Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 255th installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Toronto Diary, Day 1: ‘Gimme Danger,’ ‘Dog Eat Dog,’ ‘The Salesman,’ ‘American Honey’ (Plus Bonus ‘Sully’).

Toronto Diary, Day 2: ‘Arrival,’ ‘Nocturnal Animals,’ ‘A Monster Calls,’ ‘Amanda Knox’.

Toronto Diary, Day 3: ‘Mascots,’ ‘Snowden,’ ‘Beauties of the Night,’ ‘Water and Sugar’.

Toronto Diary, Day 4: ‘The Handmaiden,’ ‘Queen of Katwe,’ ‘A United Kingdom,’ ‘(re)ASSIGNMENT,’ ‘Gringo’.

Toronto Diary, Day 5: ‘Blair Witch,’ ‘Loving,’ ‘Jackie,’ ‘The B-Side,’ ‘The War Show’.

Toronto Diary, Day 6: ‘La La Land,’ ‘Una,’ ‘The Bad Batch,’ ‘Into the Inferno’.

Reports of a Weak Market Are Greatly Exagerrated: TIFF Acquisition Market Heats Up as Distributors Claim Hot Titles.

Toronto’s First Weekend: ‘Moonlight’ Leads the Way as TIFF Gets Bold.

Toronto’s Hot New Writer: It’s William Shakespeare.

‘La La Land’ Set to Open Chicago Film Festival.

Summer Blockbuster Battle: How 2016 Stacks Up to Years Past.

The Hidden Cost of Hollywood Franchises: Why mid-tier movies struggle to find place in universe era.

NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke Wants to Bring You More Sequels.

Have Superheroes Killed the Movie Star?

It’s All Connected: The Consequences Of Marvel Studios’ Rebranding.

China: Weekend Box Office.

Canada’s Rising Stars: 15 Newcomers Grabbing Hollywood’s Attention.

Why are films that take us off the grid on the rise?

Older characters ‘underrepresented and ridiculed in Hollywood’.

New Research Shows Hollywood Is Ageist.

When Remakes Can’t Escape the Original.

Lionsgate, Univision Unveil SVOD Movie Service for Hispanic Audience.

Lionsgate and Starz to Spend $1.8 Billion on New Films, TV Shows.

Turner Sets Massive ‘Star Wars’ Movie Rights Deal with Disney.

Why Hollywood Loves Canada: 4 Cities Offering Big Filming Incentives.

Chinese Studio Exec Lays Out Everything Hollywood Does Wrong.

NBCUniversal to Cut 200 DreamWorks Animation Jobs.

American Money: What ‘American Honey’ & ‘Hell or High Water’ Say About Poverty In The U.S..

‘Bad Moms’: Not Just A Female-Led Seth Rogen Movie.

‘Blair Witch’: Shaky Cams That Left Audiences Shaking.

Into the Woods: The Blair Witch Project revisited.

How 1999’s ‘The Blair Witch Project’ Foretold Hollywood’s Shift to Viral Marketing.

Two ‘Space Mountain’ Movies Were Killed By ‘Star Wars’.

‘Jaws’ movie strayed from the book’s plot to add even more suspense.

A Look at ‘Pacific Rim’ Screenwriter Travis Beacham’s Crazy Directorial Debut ‘The Curiosity’.

The Early Screenplays of JJ Abrams.

James Cameron Explains How He Wrote ‘Aliens’ and ‘Rambo: First Blood Part II’ At The Same Time.

John Hughes’ Women: Monsters & Angels.

Ava DuVernay and Queen Sugar Look Like the Future of Television.

Harvey Weinstein and Steven Spielberg Go Head-To-Head With Competing Kidnapping Dramas.

‘Groundhog Day’ Musical Coming to Broadway in 2017.

Art House Theaters Hit By Bankruptcies: “We Need a Serious Game-Changer”.

The 5 Rules for Making an Outstanding Indie Film.

The Black List Opens Database to Student Producers and Directors.

Best Movie Sports Sites You Can Visit.

‘Saturday Night Live’ Adds Three to Cast for Season 42.

TV Goes to Pot: Marijuana-Themed Series Light Up the Small Screen.

A Complete Guide to Fall TV’s Many Reboots.

Fall TV Preview: How Each of the Big 5 Networks Can Win the Season.

New York Comic-Con 2016 TV Schedule: Find Out Which Shows Are Heading to NYCC.

28 TV Network Chiefs on Dream Casting, the Reboot Craze and What Happens Under President Trump.

Creative Arts Emmy Awards: Complete List of Winners.

Jill Soloway Aims to Topple the Showbiz Patriarchy With ‘I Love Dick,’ ‘Transparent’.

‘Westworld’ is the next big thing on TV and you need to watch it.

‘Westworld’: Sympathy for the Robot.

HBO Now Is Coming to Sony PlayStation Consoles.

The Netflix Backlash: Why Hollywood Fears a Content Monopoly.

Twitter’s new, longer tweets are coming September 19th.

How to Use Instagram’s Powerful New Comment Filter Option to Shut Down the Harassment and Negativity.

Man Booker Prize for Fiction Announces Its 2016 Shortlist.

Matthew Weiner’s Debut Novel Is Coming Soon.

Alan Moore on Why Superhero Fans Need to Grow Up, Brexit, and His Massive New Novel.

Ernest Hemingway’s Six-Word Sequels.

This device can read the pages of a book without opening it.

John August: Starting a screenwriting career outside of LA (or New York, or London).

Read: Learning to speak the language of creativity.

