Last night teaching at Chicago Filmmakers we were looking over a script loaded with action line verbs like she realizes and he thinks, which, of course, triggered the Unfilmables debate. It always does. The student pointed out several professional screenplays that broke the rules. Being a rule breaker from way back, I was aware of […]
Today we’ll carry on with the Top 101 Screenplays as voted by the Writer’s Guild Of America. You can find tons of Oscar-nominated scripts at Simply Scripts here. If you ever wanted to go to Film School, here’s one of the exercises we do. Compare and contrast. I’ll cut and paste a favorite scene from […]
“Working as a screenwriter, I always thought that ‘Film is a collaborative business’ only constituted half of the actual phrase. From a screenwriter’s point-of-view, the correct rendering should be ‘Film is a collaborative business: bend over.”–David Mamet I had a chance to work with two of David Mamet’s favorite actors, Jack Wallace and J.J Johnston. […]
Who is the most adapted writer of all-time? Give me your top 3 before I tell you… who would it be? Writing this in October 2015, our #1 is, of course, The Bard… IMDB has William Shakespeare for 1,098 adaptations! This includes 379 feature films, and 16 projects in development in 2015-16 based on his […]
This from the guy who wrote Confessions of an Eclair-Eater… From the guy who hasn’t wedged into a size 38 in 15 years… Who walked out on Benjamin Button for Paul Blart, Mall Cop… I like fat guys…they make me laugh. Fat guy humor has been around forever, unlike the YouTube superstars humor of watching […]
