Screenwriting From Iowa

“I think The Third Man is one of the best, if not the best, non-auteur films ever made.” Writer/Director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show) “The Third Man was never written to be read but only to be seen. Like many love affairs, it started at a dinner table and continued with many headaches in […]

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“Anybody who goes into film has to be a little crazy. And has to be ready for every kind of disappointment and defeat. And must be grateful for any kind of evening such as this that he can get out of it. It’s mathematically almost an impossible medium to succeed in on any sort of […]

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“Coverage: All the shots and angles needed to capture a scene effectively and edit it well.” Glossary of Lighting Terms, Lowel EDU Much has been written about Orson Welles watching John Ford’s Stagecoach 40 times before or while making Citizen Kane. One of the techniques Welles learned from Ford was shooting long takes. And Welles said he learned from Ford not just shooting long […]

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Merry Christmas—50 weeks early. When I was driving through Nashville last November after a production I had lunch with William Akers (Your Screenplay Sucks!) and he told me about a video of Orson Welles doing a Q&A with students at USC back in 1981. I’d never seen or even heard of the video, so I figured it would […]

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Warning: Even though I’m dealing with some older films, I still feel I need to mention that there are some spoilers today. “Chucks’s first words of dialogue in the movie is ‘time.’ Time runs his life and for six years time ran our lives as we made this movie. His last words are ‘thank you,’ an […]

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“Clichés, in particular, have always baffled me. You’d think it’d be as simple as, ‘Don’t use clichés,’ but it isn’t. I’ve fallen in love with plenty of great movies that others have insisted were riddled with clichés. Many times I have to admit they’re correct, and yet I still love the movie. The ending of Die Hard has Bruce Willis […]

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“All humor is rooted in pain.”  Commedian Richard Pryor “I think humour does save one’s sanity. We can go overboard with too much tragedy. Tragedy is, of course, a part of life, but we’re also given an equipment to offset anything, a defence against it. I think tragedy is very essential in life. And we […]

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Looking for a New Year’s screenwriting resolution? Here’s one nicely tucked in two sentences that you can adopt: “The road to Hollywood is neither a sprint nor a marathon…it’s a death march. The smartest things you can do to advance your craft and career are to read scripts, watch movies, be up to date on […]

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