All posts by: paul peditto

Nobody wants to be Alan Smithee Resignation… Defeat… No fun at all. When you see this name it speaks to a soul-sucking experience so bad that it caused the Director to take his name off the movie. I wanted to use Allen Smithee on Jane Doe. I had to be talked out of it. The […]

  NOTE: Have a terrific holidays, folks. Heading to the Big Apple to see the family, I’ll return January 1, refreshed and re-energized, ready for year 3 at Script Gods. I’ll have some news for you then about a pair of movies in the works. In the meantime, stay positive, and stay vigilant (see below). […]

Recently at a Meetup.com group here in Chicago, I was asked to give a down and dirty format lecture in about 55 minutes. Lightning round stuff, I barely had enough caffeine in my system to make it through. Concerning format, the first three words out of my mouth are The Screenwriter’s Bible, by Dave Trottier. […]

INT. AUDITORIUM – MORNING Kaufman, bleary-eyed, sits in the back. McKee paces. MCKEE Anyone else? Kaufman timidly raises his hand. MCKEE Yes? KAUFMAN You talked about Crisis as the ultimate decision a character makes, but what if a writer is attempting to create a story where nothing much happens, where people don’t change, they don’t […]

I only met Charles Bukowski once. I wrote a play about his life which was produced in Chicago and New York. It was later presented on National Public Radio. For the NPR reading in Los Angeles, Bukowski came down with his wonderful wife Linda Lee. This was ’93, about a year before his death. I […]