Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 105th installment of Saturday Hot Links!
Today: The Smells Like Teen Spirit Edition.
Note: Nirvana’s first hit song “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was released 22 years ago this week.
Every single Indiewire movie review from the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival.
8 femme-centric movies from TIFF.
More TIFF: Blogger’s 911 call creates a ignites debate about cellphone use while screening movies. What’s the debate. Don’t do it!
FIFA is moving the 2022 World Cup to winter? Not so fast!
Dude has 300,000 Star Wars collectibles in his possession… makes Guinness Book of World Records.
The Secret World of Sleep: 4 Weird Things About Catching Zs.
Woody Allen to receive Golden Globes’ Cecil B. DeMille Award.
Why is Friday the 13th an unlucky day.
Kickstarter Project of the Week: “Tiger Within,” written by Gina Wendkoss who wrote The Princess Diaries.
“I’ve been playing the same game of Civilization II for nearly 10 years…”
Kudos to screenwriter John August whose 15 year dream to bring “Big Fish” to Broadway has come true.
More John August and “Big Fish.”
9 epic literary burns.
13 peculiar facts about the world’s taste in summer movies.
Could lobsters help us live forever.
If we live forever, good thing TV networks have decided to target ‘alpha boomers.’
10 songs Bill Nye made educational.
Watch out! Here come new cable channels.
That whole Up movie flying over the ocean with a bunch of helium balloon thing? Can’t happen.
You knew you wanted it. It’s the Benedict Cumberbatch name generator!
Ray Dolby, sound technology inventor, dead this week.
11 famous mermaids and their creators.
Disney’s proposed approach to Star Wars movies? I got a bad feeling about this.
No, seriously. I’ve got a bad feeling about this.
I mean a really bad feeling.
More Disney: CFO says Lone Ranger flop means non-franchise movies need to cost less.
Elvis has left the building… and Voyager 1 has left the solar system.
Ben Affleck’s “Batman” will be… “tired and weary.”
30 astonishing Batman movie facts… see if you can find “tired and weary” among them.
How spin class gurus hypnotized Hollywood.
More Hollywood inanity: They’re naming their kids Tesla. You know… for the electric car.
Even more Hollywood trends: Treadmill desks.
Want to see the most “spiritually literate films” from 1997 to 2012. Go here.
In that vein, reflections on Flannery O’ Connor’s prayers.
J.K. Rowling is bringing back Harry Potter… without Harry Potter.
Maybe it’s just because J.K. has always had a secret ambition to be a screenwriter.
Meet the ugliest animal in the world.
More animal news: Is panda poop the missing link for cheap, renewable energy.
Yet more animals: 11 things we know about the dodo bird.
10 cheap tools every filmmaker needs.
The strange symbolism of the $1 bill.
If had a spare $500K lying around, I’d spend it the exact same way this guy did.
New Netflix competitor: Target.
3 insanely important crops you’ve never heard of.
You can contribute to the effort for Roger Ebert’s home town to erect a life-size statue of the film critic.
Chuck Wendig: 25 steps to edit the unmerciful suck out of your story.
How audiences are ruining the quiet horror movie experience.
What Shakespeare plays originally sounded like.
8 movies where humans totally botched meeting aliens.
Where did tennis get is crazy ass scoring system.
James Cameron used sex and sci-fi to get noticed in Hollywood… and no one else has ever done it since!
J.J. Abrams building a post-production facility for Star Wars movies in Santa Monica.
How the owners of all 32 NFL teams made their money. Easy. Got it from daddy.
Salon Pictures announces slate of women directed films.
Testes size correlates to a man’s involvement in toddler care.
Look who almost played Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs.
Why do so many countries end in “-stan”.
11 unsuccessful animated versions of hit TV shows.
If you touch a baby bird, will its mother really abandon it.
5 minor characters who ruined everything for the hero.
How a Van Gogh painting stayed hidden for more than a century.
Sundance Channel to air French zombie series.
Are planets forming without stars.
11 authors who hated the movie versions of their books.
We are very near the end of civilization as we know it.
How to write a screenplay in 24 hours.
5 amazing things people buried in the desert.
Cal Worthington: Car dealer and ad pitchman, dead at 92.
Finally perhaps the single best thing you’ll see online this week: Believe it or not, it’s from Chipotle [video].
Screenwriting Master Class Tip of the Week: I’ve got two online workshops on the calendar this fall, a great opportunity for you to have me accompany you in the story-crafting process:
September 23: Prep: From Concept to Outline
October 7: Pages II: Rewriting Your Script
Why a workshop?
* The structured environment including weekly due dates can motivate and compel you to get the work done.
* Feedback from myself and other writers can provide deep insights and better narrative possibilities for your story.
* You can develop your own critical analytical skills in analyzing other people’s stories.
But perhaps the biggest plus: Both the Prep and Pages II workshops give you an approach to these crucial parts of the writing process. It’s easy to say, “Do more prep-writing” or “Writing is rewriting,” but what does that mean? Prep how? Rewrite what?
The approaches I present in Prep and Pages II are based on years of working in Hollywood, reflecting on the craft, and teaching it to hundreds of writers. I’ve seen countless writers use the structure of Prep and Pages II to wrangle their story and take it to the next level.
Certainly you do not need to take a workshop to prep a story or rewrite a script. You can discover what you need to know about both simply by doing it over and over again until you find an approach that works for you. Or you may discover you don’t need one approach, you work your way into and through the writing process differently for each story.
However if you are stuck, confused, and frustrated by a script project because you feel lost. Or you find you spend an enormous amount of time wandering here and there either in prep or rewrites and want to find a way to focus your process and speed things along, consider either of these workshops.
Go here to learn more about Prep: From Concept to Outline.
G here to learn more about Pages II: Rewriting Your Script.
Onward!