Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 243rd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Tony Awards Winners: Complete List.

Tony Awards: 5 Biggest Snubs and Surprises.

Tony Awards Hit Highest Overnight Rating in 15 Years.

Tonys Actor Roundtable: 7 Broadway Standouts on Diversity and Rude Audiences.

Summer Box-Office Slump: Revenue Down a Steep 22 Percent.

Top 10 Takeaways: Why Horror Sequel ‘The Conjuring 2’ Beat ‘Warcraft’.

Why Hollywood Should Worry About ‘Warcraft’ Despite Chinese Box Office.

Alibaba Pictures Unveils Slate of 17 Movies, 2 TV Shows.

On Live-Action Remakes: Bringing Life To Disney Classics.

From ‘Toy Story’ to ‘Inside Out’: Every Pixar Film Ranked by Box Office.

California Tops List of Film Production Locations for Second Year in Row.

US Film Production Spending Increased 11 Percent to $7 Billion in 2015.

Why Hollywood Doesn’t Tell More Stories for — and About — Girls.

Stacey Snider to Succeed Jim Gianopulos as Top 20th Century Fox Executive.

As Stacey Snider Ascends at Fox, Hollywood Is in Turnaround.

Fox’s Film Studio Politics at Play in Top Executive Shake-up.

Why Can’t People in Hollywood Just Say They’ve Been Fired?!

Superman Is The Most Powerful Superhero According To Actual Scientific Research.

Why R-Rated Comedies Have More Fun and More Highlights From Greenwich’s Comedy of Business Panel.

Save Ferris: A Chicago Guide to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

June 26, 1975 Hollywood Reporter article: “‘Jaws’: How “Massive” Promotion Built a Summer Blockbuster”.

Steven Spielberg on DreamWorks’ Past, Amblin’s Present and His Own Future.

Amy Schumer Doesn’t Care If You Like Her — She’s Changing the Game.

How Andrew Stanton Found the Right Path for ‘Finding Dory’.

Three Screenwriting Lessons that Disney’s Zootopia Can Teach Screenwriters.

The Best Way for a Sequel to Copy the Original.

How a First-Time Filmmaker Sold His Sci-Fi Movie to Paramount Before It Was Finished.

Here’s What Happens When You Win the Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting.

The Outsiders’ Insider: How Franklin Leonard’s Black List is reshaping Hollywood.

How To Shoot a Short in One-Hour and Become a Better Filmmaker While Doing It.

This Is How You Make a Feminist Film About Hollywood.

How This Indie Filmmaker Explored the World of Fan Fiction to Find His Story of an Outsider.

The exhilarating thrill of watching scary movies alone.

Transformers: The Movie and The Great Toy Massacre of 1986.

Now That Virtual Reality Is a Reality, What’s Next for the Tech Format?

Virtual Reality Startup VRse Raises $12.56 Million, Rebrands as ‘Within’.

Lucasfilm Developing ‘Star Wars’ Augmented-Reality Content Under Pact With Magic Leap.

Top Hollywood Accountant Launches Profit Participation Audit Firm.

TV Upfronts: Broadcast Booms With Double-Digit CPM Price Hikes.

10 TV Writers to Watch in 2016.

10 Things We Learned From Variety’s TV Summit.

The 20 Best TV Dramas of the Last 20 Years.

23 Surprises, Oddities, and Oversights in This Year’s Emmys Ballot.

Canceled TV Shows From the 2016–17 Season.

TV Drama Scribes Chat Social Media, Ratings, Peak TV & ‘Supergirl’ at Variety’s Night in the Writers Room.

Limited Series Writers Take Big Risks in Short Runs.

Talking the Modern Romantic Comedy at Variety’s Night in the Writers’ Room.

How Comedy Usurped Drama As the TV Genre of Our Time.

What 137 Culturati Loved in TV Comedy This Year.

Tina Fey, Sam Esmail and 19 More TV Scribes Share Their Secrets to Making a Show “Binge-Worthy”.

Bury Your Gays: TV Writers Tackle Trope, the Lexa Pledge and Offer Advice to Showrunners.

Showrunner Aline Brosh McKenna Brings Logic to ‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’.

New York’s First Impressions of 9 Legendary TV Comedies.

Reality Formats Starring Kids Are Reliable Ratings Winners.

How L.A.’s Silver Lake Became TV’s Most Neurotic Neighborhood.

21 TV Shows Based on Movies, From ‘Teen Wolf’ to ‘Animal Kingdom’.

Turner Launches Online Comedy Network Super Deluxe.

Adult Swim: Out of 47 Shows On their Current Slate, None Have Been Created By Women.

Lena Dunham and the ‘Girls’ Writers Share the Lessons They’ve Learned From the Show.

Can Barry Diller’s Vimeo Take on YouTube and Netflix With New Subscription Model?

Can Netflix Survive in the World It Created?

Meet Netflix’s “Juicers”: People Who Get Paid to Watch TV.

Why Eastern Europe Will Resist Netflix.

Twitter Takes $70 Million Stake in SoundCloud.

Sorry, Facebook, But Video Isn’t Replacing the Written Word Any Time Soon.

Sony Pictures Invests in Interactive Storytelling Platform Interlude.

Virgin to Pick SeriesFest Pilots for In-Flight Airline Channel.

Microsoft to Buy LinkedIn for $26.2 Billion in Cash.

Microsoft wants to monopolize your workplace.

Two unreleased Frank Zappa albums will emerge from the vaults this July.

