Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 186th installment of Saturday Hot Links.
Cannes Says “Non” to TV Series Craze.
Cannes 2015: The Coen Brothers Don’t Watch TV.
Cannes 2015: The 10 Movies Indiewire is Most Excited to See.
Cannes 2015: Netflix’s Ted Sarandos on Upending the Movie Business.
Cannes 2015: Salma Hayek Drops Truth Bombs About Hollywood’s Gender Problem.
Must Read: The Marvel-Industrial Complex.
Looking at Female Superheroes with Ten-Year-Old Boys.
Schedule Spitball: Predicting the Networks’ Fall Lineups.
The State of Network Television: 10 Trends That Will Guide the 2015–16 Season.
TV Upfronts: 5 Burning Questions for Broadcast’s Big Week and Where Each Network Stands.
TV Upfronts: Studio Scorecard.
Sony Hack Aftermath: How Hollywood is Getting Tough on Cybersecurity.
Amazon Said to Drop Viacom Shows as Reality Fatigue Hits Online.
‘Sherlock,’ ‘True Detective’ Among BAFTA TV Award Winners.
A.C.L.U., Citing Bias Against Women, Wants Inquiry Into Hollywood’s Hiring.
‘Simpsons’ Showrunner on Harry Shearer: “We’re Not Forcing Him Out”.
How Hollywood stays white and male.
Why We Desperately Need More Girls On Screen for Both Our Sons and Daughters.
‘The Incredibles 2′ Will Be Brad Bird’s Next Film.
Warner Bros. Animation to Release New Looney Tunes Feature.
23 Top Showrunners on How They’d End ‘Mad Men’.
Amazon Studios Greenlights 6 Pilots in Next Wave of Kids’ Programming.
What TV Agents Say vs. What They Really Mean: A Television Writer Breaks It Down.
Top 10 Most Memorable Mother-Daughter Quotes on Screen.
The raucous feminist humor of “Inside Amy Schumer”.
Fall TV and Feminism: A First Look at the Upfronts.
10 Reasons Why Charlize Theron in ‘Mad Max: Fury Road’ Is the Badass Successor to ‘Alien’’s Ripley.
Australian Government Plans to Tax Digital Downloads, Media Dubs It the “Netflix Tax”.
China’s Real Estate Developers Roll Dice on Film Studios.
How ‘House of Cards’ Creator Aided Man’s 36,000-Mile ‘Walk Around the World’.
What modern action films could learn from the original Mad Max.
Incredibly Peeved Men’s Rights Activists Call for Boycott of Mad Max.
6 Reasons Modern Movie CGI Looks Surprisingly Crappy.
Filmmakers Will Have to Adopt New Ways of Storytelling to Make Virtual-Reality Movies.
Shashi Kapoor, First Indian Hollywood Crossover Star, Gets Highest Film Honor.
7 Roger Corman Films All Cinephiles Need to Watch Now.
A New Film Studio Grows in Uganda — Wakaliwood.
‘Jurassic World’ Teams With Barbasol Shaving Cream.
MLB Brings Baseball Stories to Snapchat.
David Lynch: ‘Twin Peaks’ Showtime Revival “Happening Again”.
1977 Audience Reaction During A Screening Of ‘Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” [audio].
17-Minute Documentary About The Biggs Darklighter Deleted Scenes In ‘Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope’ [video].
Here Are All the Cannes Trailers Available So Far [videos].
Beautiful 7-Minute Tribute To The Films Of Audrey Hepburn [video].
The Five Stages of Watching a Marvel Movie [video].
Hollywood ignores red states. It doesn’t seem to matter.
Scriptnotes: Episode 197.
Chicks Who Script: Episode 40.
Doug Richardson: Read me and weep.
All of Brian Koppelman’s six second screenwriting lessons in one spot.
Nantucket Film Festival to Honor ‘Chinatown’ Screenwriter Robert Towne.
Vulture screenwriter roundtable with David Goyer, Michael Showalter, and Michael Weber on May 30.
Finally excellent in-depth interview with Black List founder Franklin Leonard.
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week: I have brand new class debuting on May 25. It’s called Scene Description Spotlight which sounds super practical. And in a way, it is because at one level, it’s an immersion into the nuts and bolts of the writing craft. However what it’s really about is this: Exploring and expressing your voice as a writer.
You hear this over and over and over again in Hollywood development circles. Agents, managers, producers, execs, talent. All looking for writers with distinctive voices.
If you think voice means character dialogue… think again. Voice also involves scene description. You know, that boring stuff you write to set up and play out a scene.
Over the years, professional screenwriters have learned to use scene description as a way to create strong visuals… convey mood… entertain the reader… and express their voice.
In my 1-week Scene Description Spotlight, you will learn about:
* How Genre + Style = Narrative Voice
* Memorable ways to introduce characters
* The crucial importance of ‘editorializing’
* Using tempo and pace to make scenes spark to life
* The freedom screenwriters have to break grammatical rules
* Directing action through line management
And much, much more!
The class includes dozens of examples from notable movie scripts as well as some of the most recent selling spec scripts to give you a clear sense of how to use scene description to give expression to your voice and make your script worthy of one of Hollywood’s highest compliments: It is a good read.
I’m really excited about this class and you should be, too. Take something as seemingly simple and mundane as scene description… and use it to show off your voice.
To learn more and enroll, go here.
As always, I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!