres at 8PM EST. The show website is here: Before you watch the Academy Awards, get to know the nominees. On Friday, Feb. 13, at 8pm | 7C, join

Great Scene: “Fabulous Baker Boys”

Two weeks ago, we looked at this great scene in the movie Big — where Josh (Tom Hanks) plays ‘piano’ with Mac (Robert Loggia). Here’s another great scene involving music: Susie (Michelle Pfeiffer) vamping it up atop a Steinway piano in a slinky red dress, crooning “Makin’ Whoopie.” INT. “KING’

More weirdness by actors on Letterman

I have enormous respect for actors. The competition is even more insane than the writing side of the business, the rejection more direct, and frankly I’ve never been able to do what they do, so I’ve always been a bit mystified by how actors and their brain chemistry.

Bumping Around The Blogs

Billy Mernit provides this cogent analysis of the newest rom-com release He’s Just Not That Into You: HJNTIY’s thematic concerns are so ephemeral as to barely bear examination. There’s a stab at organization in there, reminiscent of When Harry Met Sally’s imitation of the Woody

Pitch sale: “How Could You Do This To Me?”

Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon Films buy comedy pitch “How Could You Do This To Me?” from writers Andy Marx and Andrea King as a potential starring vehicle for Miranda Cosgrove: Cosgrove will play a teen who feels that the divorce of her parents has improved her life. When mom and

Joss Whedon interview: “Dollhouse”

Continuing our Joss Whedon lovefest, Salon.com has this interview today about Whedon’s newest TV series “Dollhouse.” A few highlights: You have a huge cult — it’s not very often that TV show creators and writers get that kind of adulation. I was one of the first. The Internet