Scott Myers

“Flight of the Conchords”

If you haven’t caught up with Jemaine and Bret in their HBO series “Flight of the Conchords,” you should check it out ASAP. In the grand tradition of Spinal Tap and Tenacious D, these two New Zealanders bring song parody to new heights — or lows, depending upon how you

M. Night Shyamalan: “A Hollywood Horror Story, With a Twist”

Interesting article in tomorrow’s NY Times about Hollywood’s attempts to create auteur ‘star’: “His career illustrates one of the stubborn paradoxes of Hollywood: the film industry loves the myth of the auteur, the rugged individual filmmaker who plays by his own rules, until faced with the reality. Around

The writer’s life: What are you afraid of?

The single greatest inhibitor to creativity is fear. Do you recognize any of these voices: I am afraid of typing FADE IN. I am afraid I won’t be able to finish this script. I am afraid I don’t have enough talent. I am afraid the words won’t

Fire on Universal’s back lot

This is very sad and hopefully the loss of memorabilia and historical artifacts will be minimal. When Universal bought K-9, Siegel & Myers had an office on the lot. I used to go jogging in the back lot, past the Back to the Future square, the Bates motel and

“Gettin’ Rich”

A professional acquaintance of mine, Ken Lewin sent word to me that he co-wrote, directed, and produced four comedy webisodes of “Gettin’ Rich” for OnNetworks. They’re available for viewing on YouTube here. Funny stuff, so check it out! Comment Archive

Daily Dialogue — June 1, 2008

“[flipping through a law book] land, land…”Land: see Snatch.” Ah, Hailie vs. United States. Hailie: 7, United States: nothing. You see, it can be done!”  — Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), Blazing Saddles, written by Mel Brooks, Norman Steinberg, Andrew Bergman, Richard Pryor, Alan Unger, and Michael Hertzberg http://www.youtube.

On Writing

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”  — Stephen King

Spec script sale: “Frat Chance”

Screenwriters Sam Elhag and Rex Perez are partying hard tonight after National Lampoon purchased their spec script Frat Chance. Here’s the premise: Playing in the same undergraduate sandbox as Lampoon’s “Animal House” and “Van Wilder,” “Frat Chance” follows the adventures of a nerd whose full-boat scholarship hinges

Friday movie reviews

Sex and the City Los Angles Times New York Times Daily Variety Wall Street Journal The Strangers Los Angeles Times Daily Variety The Foot Fist Way Los Angeles Times Daily Variety Savage Grace New York Times Daily Variety

The Foot Fist Way

So you’re sitting there at your writing desk, someplace far, far away from Hollywood — oh, let’s say North Carolina — and you have a crazy idea for a ultra-low budget karate comedy. Would you save up pennies for four years to pull together a $35,000 budget, roll

Opportunity to work on an animation short

Some good news from one of our blog participants Stuart Creque and an opportunity for you or someone you know to work on the production of an animation short: Renderyard production provides a financial platform for producing experimental films and animations made by emerging filmmakers. We help to produce and

Board games into movies?

Far be it from Hollywood to leave any stone unturned in searching for every conceivable movie premise — and that includes board games. Who can forget the limp 1985 movie Clue adapted from the Parker Bros. board game? Now comes word that Hasbro has joined forces with director Michael Bay to

Writing Mantra: “Trust the Process”

“Trust the Process” One of the most important writing mantras. This is probably my favorite writing mantra. It’s both practical and spiritual, which pretty sums up my experience of the act of writing. There is prep-writing (brainstorming, research, generating plot elements, developing characters, story structure, scene breakdowns, outline)

Coen brothers: A glimpse into their creative process

Today’s Daily Variety has an article — “Coen brothers script Hunter’s career” that not only provides some fun and interesting historical tidbits (e.g., Holly Hunter was responsible for her roommate at the time, Frances McDormand, auditioning for Blood Simple), but also a chance to see how the brothers

Spec script sale: “Wedding Banned” for big bucks

Biggest dollar sale for a spec script in some time: $850K against $1.6M for writing team Jack Amiel and Michael Begler’s Wedding Banned. Here’s the premise: “A long-divorced couple kidnap their daughter on her wedding day to keep her from making the mistake of her life.

“The Hero’s Journey: Jeff Nathanson on the road to writing Indiana Jones”

“Written By” magazine is the monthly journal put out by the WGA — and I love it. This month, they have numerous articles including ones featuring Danny Strong, who wrote the screenplay for HBO’s Recount, David Koepp (pictured at left), who received “screenplay by” credit for the new Indiana Jones

Master plots — Part 1

In a prior thread “Similar but different — Part 1,” I noted in the comments I had some background material on a variety of storylines. In this post, ten different plots courtesy of author Ronald Tobias and his book “20 Master Plots (And How to Build Them).” 1. QUEST Where the

On Writing

“The best thing and worst thing about life is that you just don’t know what’s going to happen.” — John Edgar Wideman

Spec script sale: Lionsgate acquires comedy script

Screenwriter Adam Sachs sells the spec script Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty to Lionsgate. Here’s the premise: “Story centers on the friendship between a drunk, middle-aged reporter and a teenager who bond while finding themselves somehow pitted against a group of fanatical protesters.” One would suppose the “fanatical protesters”

New York Times “Times Machine”

A great new online research tool as the NY Times announces its Times Machine: “TimesMachine can take you back to any issue from Volume 1, Number 1 of The New-York Daily Times, on September 18, 1851, through The New York Times of December 30, 1922. Choose a date in

Cable movies

It may not be the first thing you think of when you write a spec script, however, cable TV networks continue to produce movies. One of the more surprising nets to get in on the action of late is Spike. Here is an excerpt from a PR piece about Backwoods,

Bitter Truth #3

“No matter how many items are on sale, they will have every size but yours.” © 2008 Kurt Brown & Scott Myers Comment Archive

Character: “Power and Perspectives Not Taken”

I love The New Yorker” magazine. Always interesting, informative articles — and often, I’ll find something that applies to screenwriting. Like the latest issue (5/26/08), there’s a short piece in “The Talk of the Town” section titled “Power Hour” about a psychological study that came out in

On Writing

“Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.”  — Howard Aiken

More thoughts on action genre and character

I did some more thinking about this thread where I went into some depth re Tony’s Stark’s character in Iron Man to make the point that we, as writers, need to dig into our characters in order to dimensionalize them. However, what we find there and present on