Go Into The Story

Welcome to Week 4 of the GITS Script Reading & Analysis series. This week we will be analyzing the 1/15/1990 draft of The Silence of the Lambs. If you haven’t had a chance to read the script yet, you can go here. I thought this week I

“The U.S. Marshal Service annually flies 155,000 prisoners around the country for transfers, legal hearings and medical exams. As you know, today’s flight is a special one. We’re populating Alabama’s Feltham Penitentiary, the newest super-max facility in the system. This place was designed to

Per the dean of contemporary American screenwriting: THE TEN COMMANDMENTS 1. Thou shalt not take the crisis out of the protagonist’s hands. 2. Thou shalt not make life easy for the protagonist. 3. Thou shalt not give exposition for exposition’s sake. 4. Thou shalt not use false mystery

Fun article for all you “Lost” fans as Lindelof describes meeting with J.J. Abrams about this crazy idea for a show — a bunch of people get stranded on an island: Lindelof came in with plenty of ideas, including nonlinear storytelling and flashbacks. “The biggest issue with a desert island

Two articles. First a new Vulture series from agent turned manager turned producer Gavin Polone: The total box office is down 4 percent from 2010 so far this year, but the film industry should pay closer attention to a far more revealing and damning number: 2011 looks to have the

Based upon the stellar B.O. performance of Lion King: 3-D [#1 two weekends in a row grossing over $62M], Steve Zeitchit (LAT) ponders the present and future of movies: Cinema can’t compete with what television does narratively, not with so many shows and the possibility of so

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

A new short story from Popcorn Fiction, the terrific site hosted by screenwriter-novelist Derek Haas: I’m jazzed to welcome back screenwriter Danielle Wolff to Popcorn Fiction. In her new story, a woman takes action to assure her place inside Ikea is secure. I’ll let you figure out

SELFRIDGE: Well — lucky your guy had a twin brother, and lucky the brother wasn’t an oral hygienist or something. A Marine we can use. I’m assigning him to your team as security escort. GRACE: The last thing I need is another trigger happy asshole out there! SELFRIDGE: Look,

I posted this a few weeks back, wherein film essayist Jim Emerson critiques the directing style of Christopher Nolan: This essay takes a long, hard look at roughly the first half of the big car and truck chase sequence from Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, set on the lower

Oh, boy. Here is a major time suck courtesy of Total Film: 50 Greatest Star Wars Toys. As a taste, see if you recognize Commander Jorg Sacul. Remind you of anyone? I can’t even begin to imagine how much money my family has spent on SW toys, specifically at

About the video: »Hitch« is our graduation project at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Hannover. It’s about »The Ultimate Hitch Cookbook«, an animated book containing the recipes for Alfred Hitchcock’s classics. It’s made for Hitchcock enthusiasts and every other couch potato out there. Their

So there’s dialogue that can inspire us as writers. Dialogue that employs the best practices and principles to help steer us toward greatness. Then there is crap dialogue. One form of crap dialogue is terrible exposition. What is exposition? Here’s a definition: “Dialogue, description, etc., that gives the

— Alec (Kelly Reno), The Black Stallion (1979), screenplay by Melissa Mathison & Jeanne Rosenberg and William D. Wittliff The Daily Dialogue theme for the week is non-verbal ‘dialogue’ suggested by Saint. The Black Stallion suggested by Elisa. Trivia: The scene with the cobra took two days to film, because

Here is the current list of suggestions: Fast talking reporter types [jryanpeterson] Big announcements [John] Declarations of love [Ric] St. Crispin Day type speeches [Atlanta] Not Quite Famous Dialogue: Dialogue that precedes or follows famous dialogue [CWillGoWrite] Fightin’ words [Tavis] Repartee [Laura Deerfield] Terrible exposition [Teddy Pasternak] Wrongfully accused [Matthew

We have completed Round Three of our new weekly GITS Script Reading & Analysis series. #1: Gladiator (Action) #2: Bridesmaids (Comedy) #3: Good Will Hunting (Drama) I have started an archive for the series here where GITS readers can access all of the posts and comments per each script we

Jim Henson would have been 75 years old today. Geek Chic Daily did a nice thing to honor his memory: They interviewed his daughter Lisa Henson, CEO of the Jim Henson Company, about her father. Excerpts: GCD: We’ve recently seen Archaia Comics come out with A Tale of Sand,

We tend to focus on the spec scripts as sales and of course that is the dream, isn’t it? Write a spec. Sell it for a million bucks. Move to Hollywood. Start dating Ryan Gosling or Emma Stone. But there are multiple ways a spec script can benefit a

Back for another installment of Saturday Hot Links… with a side of mashed yeast! The videos this week: Cute kitties!!! Variety senior critics provide a run-down of their highs and lows of the recent Toronto International Film Festival. THR: Toronto 2011: The 10 most buzzed-about films that still

Warner Bros. acquires action comedy spec script “Murders & Acquisitions” from writer Jonathon Stokes. Per Deadline: A Wall Street stock broker becomes the target of a hit from a rival firm. Stokes is repped by UTA and Energy. By my count, this is the 68th spec script to sell in

Via Collider: If you like your comedies dark or your characters deeply eccentric and emotionally fraught, then chances are you’ve stumbled onto the work of writer/director Todd Solondz. The filmmaker found himself a success straight out of NYU, landing a three-picture deal with 20th Century Fox off