Daily Dialogue — June 11, 2010 “Oh, great. You get the girl, I get the coroner.” — Jack Vicennes (Kevin Spacey), L.A. Confidential (1997), screenplay by Brian Helgeland & Curtis Hanson, based on the novel by James Ellroy The Daily Dialogue theme this week is film noir movies. L.A. Confidential suggested by Teelajbrown. Trivia: Pierce
Reader Question: How big of a plot point do I need in the middle of Act One? Talking Inciting Incident, Call to Adventure, The Hook, whatever you call it. A question via email from GITS reader Benjamin W: been struggling with something and thought it might be a good question for you to answer on the blog. im wondering about what i would call the catalyst moment
Update: Berkeley Breathed I fessed up my inner Fan Boy when it came to Berkeley Breathed with this post over a year ago. But now there’s more Breathed news to geek on. Per the LAT: “Technicolor shows its creative side” The longtime film processing firm is venturing into the highly competitive business
“Independent producer opens a window on the filmmaking process” Now this is interesting: The producers of this ultra-low-budget romantic comedy about a deadbeat actor and his sister who becomes mixed up with the mob took an unorthodox approach: They decided to turn the cameras on themselves, using a live video stream to let viewers watch the production
Scene Description Spotlight: “Memento” Filmmakers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay for the fantastic movie Memento (2000) had a challenge: With a movie in which the narrative moves alternately in forward chronological and backward chronological order, how to craft scenes so that the moviegoer would understand immediately what time-frame each
Daily Dialogue — June 10, 2010 Derris Kingsby: You want the facts, don’t you? Philip Marlowe: When it comes to women, does anybody really want the facts? — Derris Kingsby (Leon Ames), Philip Marlowe (Robert Montgomery), Lady in the Like (1947), screenplay by Steve Fisher, based on the novel by Raymond Chandler The Daily Dialogue theme
Music videos inspired by movies? An interesting email from GITS reader Elizabeth Ozemebhoya: I was thinking about music videos and how most of them don’t rely on dialogue to tell a story, something that is essential in screenwriting. Recently, Movieline featured the 10 Greatest Music Videos Based on Movies. It would be interested to
Reader request An email from GITS reader Chaim: I am trying to identify the gold lighter used in the usual suspects by Kevin spacey, the model and brand, I have been trying to get this info for a year, can you help You remember the cigarette lighter: SPOILER: Before he’s allowed
Screenwriting 101 — Wesley Strick “I have two tricks. One is that I write every day, regardless of whether I want to or not because as I just said, in a way I never want to write. It’s not even an issue. I just write four pages a day when I’m working. I
Daily Dialogue — June 9, 2010 “I know his name. The name of a man who will pick up a phone and call Chicago and New Orleans and say “Hey Bill, Joe is coming down for the weekend. Advance him fifty thousand,” and he hangs up the phone and the money’s advanced, protection money. A
Pitch Sale: “Untitled John Hlavin Thriller” DreamWorks wins bidding war to nab action-thriller pitch from writer John Hlavin. Per THR: Plot details are being kept under wraps, but the story is described as an internationally set heist movie. Hlavin has worked on such shows as “E-Ring” and “Daybreak” and was a writer and story
Patrick Goldstein: “Why does Hollywood’s heat of the summer box office feel so ice cold?” So when confronted by a dismal Memorial Day weekend at the box office, last week there was this: “There very well could be some burnout with moviegoers, who are looking for something new and fresh,” a top studio exec lamented Tuesday. The phenomenon has a name: “sequelitis.” But then the
Writing as Child’s Play, Part 2 Within minutes of the previous post — “Writing as Child’s Play” — this comment from Princess Scribe: Fantastic article! If you have not seen it — and most likely you have — there is a YouTube video of a glorious french toddler, telling tales of Winnie the Pooh, hippos, tigers… and crocodiles: http:
Writing as child’s play? Amazing article in a recent New York Review of Books: “What Babies Know and We Don’t”. Written by Michael Greenberg, the focus of the article is a new book “The Philosophical Baby: What Children’s Minds Tell Us About Truth, Love, and the Meaning of Life,” by Alison Gopnik.
Star Wars take-off World Cup style Okay, I swear I will try to keep World Cup references to a minimum during the next month. But since this Adidas piece involves an iconic movie moment — the Star Wars cantina scene — I figure I can get away with it. Per Adidas: adidas Originals invites you to join David
Hollywood Tales “I went to the studio the first day absolutely appalled. I had been writing pulp stories for about three years, and here is William Faulkner, who was one of the great literary lights of the day, and how am I going to work with him? What have I got to
Daily Dialogue — June 8, 2010 “For a job with you he’ll come. Cesar! There’s not a safe that can resist Cesar and not a woman that Cesar can resist.” — Mario Ferrate (Robert Manuel), Du rififi chez les homes / Rififi (1955), adaptation by Jules Dassin, collaboration by René Wheeler and Auguste Le Breton, dialogue
Pitch Sale: “Most Wanted” Universal buys action-comedy pitch package “Most Wanted” from writer Pete Chiarelli with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds attached to star: The story sees Bullock as a criminal suspect with Reynolds as an FBI agent who is supposed to be escorting her to court when the two are ambushed and
Spec Script Sale: “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman” Mandate Pictures buys spec script “The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman” from writer Matt Drake. Per SlashFilm: Mandate Pictures just announced that Shia LaBeouf would star in The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman, the feature directorial debut of award-winning commercial director Dante Ariola (check out some of his commercial
On writing “Part of being a writer is getting yourself quiet enough and out of the way enough that the character can just speak. If you make yourself available, you can just sit down, open the floodgate, and it’ll be there.” — Callie Khouri
Daily Dialogue — June 7, 2010 Philip Marlowe: Excuse me, I don’t see any Courry Brand cat food here. Supermarket clerk: Some what? Philip Marlowe: Some Courry Brand cat… Supermarket clerk: Could you spell that? Philip Marlowe: Courry Brand, C-O-U-R-R… Supermarket clerk: Oh, we’re all out of that. Why don’
Mystery Man: A Final Salute This was the final article from Mystery Man that I posted on GITS: March 4, 2010. The piece was featured at The Story Department, a blog hosted by Karel Segers (TSD has been featuring notable MM posts from the past): MMOF’s latest is an appreciation of Ayn Rand’s
Profile: Hayao Miyazaki (Part 2) From our friend Trevor Hogg at FlickeringMyth.com, a profile on the legendary writer-director-animator Hayao Miyazaki. Here is an excerpt from Part 2: “I was frankly in a dilemma after my work on From the Apennines to the Andes [1976] ended,” stated Japanese anime artist Hayao Miyazaki who
Profile: Hayao Miyazaki (Part 1) From our friend Trevor Hogg at FlickeringMyth.com, a profile on the legendary writer-director-animator Hayao Miyazaki. Today an excerpt from Part 1: “I was an overly self-conscious boy and I had a hard time holding my own in fights with others,” recalled renowned Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki,
Video Interview: Alfred Hitchcock [In honor of Mystery Man, a reprise of a GITS post from 2008 with one of MM’s favorites: Alfred Hitchcock]. Here’s a gem from the Web — the first part of an interview with Alfred Hitchcock. In it, the famed director of such classic movies as Rear Window (1954)
