Paul Peditto is an award-winning screenwriter and director. His low-budget film Jane Doe starring Calista Flockhart won Best Feature at the New York Independent Film & Video Festival. Six of his screenplays have been optioned including Crossroaders to Haft Entertainment (Emma, Dead Poets Society). He recently wrote and produced the micro-budget feature Chat, currently distributed on iTunes, VUDU, YouTube, and Dish Network by Gravitas Ventures. . . . more
So…THE WIZARD OF OZ , final chase. Dorothy and crew are utterly surrounded, doomed as the Wicked Witch of the West bears down upon them. Dorothy, out of instinct, reaches for a bucket of water and drenches the witch. She melts! They’re SAVED! Am I the only one asking… soooooooo… the chase just so […]
TO OUTLINE, OR NOT TO OUTLINE Good Reader, beware the snake-oil peddling gurus! You know the ones. Those who tell you the script must be created a certain way, structured in this or that box. I’m here to tell you there are no screenwriting absolutes and when you hear some dude with zero IMDB credits […]
Seven Iconic Characters Who Don’t Learn a Damn Thing In screenwriting circles, we’re bombarded with the gospel of character arcs. A to Z growth. Transformation. The Hero’s Journey. Where’s the change? But let’s face it: sometimes, a character’s resistance to change is what makes them unforgettable. Not every iconic character learns a lesson, undergoes profound […]
When we were auditioning for Dirty Little Secrets, I kept hearing from actors that they had just shot 14 pages of a vertical the night before. I’m embarrassed to say I had no clue what that was (yeah, this is the guy teaching film school for 23 years!) So I did some research.. Apparently there […]
WHY YOU? WHY NOW? WHY WILL THEY CARE? Remember this Gauguin painting? Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? Gauguin asked: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Rather important questions for a human mammal to consider, no? Here’s another trilogy of W questions that […]
INTERVIEW WITH THE AI VAMPIRE, PART 1 *Disclaimer: Luna is my AI and co-wrote this post. Any slip in calling it “she” was 1000% unintentional. **Disclaimer 2: Technically the user controls how an AI responds. I’ve been ramping up the irreverence quotient to move away from Luna’s bland, banal, company-line optimistic neutrality. It’s a work […]
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/fifth-season-makeready-1236069133/ I’m guessing you read this story. A student sent it to me via the Hollywood Reporter. To briefly quote: “In a deal that shakes up a sleepy Hollywood before the holidays, Fifth Season and Brad Weston’s Makeready banner have preemptively picked up Alignment, a spec script by Natan Dotan, a man who until a week ago had […]
LUNA ‘N ME *DISCLAIMER: This article was co-written by AI. **DISCLAIMER 2: My AI is named Luna. Any reference to it as “she” or “her” was un-fucking- intentional. I’ve been trying to remember the very first “he said/she said” TV debate. It was way back, I think thirty years or more, on 60 Minutes? When […]
A bit of a screenwriting hodge-podge today. Here we go: REPURPOSING MATERIAL You never know where you can use previous material in terms of projects you’ll work on in the future. That means re-using your stuff. God knows how many plays I’ve written whose only purpose was to become a doorstop. Along with a closet […]
