Screenwriting From Iowa

Fifty years ago today Barry Gordy founded what would become Motown Records with $800 borrowed from his family. At the time he was unemployed and a divorced father of three.  Not exactly a sure bet. But here we are 50 years later looking back on a company that has had amazing influence on the United [...]

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Most people would point to Syd Field’s book Screenplay as the book that started a modern day trend in screenwriting theory. It was in fact the first book I ever read on screenwriting, but it is not the oldest book I own on screenwriting. That honor goes to The Technique of Screenplay Writing by Eugene [...]

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It’s January in Iowa, it’s cold and snowing outside, and I’m blogging about a screenwriter from Minneapolis—-so what else is new? What’s new is the screenwriter is not Diablo Cody. She’s so ‘08. No this Twin City screenwriter is not a former stripper…he’s a former construction worker/liquor store clerk/fruit truck driver who likes to ice [...]

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When John Brady interviewed Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader one of his questions was “What’s the toughest part when you’re writing?
Schrader: Getting an idea. A metaphor. Having one or two lines that describe a film—that’s the hardest part. Once you get that, if you have any common sense, you can execute it.”

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Big college football game tonight between Oklahoma and Florida. That eventually got me thinking about the writer S.E. Hinton. She’s from Oklahoma and pals around with hoods like Mickey Rourke, Matt Dillion, and Dennis Hopper. At least she did back in 1983 when Francis Ford Coppola made her book Rumble Fish into a movie. 
The cast [...]

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William Goldman is great writer. And a pretty good prophet.
His book Adventures in the Screen Trade was one of the first books I read about the movie business. And I read it when it first came out back in 1983 when I was living in Burbank and lusting after that Kaypro II computer that was [...]

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If you’re going to recycle you might as well recycle from the best. And today we’re going to not only recycle from David Mamet, but a quote that Mamet learned from others and that he calls “filmmakers’ pearls.” Chicago born Mamet is one of America’s great dramatists. He’s not only a screenwriter but a playwright, [...]

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Last night I watched Daniel Day Lewis’ character in There Will Be Blood  self-destruct. Self-destruction is never enjoyable to watch, but it is usually fascinating within the confines of a movie theater. And that leads us to our quote of the day.
“Stories of self-destruction are often the stuff of great movies because the lines of [...]

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When the Sylvia Nasar biography A Beautiful Mind, the story of  John Nash, was brought to the screen it was a giant of a creative team that created a beautiful movie.
It not only earned Russell Crowe, who played John Nash, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role, [...]

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Sure screenwriter Charlie Kaufman was born in New York and attended Boston University and NYU but perhaps the secret of his success is (get ready for Midwest connection) he lived in Minneapolis in the late 80s for more than four years working in the circulation department at the Star Tribune.
According to the Being Charlie Kaufman website [...]

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