Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 180th installment of Saturday Hot Links.
Today: The Major League Baseball Season Is About To Begin Edition!
Agency Shakeup: Mass Defection to UTA Is a Major Blow to CAA’s Dominance.
CAA Sues UTA and Two Agents for a “Lawless Midnight Raid”.
Related: CAA vs. UTA, Corporate Raiding and the Ghost of Ed Limato (Analysis).
Critics’ Picks: Nine Baseball Films to Kick Off the Season.
The 10 Indie Films You Must See This April.
This App Lets You Send Messages Many Years in the Future.
Mad Men Is Back — And With it, the End of Great TV Dramas.
Related: TV writers (and writers of TV) predict the end of ‘Mad Men’.
Reckoning by Lisa Mecham.
RIP: Scripped.com.
One of the Last 3 Remaining Howard Johnson’s Restaurants Closes.
The 20 Things You Should Never Do In A Pitch Meeting.
Half a million people are playing a game on Reddit called the button.
Trevor Noah to Replace Jon Stewart on ‘The Daily Show’.
Related: Patton Oswalt Defends Trevor Noah With 53 Tweets.
Related: A Writer From The Onion Totally Destroys Patton Oswalt in This Epic Twitter Rant.
The 7 Dirty Secrets of Film Financing.
Woman Killed In Front Of Her Son After Laughing At Stranger, Cop Says.
The Essentials: The 15 Greatest Ingmar Bergman Films.
Walking backwards boosts creativity.
What The Success of ‘It Follows’ Means for Indie Film Distribution.
It Takes How Much Water to Grow an Almond?!
‘American Sniper,’ ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ Drive First Quarter Box Office Up 3%.
Airbnb has expanded to Cuba.
We Need More Badass Women: TV Bosses Tell Us Why The Bechdel Test Isn’t Enough.
France Bans Fashion Models Who Are Too Thin.
Writers Guild Takes On Universal Over ‘Jurassic World’ Credits.
Is the internet killing middle class jobs?
Is The Big Lebowski a Film Noir [video].
Dog somehow survives after being hit by car and getting stuck in the bumper for 248 miles.
Discovery Nabs Record Ratings at Top of 2015 as Other Cable Giants Falter.
Related: Discovery CEO David Zaslav’s Pay Soars to $156 Million in 2014.
Related: Hollywood Executive Pay 2014.
15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Tabasco Sauce.
How to Sell a TV Show to Netflix.
Google Maps now lets you turn any location into a game of Pac-Man.
11 Best Mockumentaries.
9 Things Lawyers Look for When Picking a Jury.
15 Commercials Directed By David Lynch.
16 Famous Authors’ Tips for Writing Better Poetry.
Lionsgate Introduces Distribution Unit To Target Next-Gen Audiences.
Hear David Duchovny’s Moody Alt-Rock From Debut Album.
Billy Eichner and Dave Letterman Yell at New Yorkers About The Late Show [video].
What if you could tell the government exactly how to spend your tax dollars?
50 Essential African-American Independent Films.
What Happened When I Posed As a Man on Twitter.
Fred Armisen to Host First-Ever Peabody Awards Evening Gala.
8 Books You Need to Read This April.
When Will the New Comedy Boom Start Affecting Movies?
Related: The Unexpected Resurgence of the Comedy Duo.
Lesbians earn a third more than straight women.
Artist paints Star Wars characters using nothing but coffee.
Why Does It Feel So Cold When You Step Out of the Shower?
Chris Rock Is Taking a Selfie Every Time He Gets Pulled Over by the Police.
Overwhelmed? Overworked? The cure for work overload.
The Moment [podcast]: Eric Bogosian.
Scriptnotes: Episode 190.
Balls of Steel: 11 Ways to Avoid Disaster When Choosing a Writing Partner.
The Most Secretive Book in History.
Two Sites That Make Finding Streaming Movies A Lot Easier.
Meet the two women using rap to fight rape culture in India.
How ‘The Fast and the Furious’ Took Over the World.
9 Secrets About Disneyland’s Pirates of the Caribbean Ride.
12 Unaired Pilots of Popular TV Shows.
Vote on a Message to Send to Space About What Earthlings Think of the World.
Why Hollywood Is Obsessed With Shared Universes, And Why Many Are Doomed To Fail.
Coffee counteracts liver cancer risks from drinking alcohol, study finds.
How we turned Mount Everest into a dump.
Academy Buys ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ Shuttle for $344,000.
Ben Gibbard Picks the Best Death Cab for Cutie Songs.
What’s Behind a Europe Plan That Would “Destroy” Independent Film.
Quiz: Are you a replicant?
The 12 Best Car Stunts In Cinema History.
Why Does Bacon Smell So Good?
21 Insane Scientology Stories That Going Clear Left Out
Related: Scientology’s Hollywood Real Estate Empire.
30 Facts About Chocolate.
What Screenwriters Need to Know About Submission Releases.
The Science Of Why We Fidget While We Work.
Leonardo DiCaprio Builds an Eco-Resort.
6 Embarrassing Grammar Mistakes You Simply Don’t Want to Make.
Cable Chaos: Companies Grow Desperate as Over-the-Top Crisis Strikes.
Relate: How to Cut the Cable TV Cord in 3 Easy Steps.
Ollie the Baby Otter Robot.
5 Reasons Why Letting the Public Fund Movies May Be Bad for Hollywood.
And finally: Christian minister claims her gift of prophecy allows her to predict movie plots.
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: Let’s face it: Rewriting is a bitch. Or a bastard. Pick your gender specific invective. Doesn’t matter. The process is a pain no matter how you shake your fist and swear at it.
One big issue I’ve found with writers caught up in the maelstrom of rewriting is that there is no one surefire path to success. This stands to reason. Stories are organic and so a certain amount of rewriting them involves wallowing in the wilderness. That’s just the nature of things.
However I have an approach which I honestly believe can move your process forward in a big way. It’s one I use in the Pages II: Rewriting Your Script workshop, a 10-week class that guides you through a rewrite.
In this workshop, you will not only drill down into your story and understand it more clearly, if you do the work, you will get from FADE IN to FADE OUT on your next draft, and move you script toward the point you can bring it to market.
I’ll talk more about the workshop in a post on Monday, but let me just say this now: I only offer this class once every year. Why? Because of the amount of time involved. I work hard teaching all of my courses, but rewriting is a particular kind of time-suck. Critiquing each writer’s beginning drafts. Providing feedback on each of their re-write assignments. Reading script pages. And all the way along guiding each writer through the rewrite process. It’s a lot of work!
But you know what? There is a unique kind of satisfaction that comes from seeing a story achieve more of its potential in the rewrite process. Oftentimes it’s about the writer discovering the real story they were trying to tell. The individual and collective experience of a rewrite workshop is both rewarding and energizing.
Let me add this: I do not subscribe to the belief there is one approach to writing… or rewriting. Every writer is different. Every story is different. But I do know this: The process I use in Pages II has helped many, many writers solve major story issues, discover important story keys, and enable them to take their script to the next level.
If you have a script that is a complete draft, but you know needs work…
Or a partially completed draft where you got stuck and couldn’t find your way out…
Or a story you’ve rewritten multiple times, yet feel it just doesn’t work…
I encourage you to consider joining me in my upcoming Rewriting Your Script workshop which begins Monday, April 13.
For more information, go here.