Screenwriting From Iowa

“After twenty years of reviewing films, I haven’t found another filmmaker who intrigues me more…Errol Morris is like a magician, and as great a filmmaker as Hitchcock or Fellini.” Roger Ebert You know what’s most quirky about The Black List (2013)? Yes, screenwriter Elijah Bynum is the only writer with two scripts on the list, […]

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I couldn’t help but smile yesterday when I saw The Hollywood Reporter headline: ‘Holland, Michigan’ Tops 2013 Black List  The Holland, Michigan script written by Andrew Sodroski received 46 mentions from film executives placing it at the top of the pile of the best unproduced scripts kicking around Hollywood. While I know more about the […]

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“BEGIN WITH THE END IN MIND” Steven R. Covey The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Habit #2) After I wrote the last screenwriting tip, Writing Good Bad Guys (Tip #85), I discovered a Facebook thread over at The Inside Pitch where WME Story Editor Christopher Lockhart listed some of his favorite bad characters in movies. (I’ve […]

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“Odd lead performances be damned, [Bubble] is not only an underrated gem, but yet another masterpiece found within Soderbergh’s historic filmography.” Joshua Brunsting, Criterioncast  Today on re-post Saturday I decided on one where Oscar-winning director Steven Soderbergh (Traffic) talked about directing non-professional actors because it’s a nice match for the post earlier this month where […]

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“I read a phenomenal book called Directing Actors by Judith Weston, which I would recommend to anybody who wants to direct anything. And then I called up a bunch of young directors and said, ‘You don’t know me, my name is Billy Ray, I’m about to go direct a movie. Could I take you to lunch and […]

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(Note: Somehow when I posted this the majority of text disappeared. Will try to track down missing text.) “Every villain is the hero of his own story.” Actor Tom Hiddleston “This was my first time acting, or even thinking about acting.” Actor Barkhad Abdi (Lead Somalian hijacker in Captain Phillips) NPR Interview, October 20, 2013 […]

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“How does an artist look at the world? Well, first she asks herself, ‘What’s worth stealing?’ Austin Kleon Author of the New York Times bestseller Steal Like An Artist You don’t have to just “study the masters” of cinema to find inspiration—sometimes a 1950s TV movie will do. Airplane! is one of the funniest movie ever made. AFI’s […]

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“The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other.” The Apostle Paul “I’m just obsessed with this search for a spiritual core in life. And I’m sorry to have to talk in that way about these films, but […]

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“I’m often asked by younger filmmakers, ‘Why do I need to look at old movies?’ I’ve made a number of pictures in the past 20 years and the response I find that I have to give them is I still consider myself a student. The more pictures I’ve made in the past 20 years, the […]

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“I say about myself that I make comedies the way John Ford might have said ‘I make westerns.’ That might be true. That might also be cloaking something. Scorsese in his survey of American cinema, talks about the American director as smuggler. You work within a given genre and smuggle your honest, artistic concerns in […]

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