Great Characters: Tyler Durden (“Fight Club”) The movie’s budget more than doubled. Filming lasted 138 days and the director shot nearly three times the amount of footage as a normal movie. It underperformed at the box office. Its legacy led to the firing of a studio head. Yet Fight Club [screenplay by Jim Uhls, based
Daily Dialogue — October 7, 2011 REESE Are you injured? Are you shot? No response. He reaches over and runs his hands over her arms, legs, chest. Sarah flinches. She feels the BLIND PANIC BOILING UP WITHIN HER. She pushes his hand away and opens the door. Reese slams her back in the seat and slaps
You still have time to write that spec script in 2011! That is you can get that spec done in 2011 if you start right now. And the best way to expedite that process is to nail your story before you type FADE IN. Writing a screenplay is a three part process: * Prep-writing: Concept, research, brainstorming, plotting, character development, outline.
GITS Meet-Up: LA? Longtime GITS reader and confidante Nate Winslow (@nate_winslow) and I were talking the other day. He’s moved to L.A. to pursue his ambition of becoming a movie producer. Turns out he’s there all of 2 weeks and finds himself living in a Venice apartment with this
Spec Script Sale: “The Envoy” Warner Bros. acquires action-thriller spec script “The Envoy” from writer Robert Lynn. From THR: The story centers on young diplomatic courier whose routine delivery turns deadly when it’s discovered the sensitive information he carries contains stolen plans for an attack on American interests. He must make it to
Writing Question: What do you do when you get stuck in the story-writing process? This came up in a Comment thread and I thought it might be helpful to aggregate suggestions from the GITS community. Perhaps you’re stuck in the prep-writing phase of things, flummoxed by where to take the plot or baffled by some character choices. Maybe you’re in page-
“Why We Write”: Cathryn Humphris During the last WGA strike, TV writers Charles “Charlie” Craig and Thania St. John started a blog called Why We Write. They posed that question to a number of writers and over a period of several months, posted their answers on the site. As far as I can tell, the
GITS Script Reading & Analysis: “Toy Story 3” — Theme Onto the subject at hand today as we continue our analysis: What are some of the key themes in the draft of Toy Story 3 we read? I don’t know what you think theme is about, but — as I articulated here previously — I think theme = meaning. And more pointedly,
The Business of Screenwriting: What to do if your movie sucks “I don’t care how expensive your shrink is or how good they are, when confronted with a story — your story — as a movie and it both sucks and blows [Simpsons reference], you are going to take a serious ego-hit.” I wrote a movie that sucked. I don’t
Daily Dialogue — October 6, 2011 BBC Interviewer: The sixth member of the Discovery crew was not concerned about the problems of hibernation, for he was the latest result in machine intelligence: The H.-A.-L. 9000 computer, which can reproduce, though some experts still prefer to use the word mimic, most of the activities of
R.I.P.: Steve Jobs (1955–2011) The entire text of Steve Jobs’ commencement address given to the graduating class at Stanford University in 2005: I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest
Writing Question: How do you know when you are done with your script? This is a critically important question because the last thing you want to do is send out a script before it’s ready. So what personal guidelines do you use to assess your scripts? What process do you have to determine if you’ve done all you can do on
“Drive: An Illustrated Response” by Lisa Hanawalt For all you folks who went gaga over the movie Drive, check out this brilliant piece of satire by Lisa Hanawalt. Some excerpts: I like Ryan Gosling. I liked him in The Notebook, Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, and Google Image Search. And driving around LA at night
“The Reapers are the Angels” + Danger Mouse + Chris Milk = Movie This is one of the more interesting movie deals I’ve seen in a while. Per Variety: Good news Danger Mouse fans: The eclectic producer’s soundtrack concept album “Rome” will be turned into an actual movie. Pic’s story will be based on Alden Bell’s novel “The Reapers
“Why We Write”: Tim Griffin During the last WGA strike, TV writers Charles “Charlie” Craig and Thania St. John started a blog called Why We Write. They posed that question to a number of writers and over a period of several months, posted their answers on the site. As far as I can tell, the
Matt Stone and Trey Parker at NYU Takeaway quotes: * “It’s amazing how a deadline gets your creative juices going. * “In our writers room, you never say ‘no.’ You almost never go, ‘No, that won’t work because of this.’ You don’t need that energy.” * “Each individual scene [in South Park] has to work as a
GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “Toy Story 3″ — Characters We continue our analysis of the script Toy Story 3 today by considering the characters in the story. Here is a list of most of the characters in order of appearance in the script: Mr. Potato Head Woody Mrs. Potato Head Bullseye Jessie Aliens Buzz Lightyear Hamm Aliens Andy Andy’
Script To Screen: “Pulp Fiction” The dance scene at Jack Rabbit Slims from Pulp Fiction. Setup: Mia wants to dance. Vincent has no choice. Vincent and Mia walk up to the microphone.ED SULLIVAN Now let's meet our first contestants here this evening. Young lady, what is your name?MIA (into microphone) Missus
Daily Dialogue — October 5, 2011 JEROME I got it. EUGENE Of course you got it. JEROME (VO) And that’s the way it was. Each day I would dispose of as much lose skin and fingernails and hair as possible to limit as much of my invalid self I would leaving the valid world. At
Writing Question: Do you have trouble writing Nemesis characters? Interesting but I’ve received several emails from folks lately talking about how hard it is for them to write Nemesis characters. I certainly see that in scripts I read as well. Perhaps it’s because most of us aren’t naturally inclined to wanting to blow up the world,
“The Incurable Disease of Writing “ This is one of the most fascinating interviews I’ve read in a long time. It’s subtitled “A neurologist considers the compulsions and frustrations of literary creativity.” The neurologist in question is Dr. Alice Flaherty, director of the movement disorders fellowship at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor
“Why We Write”: Stephen Engel During the last WGA strike, TV writers Charles “Charlie” Craig and Thania St. John started a blog called Why We Write. They posed that question to a number of writers and over a period of several months, posted their answers on the site. As far as I can tell, the
GITS Script Reading and Analysis Series: “Toy Story 3″ — Structure Welcome to Week 5 of the GITS Script Reading & Analysis series. This week we will be analyzing the script for Toy Story 3. If you haven’t had a chance to read the script yet, you can go here. As background, I will be posting excerpts from the Creative
Screenwriting 101: Shane Black “Well, it’s sort of like being led by the nose by the process as opposed to having any particular control over it. As ideas occur to me over a period of time, I’ll write down little bits and snippets for scenes and pieces of dialog — ideas for a
Daily Dialogue — October 4, 2011 His voice trails off. There is something familiar about the cracked mirror of the compact — and the fleur-de-lis pattern on the case confirms his suspicion. Fran notices the peculiar expression on his face. FRAN: What is it? BUD (with difficulty): The mirror — it’s broken. FRAN: I know.
