Bumping Around The Blogs
Alex at Complications Ensue.com offers this interesting comparison between business start-ups and the spec screenplay world based upon Paul Graham’s “Startups in 13 Sentences” :
2. Launch fast.
The reason to launch fast is not so much that it’s critical to get your product to market early, but that you haven’t really started working on it till you’ve launched. Launching teaches you what you should have been building. Till you know that you’re wasting your time. So the main value of whatever you launch with is as a pretext for engaging users.
Don’t send your scripts out to buyers until they are as good as you can make them. Don’t send your scripts to your agent until they’re ready to go to buyers.
[h/t to Josh James for the heads-up].
Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood.com posts about the Top 25 Best Cities for Indie Moviemakers as compiled by Movie Maker:
Chicago was named №1 (beating out last year’s winner, Austin). Why the Windy City? “Thanks to the very generous 30% tax credit it offers moviemakers and the mix of mega-budget Hollywood fare like The Dark Knight and Michael Mann’s upcoming Public Enemies and more modest independent features. “In the nine years we’ve been compiling the list, Chicago has always been the ‘movie city that could,’” says MovieMaker magazine editor Jennifer Wood. “Ironically, it is Rod Blagojevich who Chicagoans have to thank for the top spot on this year’s rankings, as it was the former governor who signed the state’s very generous tax credit into law in 2008.”
John Rogers at Kung Fu Monkey.com pulls out a blast from his blogging past with the list Top 10 John Wayne Movies That Could Also Be Porn Titles:
10.) Men Without Women (1930)
9.) Rough Romance (1930)
8.) Seven Men from Now (1956)
7.) Girls Demand Excitement (1931)
6.) Maker of Men (1931) or Two Fisted Law (1932) — tie
5.) Ride Him, Cowboy (1932)
4.) His Private Secretary (1933)
3.) The Star Packer (1934)
2.) Pals of the Saddle (1938)
Click through at the link above to find out which movie is #1.
Lee Goldberg at A Writer’s Life.com expresses disappointment in “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” and “Dollhouse” in the post “Trust Me, It Gets Better”:
I admire both of these guys very much as writers and as showrunners, but c’mon, what were they thinking? In this highly competitive primetime environment, no series can afford to have three episodes in a row that suck…especially the first episodes that are intended to be sampled by new viewers.
At Mystery Man on Film.com, MMOF has completed his analysis of unproduced Hitchcock scripts:
As many of you know, I just wrapped up my series on the Unproduced Screenplays of Alfred Hitchcock and I thought I’d repost links to all of the articles for those who may be new to the blog. There’s a lot of great material here. A study of Hitchcock is absolutely crucial to every screenwriter. Hitch will change the way you write and view cinema.
Patrick Goldstein at LA Times blog “The Big Picture” squashes the rumor that Judd Apatow might be involved with Ghostbusters 3:
“It’s not true,” says Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures. “We have some great new writers working on a new script, but Judd isn’t involved. Judging from the frenzy on the Internet, there still seems to be plenty of interest in the idea of doing another film, so we’re certainly taking that as a good sign.”
Julie Gray at The Rouge Wave.com drives home a point I make with my students with this post “Character Introductions and Voice”:
Here’s an amalgam of BAD character introductions that I have seen approximately 1.3 million times:
JOHN PATRICK is 43 years old and is wearing khaki pants with a blue shirt and a green tie. He is the president and CEO of a large industrial company and he is uptight and judgmental. His WIFE is 38 and has blonde, curly hair and green eyes. She is dressed in a sexy dress and she is bored with her life.
So — here we have a collection of descriptive words that don’t add up to a feeling of who this couple is. They both just stand there like mannequins. We have a lot of information here — and information, by the way, that we cannot SEE (the president and CEO of a company) and dull details that do not paint a picture of the essence of these people. What does “bored with her life” look like? Why the specificity of khaki pants and a blue shirt? What does that convey, actually? That he’s conservative? Maybe.
Julie goes on to post the introduction of five primary characters from the script Juno, which amply demonstrate that when you introduce a character, you have the opportunity to share something of that character’s core essence to the reader. This is especially critical because in Act One, the reader is doing their best to assemble and collate your story’s ‘cast’ of characters.
Anne Thompson at The Daily Variety blog Thompson On Hollywood thinks Terminator Salvation is going to be a hit:
First, everyone knows what a Terminator movie is. And second. this one stars Christian (Dark Knight) Bale as an adult John Connor fighting to save the human race from extinction by the machines. The world is going to hell; it’s being destroyed. Sound familiar? As we all stare into the void wondering how we’re going to manage, this May our movie fantasy may involve John Connor kicking ass to save the world.
Click through to Anne’s blog to see the latest trailer for the movie.
And Robin Kelly at Writing For Performance.com links to a London Times first-person piece by Tessa Ross. Who’s Tessa Ross, you ask? The controller of film and drama at Channel 4 in the UK who “greenlit, optioned and developed the script for Slumdog Millionaire”:
I’m a little uneasy at saying Slumdog Millionaire marks a renaissance in British film. It is wonderful that everybody is proud of it, but you get this kind of success only if you’re given the money and time, to take risks. Slumdog started as a very small seed and had to be nurtured.
Blog on!
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