Listen: Chicks Who Script (Episode 91).

Listen: Screen Talk (Episode 115).

Listen: Scriptnotes (Episode 267).

Watch: 12 Silent Men.

Watch: ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ crashes without CGI.

Watch: Stanley Kubrick — The Cinematic Experience.

Watch: Landscapes — A 70MM Supercut.

Watch: HBO | The Rise of TV as Film.

Watch: ‘Jaws’: The Differences Between the Book and the Movie.

Watch: False Protagonists.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — ‘American Pastoral’ press conference.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — ‘Arrival’ press conference.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — ‘Lion’ press conference.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — ‘The Magnificent Seven’ press conference.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — ‘The Promise’ press conference.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — ‘Snowden’ press conference.

Watch: ‘A United Kingdom’ — Guardian TIFF Talks.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — Master Class — Ewan McGregor.

Watch: TIFF 2016 — Master Class — Jill Soloway.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

This September, I begin a new chapter in my creative journey as an assistant professor of screenwriter at the DePaul University School of Cinematic Arts. As a result, I will only offer group workshops — Prep: From Concept to Outline, Pages I: Writing the First Draft, and Pages II: Rewriting Your Script — between May and August which means the next sessions I will lead will be in 2017.

However I do have a handful of slots available for private one-on-one workshops including the premiere program I offer: The Quest.

The Quest is an intensive 20-week online screenwriting workshop which consists of three stages:

Core [4 weeks]: Participants learn essential screenwriting principles covering Plot, Concept, Character, Style, Dialogue, Scene, Theme, Time. There are 12 written lectures each week which post daily, then a writing exercise due Sunday to put the theory into practice. I wrote all 48 lectures amounting to over 250 pages of in-depth content and believe it to represent a new, cutting edge way to think about screenwriting.

The approach presented in Core is unique in these respects:

Coherent: Rather than a writer being forced to pick a bit of screenwriting theory from this guru or that, this educational resource or that, the Core content comes from a specific perspective — my own — based on over 25 years experience as a screenwriter and over 10 years as an educator. Every concept presented in Core is tied together by an overall philosophy about screenwriting, writing and creativity.

Comprehensive: The content presented in Core provides writers all the knowledge they need to have to be able to write a professional quality screenplay.

Character-based: Whereas so much of the conversation about screenwriting is focused on structure [and by ‘structure’ most people mean ‘plot’], Core presents an approach that begins and ends with character. In my view, this is not only the best way for a writer to craft unique, compelling, and entertaining multidimensional characters, it’s also the most effective — and frankly logical — way to find your story’s plot.

For 8 weeks in Core, participants in The Quest are immersed in screenwriting theory. At the end of that time, they put their understanding of those essential principles to work writing an original screenplay of their own.

Prep [6 weeks]: Starting with an original concept, participants in The Quest develop it through a series of 6 weekly lectures and writing assignments, each building upon the other until they end up with a thorough outline of their story.

I have been teaching Prep at SMC since we launched in January 2011 and the course has proved to be extremely popular. It picks up on the theory laid out in Core and runs with it in a workshop environment. The six weeks lay out like this:

The first two weeks are about exploration, starting with the Protagonist and a series of key questions to help define some of the narrative’s fundamental elements, then a full week’s worth of brainstorming, three different ways to prompt the writer’s creativity and engage the story.

The next two weeks are about wrangling the narrative, the primary Plotline points that provide the spine of the plot, and the movements of the Themeline, the story’s emotional plot.

The final two weeks are about constructing the structure, scene by scene, sequence by sequence, subplot by subplot until the participant has a detailed outline.

Armed with their outline, the writer can approach the page-writing part of the process with confidence, primed to type FADE IN and go.

Pages [10 weeks]: Using their outline as a guide, participants pound out script pages through a series of 10 weekly lectures and writing assignments. Averaging about 10–15 pages per week, by the end of The Quest the writer has a complete first draft of their original screenplay.

Here, too, the process is founded on the principles presented in Core and put into use in Prep, all reflecting a character-based approach to screenwriting.

As noted, The Quest is a workshop and that means:

* Weekly writing exercises and assignments

* Detailed feedback on all exercises, assignments, and script pages

* Regular teleconferences

The Quest is not for everyone. It involves a big commitment in terms of time and — frankly — money. However the education gives writers a solid foundation in screenwriting theory and practice, all of it grounded in over 30 years experience as a professional writer and teacher. In my humble, it is superior to anything available. Here is one of many testimonials:

If you’re serious about screenwriting, you should already know you have a long journey ahead of you. Any chance you get to cross paths with Scott, whether it’s a one week class or The Quest, is a chance to expedite that journey.

Scott’s instincts as a mentor are spot on. He can tell the difference between when you need encouragement and when you need a good kick in the pants. Under his guidance, you become the kind of writer you want to be, the kind that doesn’t need to wait for inspiration.

The Quest changed my life. It gave me the structure to be immersed in screenwriting and the flexibility needed to write and accommodate work and family life.

The Quest exceeded my expectations. Not only did I come out with a quality screenplay, but a practical approach that I can apply to each script I write.

You can spend your time reading through screenwriting inspiration, tips or shortcuts, thinking it will help more than actually doing the work, or you can take the leap and do The Quest.

— Taylor Gordon

As I say, I have room for a few Questers for the remainder of 2016. I also offer private programs for Prep: From Concept to Outline, Pages I: Writing the First Draft, and Pages II: Rewriting Your Script. If you’re interested, email me: scott at screenwritingmasterclass dot com. More information here.