Go Into The Story

“Bill Mechanic On Moguls’ Bad Decision Making”

A couple of heads-ups — from Ryan Covert in comments and Josh James via his blog — about this address by Bill Mechanic, former CEO and Chairman of Fox Studios and now an independent producer (Pandemonium). It’s definitely a must-read. I don’t have time to comment on it

“Sometimes you’re gonna lose the patient”

The Bitter Script Reader chimes in with a thought provoking post: “Sometimes you’re gonna lost the patient”: It’s a scene we’ve seen countless times on an equally countless number of medical dramas. A critical patient goes south on the operating table. Blood pressure drops, they’re bleeding

“Act 1: The ION Television Movie Contest

I rarely pimp writing competitions, but this one is unusual in a couple of regards and, therefore, worth noting. The New York Television Festival and the TV network ION are sponsoring this competition: Call for Content: The NYTV Fest also launched a new writing contest offering drama screenwriters the chance

Screenwriting 101: Michael Arndt

On Tuesday, May 23, 2000, at 4:27 p.m., I sat down to write LMS [Little Miss Sunshine]. I wrote twelve pages the first day, thirty-seven pages the second, and — pulling an all-nighter — fifty-four pages on the third day. I finished the first draft at 9:

Daily dialogue — September 30, 2009

“When people believed the earth was flat, the idea of a round world scared them silly. Then they found out how the round world works. It’s the same with the world of the supernatural. Until we know how it works, we’ll continue to carry around this unnecessary burden

Life on the Bubble: Spec Market Recap 9/21/2009

The latest from Jason Scoggins: Thirteen specs came out last week, not including one that went straight to buyers on Friday last week that I didn’t hear about until Tuesday. Here’s the genre breakdown: 2 — Action 9 — Comedy 2 — Horror 1 — Thriller Go to Life on the Bubble

Update: Information Hollywood

I originally posted this [see below] last September. Here are three updates: * There is another pay website that tracks script and movie development called The Tracking Board. It’s annual cost is $49. * Mystery Man on Film has evolved into a Twitter feed — and it’s amazing what items he

“‘Paranormal Activity’ expanding after selling out nearly all midnight shows”

Picking up where we left off tracking the fate of Paranormal Activity, this LA Times article: Twelve college towns played the ultra-low-budget horror film at late-night screenings Friday and Saturday, and virtually all sold out. The sole exception was in State College, Pa., where a Penn State

“Brands are the new stars”

The LA Times with “Hollywood sees star qualities in classic games and toys”: Welcome to Hollywood’s latest gold rush. Movie studio development slates are rapidly filling up with projects based on well-known toys and games. Some high-profile projects in the works include ones based on the classic

Trailers: “Where the Wild Things Are”

It’s difficult to keep one’s expectations tamped down about the movie Where the Wild Things Are. There was this wonderful feature in the NY Times Sunday magazine a few weeks back. Then this article in the LA Times yesterday with great nuggets like this: Jonze enlisted big-deal

Hollywood Tales

“Part of the romance of movies — one of the elemental myths of show biz — is their ability to transform lives seemingly overnight (“You’re going out there a nobody, kid, but you’re coming back a star!”). That has been, to some degree, my story: I wrote Little Miss Sunshine

Daily dialogue — September 29, 2009

“Earth. Even the word sounded strange to me now… unfamiliar. How long had I been gone? How long had I been back? Did it matter? I tried to find the rhythm of the world where I used to live. I followed the current. I was silent, attentive, I made a

WGA Foundation Crafts Workshop

For those of you living in So Cal, the WGA Foundation has put together what looks to be an excellent series of live events called “Notes on Craft”: This autumn, the Writers Guild Foundation will host a series of six evenings entitled Notes on Craft. Each evening will feature two

Beatles documentary: “All Together Now”

Over the weekend, I stayed up late watching the documentary All Together Now (2008): The story behind the partnership between The Beatles and Cirque du Soleil that resulted in the Las Vegas stage production of “LOVE.” Here’s the first part of the documentary: As I was watching the doc,

“Married scribes’ pics to square off”

Not sure if I’ve ever heard of anything quite like this: As if screenwriters don’t have to deal with enough discouragement, scribes Paul Wernick and Rita Hsiao have a uniquely dispiriting situation looming. When Columbia Pictures moved the wide release of its horror-comedy “Zombieland,” which Wernick wrote

Spec script sale: “Rubicon”

Relativity Media pick up action spec “Rubicon” from writers Ric Roman Waugh and Michael Alan Lerner: Waugh will direct the project, described as a contemporary revenge thriller set in a Mexican border town. More details: Mexican drug cartel guns down female reporter’s husband. She hires team of mercenaries to

On writing

“If you don’t know what to write, talk to your subconscious, your story, or your God and ask, ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ Ask that question and wait. There will be an answer.”  — Kurt Brown Comment Archive

Open forum Q&A

Several questions from the most recent Open Forum that can be handled pretty quickly, so I lumped them together: From Julien: Is it OK to reference to a particular movie in a script if this movie is of great importance in the story ? Yes, with a caveat. If your script

Weekend B.O.: “Moore’s ‘Capitalism’ Opens Strong, ‘Meatballs’ Stays #1”

From Huffington Post: Estimated ticket sales are for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released Monday. 1. “Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs,” $24.6 million. 2. “Surrogates,” $15 million. 3. “Fame,” $10 million. 4. “The Informant!”, $6.9

Rare footage: John Cassavetes directing

More video to honor John Cassavetes. From the French TV series “Cinema Cinemas,” a 1983 feature on Cassavetes directing the movie Love Streams (1984), which Cassavetes both wrote and directed. Part 1 Part 2

Video interview: John Cassavetes

John Cassavetes was an actor, writer, and director. But that summary doesn’t do justice to this man, one of the unique talents in the independent film world. His screenwriting credits include Faces (1968), Husbands (1970), Minnie and Moskowitz (1971), A Woman Under the Influence (1974), and Gloria (1980). I’

Question: What is a treatment vs. an outline?

An Open Forum question from januaryfire: Do you have a good definition of treatment and outline? I’ve seen these terms interchanged too many times. And the WGA website doesn’t give explanations when registering. One instructor I had said that a treatment is 2/3 as long as a

“The Top 30 Day Jobs For Aspiring Writers (And Why)”

More biting satire from The Hollywood Roaster: “The Top 30 Day Jobs For Aspiring Writers (And Why)”. Here’s a sampling: 30. Waiter — Many writers have been discovered while waiting tables in LA. You, on the other hand, will be working at an Applebee’s in Little Rock, but you

“No Signal Horror Movie Montage”

This is classic. While cell phones have been an obvious boon to consumers, for screenwriters they’ve been a major pain in the ass. Why? Because writers have had to figure out any number of ways to explain why a character or characters can’t use a cellphone to get

Interview: Ehren Kruger

Today’s interview is with screenwriter Ehren Kruger. Winner of the Nicholl Fellowship in 1996, Kruger has written over 35 film projects including Arlington Road (1999), Scream 3 (2000), The Ring (2002), The Brothers Grimm (2005), Blood and Chocolate (2007), and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009). Here are a