How to Stop Procrastinating: 5 Foolproof Methods for Writers.

Rainmaker Rewind: A Theory of the Universe of Nonfiction Books (and the Art of Creative Theft).

Peter Bart: A Resurgent MGM Builds Clout For New Film & TV Acquisitions.

BFT: Rachel Prior, producer, Big Talk Pictures.

Broken Projector: Is Hollywood’s ‘Sequel Crisis’ real?

Scriptnotes: Episode 254.

WGA Foundation: Master Class with Courtney A. Kemp (“Power”).

Watch: 24-Minute Christopher Nolan’s ‘Memento’ documentary.

Watch: The Art of Slow Motion in Film.

Watch: The Magic Hour.

Watch: Every Face Tells A Story | The Language of Cinema.

Watch: Early Cinema Censorship: Banned Images from the Silent Movie Era.

Watch: The first episode of “Roadies” for free.

Watch: Martin Scorsese And Robbie Robertson Discuss “The Last Waltz” in 1978.

Watch: Sara Benincasa in “The Focus Group” (some nudity).

Finally Bill Richmond, Jerry Lewis’ Screenwriting Partner on Seven of the Star’s Movies, Dies at 94.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

A screenplay is a unique literary form. It both tells a story and serves as a blueprint to make a movie. As such, understanding structure is a critical component to the craft. Check out the observations of these screenwriting veterans:

“The reality is that the single most important thing contributed by the screenwriter is the story structure.”

— William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President’s Men, The Princess Bride)

“The construction is the most important thing. It’s like building a house–you have to build the outside properly before you put the bits and pieces inside afterward. Get your story, get your architecture right, and you can always add your dialogue afterwards.”

— Charles Bennett (The 39 Steps, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea)

In the Core content of The Quest, we work with eight screenwriting principles, and the very first one is this:

Plot = Structure

On Monday, July 6, I will be starting a new cycle of Core classes, eight of them in all, beginning with Core I: Plot. In this 1-week online course, you will learn the importance of Plot = Structure as well as:

• Key theoretical concepts from Aristotle, Joseph Campbell and Carl Jung
• The reality of Hollywood and the “Whammo” theory
• The External World and Internal World of a screenplay universe
• Metamorphosis: Screenplay structure grounded in character
• Analysis of movies including Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Silence of the Lambs, Shakespeare in Love, The Verdict, The Sixth Sense, Up, and others

And much more.

The course consists of four components:

• Lectures: There are six lectures written by me, each posting Monday through Saturday.
• Logline Workshop: This optional writing exercise offer you the opportunity to workshop one of your own loglines.
• Teleconference: We will have a Skype teleconference call to discuss course material.
• Forums: The online course site has 24/7 forums where you may post questions and we engage in conversation about the craft.

For those of you who have not taken an online class, the interface is extremely easy. Plus online classes can be an amazing experience. Most of the activities you can do on your own time — download and read lectures, review and respond to forum discussions, upload loglines and track comments. In addition, I’ve been teaching online for over a decade and it never ceases to amaze me how much of a community emerges in such an environment.

If you’re new to screenwriting, have intermediate experience, or you’ve read it all, but want to learn the basics of what I teach in The Quest — character based screenwriting — here is your chance to learn the foundation of screenplay structure that goes beyond formula.

I only teach my Core classes once a year and the 2016 cycle begins later this month. Everything you need to know about screenwriting theory in this unique curriculum based on eight principles: Plot, Concept, Character, Style, Dialogue, Scene, Theme, Time.

CORE I: PLOT — A one-week class which begins with the principle Plot = Structure and explores the inner workings of the Screenplay Universe: Plotline and Themeline. Start date: June 27.

CORE II: CONCEPT — A one-week class which begins with the principle Concept = Hook and examines multiple strategies to generate, develop and assess story ideas. Start date: July 11.

CORE III: CHARACTER — A one-week class which begins with the principle Character = Function and delves into archetypes: Protagonist, Nemesis, Attractor, Mentor, and Trickster. Start date: August 8.

CORE IV: STYLE — A one-week class which begins with the principle Style = Voice and surfaces keys to developing a distinctive writer’s personality on the page. Start date: August 22.

CORE V: DIALOGUE — A one-week class which begins with the principle Dialogue = Purpose and probes a variety of ways to write effective, entertaining dialogue. Start date: September 19.

CORE VI: SCENE — A one-week class which begins with the principle Scene = Point and provides six essential questions to ask when crafting and writing any scene. Start date: October 3.

CORE VII: THEME — A one-week class which begins with the principle Theme = Meaning and gives writers a concrete take on theme which can elevate the depth of any story. Start date: November 14.

CORE VIII: TIME — A one-week class which begins with the principle Time = Present and studies Present, Present-Past, Present-Future and time management in writing. Start date: December 12.

These eight Core classes represent decades of my work on the front lines of the entertainment business as a writer and producer, and engaging the craft as a teacher as well, over time pulling together screenwriting theory into a coherent and cohesive approach. This is not about secret systems or magic formulas, rather the Core content presents a way of approaching the story-crafting process, starting with characters, working with characters, and ending with characters. That process of engaging you with your story universe through your characters and getting you in touch with these living, breathing individuals informs every step of your creative process, leading you to story structure, themes, conflict, subplots, and all the rest. As I say, Character Based Screenwriting.

To learn about any of the Core classes, click on the links above. If you want to have immediate access to all of the content, plus automatic enrollment in each of the eight 1-week classes, plus a savings of nearly 50%, check out the Core Package here.

I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!