Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 144th installment of Saturday Hot Links!
Today: The Celebrities On Helium Edition!
Comic-Con 2014: THR’s full guide to parties in San Diego.
Related: Comic sales rise in paper and pixels.
Related: Toronto Film Festival and Telluride Film Festival appear to be at war.
2014 Venice Film Festival lineup announced.
Nikki Finke: Inside the Sony shakeups [Part 1].
Some oddly specific niche blogs.
12 essential martial arts movies.
15 Twitter accounts for history buffs.
Boyhood coming to Criterion Collection with special features.
Related: Why Richard Linklater makes movies.
10 concentration apps that will help you get down to business.
5 reasons Sex Tape came up flaccid at the box office.
10 body parts you could do without.
20 survival films that will take you into the abyss.
Casey Kasem’s body missing from funeral home.
Filmmaker Magazine names 2014’s ’25 New Faces of Independent Film’.
X-rays of toys and their complex interiors.
FXX passes on Charlie Kaufman TV pilot “How and Why”.
Related: Is Charlie Kaufman too smart for TV?
“Simpsons World” announced: Critics lose their minds.
Ohio veteran fights to keep his therapy ducks.
Netflix crosses 50M subscribers.
McDonalds and Taco Bell apologize for selling expired, garbage meat.
Highest paid actor in Hollywood? Robert Downey Jr.
Can an excess of exercise actually lead to heart disease.
Is Matthew McConaughey circling a Black List script for his next project?
5 previous attempts to split up California.
How going Hollywood paid off for Wired magazine.
Chubby Checker settles penis size app lawsuit.
Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert battle over who is the biggest Star Wars fan.
14 rare and unreleased Weird Al parodies you may not have heard.
Why UPS trucks don’t turn left.
Writer-director Scott Derrickson (Deliver Us From Evil) on how to make a studio horror movie.
10 children’s book series that deserve adaptations.
15 Nirvana covers you may not have heard.
A new screenwriting and movie podcast series: Chicks Who Script.
Did you know there are over 13,000 concert videos in YouTube’s vault.
7 animals that eat one food almost exclusively.
Why does garlic make your breath smell so bad.
John Fasano, whose screenwriting credits include Another 48 Hrs., Tombstone, Alien 3, dead at 52.
Book Deals: Week of July 21, 2014.
Screenwriter Bob Saenz blogs about radical rewrites.
The power of positive science fiction [audio].
Are you ready for a 1/6th scale Marty McFly action figure?
Not wanting ‘trust fund kids,’ Philip Seymour Hoffman left his entire estate to their mother.
Top 10 stunts of all time [video].
14 hidden things to look for at Disneyland.
Why are some people more prone to mosquito bites.
Jon Stewart launches $10B Kickstarter campaign to buy CNN… sorta.
A brief history of the roller coaster.
22 all-time great directors and their final films.
If you get hit by an ambulance, do they have to pick you up.
13 stereotypes of the British film industry.
How Mao Tse Tung accidentally turned mangoes into divine objects in China’s cultural revolution.
How Marvel became the envy (and scourge) of Hollywood.
A middle school heavy metal band lands a $1.8M record deal.
5 man-made things you can see from space.
Galaxy Quest: The Oral History.
Beatles member George Harrison’s memorial tree killed by… beetles.
9 Kickstarter films from 2014 that deserve your attention
So these two folks went whale-watching in their kayak and… [video].
Tina Fey and Rachel Dratch 1999 two-woman show [video].
Six female characters you really should stop writing.
Headphones are shortening your career.
Watch 4-minute supercut of computer hacking in 8os movies [video].
Thomas the Tank Engine voice actor quits over salary dispute.
See the evolution of Superman’s costume in film and TV.
How to name your sequel: Not just Roman numerals anymore.
Amazon to spend $103M on original series in Q3.
The story of a story [video].
New book you might want to check out: “Rantings and Ravings of a Screenplay Reader” by Howard Casner.
THR Q&A with 22 top TV network executives.
Finally an appreciation for actor James Garner who died this week at the age of 86.
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: Frequently people email me asking if there is a way they can support Go Into The Story. They suggest I put a tip jar for contributions or some such thing. I would never do that just like I don’t believe in having ads on the site. It’s important to me that everything at GITS is free with no strings attached. The result is in all the time I’ve hosted the site, I’ve never made a dime directly from it.
Recently I got an email from a writer who took one of my Screenwriting Master Class courses. She wrote that although she was tentative about enrolling in an online class, something she’d never done before, she was interested in the content, liked my approach to screenwriting as conveyed on the blog, and that she felt by taking the class, she would be supporting Go Into The Story.
You know what? She’s right. I have several ‘revenue streams’ and SMC is one of them. All of them combined enable me to put the time and energy I do into GITS.
So if you’ve hesitated to take an SMC course before, the fact is by taking a class, you are in effect supporting the blog. Beyond that, I’m sure you will enjoy and benefit from the experience.
In that spirit, here are some of my upcoming classes:
July 21 — Core II: Concept (Scott Myers)
August 4 — Core III: Character (Scott Myers)
August 18 — Prep: From Concept to Outline (Scott Myers)
September 1 — Core IV: Style (Scott Myers)
September 8 — Pages I: The First Draft (Scott Myers)
September 15 — Core V: Dialogue (Scott Myers)
October 27 — Core VI: Scene (Scott Myers)
November 10 — Core VII: Theme (Scott Myers)
December 2 — Core VIII: Time (Scott Myers)
Want to support Go Into The Story? Why not take a Screenwriting Master Class course. You’ll learn a lot, make progress as a writer, and help to keep GITS going strong.
As always, I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!