Spec Market Roundup: June 2009 Courtesy of Jason Scoggins at the blog “Life on the Bubble,” the June 2009 spec market roundup: June was yet another tough month for the spec script market. There was a small uptick compared to May in the number of scripts on the market as sellers rushed to beat the
“The Beatles: Rock Band’s brilliant mini-movie” Per The Writer’s Almanac today: It was on this day in 1957 that John Lennon and Paul McCartney met at a church dance in Liverpool, England. John Lennon was almost 17, and Paul McCartney had just turned 15. Lennon had formed a band called the Quarrymen. They were all
On writing “When people say, ‘Oh, I just love writing!’ I know they’re full of crap. They’re probably lousy writers who are regurgitating their daily thoughts in a journal. Actual writing is hard work. Even when you have the flow and it’s going well, it’s still incredibly taxing.
More open forum responses Here are three questions and responses from the recent open forum: Mike asked: “On the subject of specs — — if a writer/director writes an original screenplay (not an adaptation, assignment, etc), then sells it with himself attached to direct, is that considered a spec sale?” If a writer-director writes
Video interview: Richard Price Another in the wonderful Authors@Google series. This one with author-screenwriter Richard Price. His film credits include The Color of Money, Sea of Love, Clockers, Ransom, and Freedomland. This is nearly 45 minutes worth of wisdom from one of the best writers of our time. Enjoy. Comment Archive
Interview: Mark Boal (The Hurt Locker) WGA.org hosts an interview this week with journalist-screenwriter Mark Boal. Boal, who wrote the article that was the basis for the movie In the Valley of Elah, wrote the screenplay for the new movie The Hurt Locker. Some excerpts from the interview: Does your journalism background affect the
Daily dialogue — July 4, 2009 “It seems it always happens. Whenever we get too high-hat and too sophisticated for flag-waving, some thug nation decides we’re a push-over all ready to be blackjacked. And it isn’t long before we’re looking up, mighty anxiously, to be sure the flag’s still
Q: “Future of the spec script market?” From a recent Open Forum post, Luzid offers up the first question: Okay, here’s a biggie — what do you think the future of the spec market is, given the dispiriting reports from Life on the Bubble? I think it will be the same as it has been since spec
Great Scene — “The Sixth Sense” As we’ve paid attention to The Sixth Sense the last few days — Daily Dialogue and this post — a great scene in the movie sprang to mind: The shooting of Malcolm Crowe. INT. BEDROOM — NIGHT TWO GIGGLING SHADOWS APPEAR IN THE BEDROOM DOORWAY. They try to turn on the light.
Daily dialogue — July 3, 2009 “I should’ve killed myself when he put it in me. After the first time, before we were married, Ralph promised never again. He promised, and I believed him. But sin never dies. Sin never dies. At first, it was all right. We lived sinlessly. We slept in the same
Moneyball saga: Cont’d “I’ve wanted to work with Steven forever, because he’s simply a great filmmaker,” Pascal told me today. “But the draft he turned in wasn’t at all what we’d signed up for. He wanted to make a dramatic reenactment of events with real people playing themselves. I’
American Beauty and The Sixth Sense: Good ‘poetic’ writing In my current online screenwriting class, we have a thread going about poetic or ‘imagematic’ writing, as reflected in scene description — tight, lean, vivid — and the use of objects as metaphors that convey deeper levels of meaning. One student asked for my opinion about two scripts she liked particularly well
Daily dialogue — July 2, 2009 “I see dead people.” — Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment), The Sixth Sense (1999), written by M. Night Shyamalan
“Every character has a right to their own world view” A question arose in the advanced screenwriting class I’m teaching about how to handle characters who aren’t likable. My response: Every character, no matter how far afield we may think of them morally or whatever, has a right to their own world view. Look at Hannibal Lecter (The
Spec script sale: “Get a Job” CBS Films picks up comedy spec “Get a Job” from writers Kyle Pennekamp and Scott Turpel: Story centers on a college graduate and his friends who are compelled to lower life expectations when they leave campus for the real world. Reality Bites meets Stripes? The writers are repped by CAA.
“Prepare for the Guillermo del Toro decade: ‘The Hobbit’ director is just getting started” Geoff Boucher has a great blog at the LA Times called Hero Complex, focusing on “genre films, graphic novels, and science fiction.” Today he provides a short version of an interview he had with filmmaker Guillermo del Toro. We already noted here how busy del Toro looks to be through
Friday Wednesday movie reviews Because these movies debut today, here’s the Friday Movie Reviews — on Wednesday. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (20th Century Fox) Daily Variety (Joe Leydon) Hollywood Reporter (Michael Rechtshaffen) New York Times (A.O. Scott) Public Enemies (Universal) Daily Variety (Todd McCarthy) Hollywood Reporter (Kirk Honeycutt) Los Angeles Times
Screenwriting 101 — Angelo Pizzo “A few ideas important to me. Before writing Fade In: A. I should be able to verbally tell the story I’m about to write in two-minute, five-minute, ten-minute versions. My primary goal is to get an audience swept along in the story. I read the listeners’
“Michael Bay Finally Made An Art Movie” And here I thought my son Luke (almost 9 years old) had the best film review of Transformers: Rise of the Fallen when he responded to my inquiry about what the movie was about with the succinct reply,”Blowing stuff up”. But despite my nepotistic instincts, I am forced to
Want and Need In the Advanced Screenwriting class I’m currently teaching, the first lecture introduced students to my own version of a screenplay paradigm: Narrative Throughline. Here is a follow-up post about another aspect in this concept: There is another layer to the Narrative Throughline paradigm that can be helpful for
Pitch sale: “Untitled Richard Wenk” Overture Films buys untitled heist pitch from writer Richard Wenk: Richard Wenk has sold a twist-laden untitled heist pitch to Overture Films. State Street Pictures, the shingle run by director-producer George Tillman Jr. (“Notorious”), brought the pitch to Overture, where it has a production deal. Tillman and Robert
Hollywood tales “Writers rarely received long contracts to begin with, their talent being seen as more provisional, not groomable, like actors. While sound [in 1927] drove the studios to scour New York for anybody capable of writing words in quotation marks and hundreds more writers — playwrights, novelists, short story writers — quested westward,
Movie review: “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” Of all the reviews of the movie Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen — from the Daily Variety (“with machines that are impressively more lifelike, and characters that are more and more like machines”) to USA Today (“Bigger, louder, longer and more metallic is definitely not better”) to the THC’s “Risky
Narrative Throughline and genres Over the weekend, one of the students in the Advanced Screenwriting course I’m currently teaching online asked this: I’d love at some point to get your thoughts about how your throughline plays out in different genres. Do you agree with the notion claimed by some gurus that different
“Cates, Murney form Ten/Four Pics” Two weeks ago, there was this news re lower budgeted movies: Amid the rubble of the contracting indie film sector, DF Indie Studios is raising its banner with plans to finance and distribute 10–12 films a year, each budgeted at as much as $10 million. The new outfit also
