Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 250th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

New York Film Festival Loads 2016 Main Slate With Festival-Circuit Favorites.

Why Are So Many Modern Movie Villains So Bad And Boring?

Why has this summer blockbuster season been so bad?

Why Hollywood hasn’t learned anything from a miserable summer of box-office bombs.

‘Suicide Squad’: How the Latest Bad Blockbuster Points to a Larger Problem With This Movie Season.

It’s All Too Much: ‘Suicide Squad’ and the Way DC Movies Connect Together.

Marvel and DC Comics have enough superheroes for 3,400 years of movies.

‘Charlie’s Angels’ AGAIN: How Reboots of Reboots Became the New Normal.

All-Female ‘Ocean’s Eleven’ Spinoff Looking to Avoid ‘Ghostbusters’-Type Backlash.

Arrival and the Non-Killing Types of Alien Movies.

China, Hollywood, and the Global Future of Film Production.

Why China Will Soon Be Hollywood’s Largest Market.

The Furiosa Test: The New, Gritty Face of Feminism in Film.

Hollywood’s 4 New Gender-Bending Reboots.

Here’s How Much More Films About Nonwhite People Make Versus Films About White People.

Diversity In Hollywood And Why Fans Get It Wrong.

Actresses Over 60 Are the New Box-Office Powerhouses.

Meryl Streep-Funded The Writers Lab Announces 12 Female Screenwriters For Second Annual Workshop.

Ava Duvernay Will Be First African American Woman to Helm $100 Million Film.

Luc Besson Found Guilty of Plagiarizing ‘Lockout’ From John Carpenter’s ‘Escape From New York’.

22 Book-to-Film Adaptations Still to Come in 2016.

CAA Tell-All Book Hits Hollywood: A Q&A With Author James Andrew Miller.

‘Powerhouse’: Counting Who is Quoted Most in the CAA Story.

Why The VHS Tape Changed Films.

The 8 Worst Movie Extras of All Time.

Hollywood Has Ruined Method Acting.

Hollywood’s Stock Crash One Year Later: A Long Climb Back Amid Cord-Cutting.

‘Out of Africa’ Producer Demands Millions From Universal Over 30-Year-Old Film.

Current Black List Screenwriter Opportunities: August 2016.

The Cat Saved Me: How Nine Lives the Movie Saved My Life.

Book Adaptations And The Fidelity Argument.

TV Titans Roundtable: 5 Chiefs Spar Over the Future (and Netflix’s Role as Arch-Frenemy).

TV’s Serial-Drama Slump: In Golden Age of Television, why is it so hard to get one right in 2016.

MTV Classic Is Bringing Back Daria, Beavis and Butt-Head, and More ’90s Gems.

FX Chief John Landgraf Says ‘Peak TV’ Oversupply Will Deflate by 2019.

David E. Kelley on Why He’s Done With Broadcast TV, “Concern” About Amazon Accessibility.

Decoding Amazon’s Baffling TV Strategy.

Time Warner Just Made Hulu the Skinny Bundle to Beat.

Hulu to End Free TV Service.

$6 Billion Reasons Netflix Can’t Afford to See Subscriber Growth Stall.

How Streaming TV Services Can Stand Out as the Format Explodes.

How European Networks Are Trying to Fight Off Streaming Rivals.

NextVR Raises $80 Million to Stream Live Virtual Reality Worldwide.

VRLA: How Can Virtual Reality Content Creators Make Money?

Apple Said to Plan First Pro Laptop Overhaul in Four Years.

Google and Facebook Killed Free Media.

An Encyclopedia of Every Literary Plot, Ever.

Major Record Labels Relocating to New L.A. Territory.

Chuck Wendig: 25 Reasons Why I Stopped Reading Your Book.

Listen: 3rd & Fairfax / WGA (Episode 29).

Listen: Broken Projector (Vomit Draft 20).

Listen: Chicks Who Script (Episode 89).

Listen: Indiewire (Episode 109).

Listen: Scriptnotes (Episode 262).

Listen: The Nerdist (Episode 283).

Listen: TheProcess.Ink (Episode 1).

