“Ultimately, it all comes down to one of the grand old rules of screenwriting: whenever possible – show, don’t tell.” Ray Morton Script magazine “IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA. IF YOU DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE CRUTCH OF NARRATION, EXPOSITION,INDEED, OF SPEECH. YOU WILL BE FORGED TO WORK IN ANEW MEDIUM - TELLING THE STORY IN PICTURES (ALSO KNOWN AS SCREENWRITING). David Mamet Memo to The Unit writers [...]
Original Source…
Archive for January 14th, 2011“I think boxing’s pretty dumb, and I’ve never been a boxing fan.” John G. Avildsen Oscar winning director of Rocky AFI lists the character Rocky Balboa on their all-time movie hero list at #7 and the film Rocky as the #4 most inspiring film of all time. Writer/actor Sylvester Stallone has understandably gotten plenty of [...]
Jan
14
2011
 
Emmy-Winning Writer Rick ClevelandPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“I thought if (Harvey Pekar, American Splendor) could write comic books about real people maybe I could write plays about real people.” Rick Cleveland Though The West Wing won 27 Emmys in its seven year run it only collected one for best writing. Just one. And that one program, In Excelsis Deo, was written by [...]
Jan
14
2011
Aaron Sorkin on Theme, Intention & ObstaclesPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaOne of the great things about listening and reading about writers talking about the writing process is you see how everyone’s approach is different. Some write in the morning, some at night, some write quickly in bursts and others methodically take their time. Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone) was very successful writing from theme, but [...]
Jan
14
2011
Movie Cloning (Avoiding Cliches)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“Yeah I think I know what my father meant when he sang about his lost highway…” Hank Williams Jr. All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down) “You must break from cliché. You must ‘Give us the same thing…only different.’” Blake Snyder Save the Cat The movie Country Strong is no Tender Mercies. And there are [...]
Jan
14
2011
Movie Cloning (Aaron Sorkin)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa “What jumped out at me (about the 14 page treatment for Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires) wasn’t Facebook. Facebook wasn’t something I knew a lot about when I started. Frankly, it’s not something I know a whole lot about now. I know more about Facebook in 2003-04 than I do in 2010. But [...]
Jan
14
2011
Movie Cloning (Blake Snyder)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“Listen to Spielberg or Scorsese talk about movies. They know and can quote from hundreds. And I don’t mean quote as in ‘recite lines from.’ I mean quote as in ‘explain how each movie works.’ Movies are intricately made emotion machines. They are Swiss watches of precise gears and spinning wheels that make them tick. [...] “Long ago, when wishing still could lead to something, there lived a king….” Grimms’ Fairy Tales, The Frog King “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king, who made a marriage feast for his son….” Matthew 22:1, a parable told by Jesus Half of the time I read Joseph Campbell (The Hero [...] “Stop me if this seems familiar: There’s a new cop comedy coming out that pairs a loose-cannon SNL veteran with a growling, resentful partner in a semi-sendup of the 80’s buddy comedy genre. “ Kyle Buchanan The Other Guys Trailer: Cop Out with Jokes I didn’t see Cop Out last year, but I’ve read that it [...] I didn’t intend to spend several days exploring movie cloning, but it’s turned into quite a rabbit hole of information. On top of the words that I listed in part 1 that explain why some movies remind you of other movies (remake, update, homage, rip-off, mash-up, inspired by, parallels, movie mapping, story patterns, story echo, [...] |
