Story Ideas: The two most important words are “what if”? There has been a phenomenal response to “Go Into The Story: The Quest” whereby I am offering the opportunity for up to four aspiring screenwriters to do a 24-week online screenwriting workshop with me as your mentor: 8 weeks of intensive screenwriting theory, 6 weeks of story prep, and
Movie Trailer: “Les Misérables” Screenplay by William Nicholson, based on a novel by Victor Hugo IMDB site Release date: 14 December 2012
News Flash: Old Farts Love Movies! There are certain things in life you can absolutely bank on. Whether it’s a singer at a sporting event botching the National Anthem or a billionaire saying really stupid things, it’s comforting to know we can look forward to recurring bits of business to bring meaning to our
The Bitter Script Reader: “12-Step Screenwriting” The Bitter Script Reader has a new video series called “12-Step Screenwriting.” Here is Week 1 — Idea, Concept, Story: Too bad this dude from the movie Annie Hall didn’t have TBSR around to clear things up for him: FULL GROUP SHOT A man stands talking, people in groups
Rod Serling: Writing to please an audience GITS reader David A sent me a link to an amazing set of videos, a sit-down conversation with TV and screenwriter Rod Serling. Most well-known for the long-running TV anthology series “The Twilight Zone” (148 episodes, 1959–1964), has over 70 writing credits including the screenplays for
GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “(500) Days of Summer” — Characters This week we are analyzing the screenplay for the 2009 movie (500) Days of Summer, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. The script was nominated for the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. You may download the script legally from the Fox Searchlight website here [draft dated April
Script To Screen: “Pretty Woman” Perhaps no movie demonstrates the power of ‘Disneyfication’ than the 1990 movie Pretty Woman, written by J.F. Lawton. Here is what the movie started out to be: The movie was initially intended to be a dark drama about prostitution in Los Angeles in the late 1980s/early 1990s. The
Daily Dialogue — May 30, 2012 LANA: What do you need to talk to Brandon about? TOM: Well, there’s some things I don’t understand ’cause, you took a leak with me and — pardon my French, Mom — but you shook off your dick. CANDACE: Yeah, what was that bullshit about paying child support for a
Breaking your story There’s a phrase professional screenwriters and TV writers use: “break the story.” Sounds like a bad thing, but in actuality it’s one of the biggest keys to being a successful writer. Breaking the story is the part of the writing process where you figure it out, nail it
Alfred Hitchcock on happiness “A clear road ahead with nothing on your plate, except the creative”. HT to Franklin Leonard for forwarding this cool bit of inspiration.
Rod Serling: Where do ideas come from? GITS reader David A sent me a link to an amazing set of videos, a sit-down conversation with TV and screenwriter Rod Serling. Most well-known for the long-running TV anthology series “The Twilight Zone” (148 episodes, 1959–1964), has over 70 writing credits including the screenplays for
GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “(500) Days of Summer” — Structure This week we are analyzing the screenplay for the 2009 movie (500) Days of Summer, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. The script was nominated for the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. You may download the script legally from the Fox Searchlight website here [draft dated April
Screenwriting 101: Larry Ferguson “A mistake most people make, in my opinion, when they consider working on a feature film, is that they feel like they have to get right into the action. I can promise you, in feature films, you don’t have to do that. It’s more effective if you can
Daily Dialogue — May 29, 2012 TERRY: Pardon me, sir, but I lost my I.D. in–in a flood and I’d like to get some Old Harper, hard stuff. Would you mind buying a bottle for me? The bum is still trying to focus on Terry and smiles. BUM: Why certainly, I lost my
“Go Into The Story: The Quest” — A few words from Producer Scott Lemme ask you something. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to get a movie made in Hollywood nowadays? I mean, seriously. You got this nutso obstacle course for any project… pre-awareness this, branded that, target demos, four quadrant, franchise, tentpole, shit! And suits so goddammed scared
“Go Into The Story: The Quest” — Submission Process At the risk of repeating myself… check that… I am repeating myself [because I keep getting the same questions via email and Twitter]… once again, here is the submission process for “Go Into The Story: The Quest”. Follow these steps precisely please! * Email address: GITSblog at gmail dot com. * In
“Go Into The Story: The Quest” — Questions and Answers As this post goes live, we are 10 hours and 1 minute away from the time I will begin accepting logline submissions for “Go Into The Story: The Quest.” What is “The Quest”? It is my attempt at creating a new pathway into Hollywood for aspiring screenwriters: A 24-week
GITS: The Twitter Conversations — Script Readers (Part 5) So late the other night, I was just about to head off to my nightly 20 minutes of sleep when I decided to check Twitter one last time. Big mistake… that turned into a bit of brilliance. The mistake was I saw that @BittrScrptReadr [The Bitter Script Reader] and @nate_
GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “(500) Days of Summer” Welcome to Week 19 of the GITS Script Reading & Analysis series.This week we will be analyzing the screenplay for the 2009 movie (500) Days of Summer, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. The script was nominated for the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. You may
On Writing “Plot is people. Human emotions and desires founded on the realities of life, working at cross purposes, getting hotter and fiercer as they strike against each other until finally there’s an explosion — that’s Plot.” — Leigh Brackett
Daily Dialogue — May 28, 2012 INT. CLEAN, UPSCALE MODERN BATHROOM — MORNING Annie stands in front of a mirror in nice lingerie. She puts on lotion, make-up, brushes her hair, mascara, etc. She getting ready to… Creep back into the bed, where Ted is still sleeping. She gets in and begins to position herself to
Starting Monday, GITS Script Reading & Analysis: “(500) Days of Summer” For Week 20 of the monthly GITS script reading and analysis series, the screenplay is (500) Days of Summer, written by Scott Neustadter and Michael H. Weber. With this script, we not only get to consider what some have called a “post-modern romantic-comedy,” we also have the opportunity
Written Interviews: Jon Spaihts (“Prometheus”) I’ve rarely seen the amount of press featuring a movie’s screenwriters than with Prometheus. Here is an aggregation of just some of the interviews with one of the film’s screenwriters Jon Spaihts: Collider Film School Rejects FirstShowing io9 Variety The Verge Additional feature: Wall Street Journal: “Can
Screenwriting Advice From The Past: Story Synopsis “The first step in preparing a photoplay is to put it into plain English telling the entire plot in from 500 to 1,500 words. This is called a synopsis.” If you are a screenwriter, you should know about Anita Loos. Loos was one of the most influential writers in
Screenwriting News (May 21-May 27, 2012) Joe Ballarini (Ice Age 4) to rewrite “Atlantis 7” for Walden Media. Richard Blaney and Gregory Small sell thriller spec script “Playing Dirty” to Nu Image/Millennium. Adam Brooks (Wimbledon) signs on to write and direct “Happy Mother’s Day” for Walden Media. Michael Brown’s script for an “Untitled
