Screenwriting From Iowa

“I don’t want to bring this to a conclusion on a down note. A few years back, I got a call from an agent, he said look ‘Will you come see this film? It’s a small, independent film a client made. It’s been making the festival circuit and it’s getting a really good response, but […]

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“A few months ago I was on this Jet Blue flight going from New York to Burbank…I’m getting comfortable in my seat—You know, I spent the 60 bucks to get the extra the legroom— so I’m starting to get a little comfortable and we make altitude. And there’s a guy who is in the other side […]

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“Most of the stuff that I’m looking forward to seeing is on TV now. Almost exclusively due to The Sopranos, there’s been a resurgence in long-form television. That’s great for someone like me, the ability to play out a narrative with a very long arc and explore complicated characters and have the audience be happy about […]

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Following the recent Morgan Spurlock post about Being Platformagnostic, this weekend I came across this Q&A with filmmaker Kevin Smith: Q: When you’ve said in the past that you will retire after Clerks 3 what did you exactly mean? Kevin Smith: It’s not just me walking away. It’s just not me doing movies for movie theaters […]

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“You need to be very ‘platformagostic.’ You want to find an audience wherever that audience is. So think about the web, TV, and theaters. Open yourself to as many possibilities as you can imagine. Today you cannot be just a filmmaker; you have to be a marketer, accountant, publicist, writer, and businessman. You have to […]

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“You want to find an audience wherever that audience is. So think about the web, TV, and theaters. Open yourself to as many possibilities as you can imagine. Today you cannot be just a filmmaker; you have to be a marketer, accountant, publicist, writer, and businessman. You have to understand the economics of making a […]

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“I get to say the think that all writers must tell themselves to start writing—which is nobody has to see this thing. I can throw it away. I’m alone with it. No one has to know what an idiot I really am. And I can burn it. And if it don’t work, if it really […]

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“The most ordinary conversation in the south has a theological basis.” Harry Crews “There are fierce powers at work in the world boys. Good. Evil. Mud (Matthew McConaughey) Mud written by Jeff Nichols One of the reasons I’ve been blogging in and around the movie Mud for the past week is because Nichols has done what I think […]

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“Writing fiction or plays or poetry seems to me to be a very messy business. To be a writer requires an enormus tolerance for frustration, for anxiety, for self-doubt.” Harry Crews When writer/director Jeff Nichols mentioned in a recent interview that one of the books that influenced his writing of his film Mud was the […]

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“I can remember very vividly in high school getting my heart-broken and it was like a physical pain. I was physically nauseous. And anytime there is an emotion that is that strong, or that I can remember or feel that strongly in the present day, it’s worth hanging a movie around.” Writer/Director Jeff Nichols While […]

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