Watch: Bruce Lee’s only surviving TV interview (1971).

Watch: The Rise (and Fall) of Hollywood.

Watch: What Makes a Movie Scary.

Watch: A History of Horror.

Watch: Feeling Lucky: The Greatest Monologues Written by John Milius.

Watch: Japanese Documentary on Young Steven Spielberg.

Watch: Movie Violence Done Right (Shane Black).

Watch: Studio Ghibli: The Techniques & Unimaginable Work That Goes Into Each Animation Revealed.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

How you approach screenwriting style is a reflection of your writing voice. This is the case whether you are intentional about it or not. A professional script reader, who plows through hundreds of scripts per year, will pick up on a script’s sense of style — or lack thereof — from the very first line of scene description. Therefore it stands to reason you need to think about your writing voice as conveyed in your script’s style. And that is what Core IV: Style is all about, exploring the breadth and depth of the 4th essential screenwriting principle I teach in the Core content of The Quest:

Style = Voice

Start with this question: Who tells your story? Obviously, when you sit down to create a screenplay, you write the story. But when a manager, producer, agent, or studio executive reads your script, who tells your story to them?

It is someone who remains largely invisible, but whose presence is felt from FADE IN to FADE OUT. Someone about whom many screenwriters have little knowledge and yet traffic in that unseen world every time they write a scene. Someone who can make a screenplay a great read — or something less.

Let’s call it Narrative Voice.

Narrative Voice is not a narrator per se. You will never see it with its own side of dialogue. In fact, you will never name it in your screenplay. But Narrative Voice is there. And it is a critical aspect of your script’s success.

What is Narrative Voice?

Narrative Voice is the storytelling sensibility you bring to your screenplay through your writing style. Think of Narrative Voice as your script’s invisible character. Although silent, it is present in every scene, every line, every word you write. As you develop and sharpen each visible character in your screenplay, you also need to figure out who your Narrative Voice is, what your Narrative Voice sounds like, and how your Narrative Voice will play an active role in the telling of your story.

In Core IV: Style, a 1-week online class I will teach starting on Monday, August 22, you will learn about:

* The ins and outs of Narrative Voice

* Elements of screenplay style

* Psychological writing (Perspective, Proximity, Perception)

* Imagematic writing (Verbs, Descriptors, Poetics)

* Action writing (Lines, Paragraphs, Direction)

And much more. The course consists of four components:

• Lectures: There are six lectures written by me, each posting Monday through Saturday.
• Writing Exercises: These optional exercises offer you the opportunity to test out your own writing style, plus the chance to workshop and receive feedback on one of your own loglines.
• Teleconference: We will have a Skype teleconference call to discuss course material.
• Forums: The online course site has forums where you may post questions / comments.

Our study scripts: Wall-E, The Hangover, The Dark Knight, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Last Boy Scout, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Chinatown, The Matrix, Black Swan, Legally Blonde, American Beauty, Little Miss Sunshine, Basic Instinct, Unforgiven, True Grit, The King’s Speech, and Winter’s Bone.

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.

Core IV: Style is one of eight classes in the Core curriculum. Here is the schedule for the remaining five classes, the only time I will be offering these courses in 2016:

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.

Choose one or two depending upon your interests and needs. Or if you’re really serious and want to save some coin (nearly 50% off), consider The Core Package which gives you immediate access to the content for all eight Core classes which you can go through at your own pace, as well as the option of taking each 1-week online course.

“When I found out about Scott Myers’ Screenwriting Master Class, I signed up for the first module, to test the waters, but before the week was out, I’d signed up for the rest [The Core Package]. Wish I’d known about it all those years ago! Value for money, solid understandable notes, a teacher who’s been there and done it, plus swapping ideas with fellow writers — it doesn’t get any more real.” — Philip Brewster

I have gotten to know dozens of professional script readers throughout the years and I can let you in on this little secret: A writer’s voice as exhibited in screenplay style goes a long way toward winning them over and getting you favorable script coverage.

For information on Core IV: Style, which begins August 22, go here.

For The Core Package, go here.

I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!