Screenwriting From Iowa

Radio was supposed to die in 1945, when TV came along. It turns out that radio grew and grew, and it’s a bigger business today than it has ever been. People really like to listen to other people talk; sometimes listening is the only thing you can do. Audio is the only medium you can […]

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From my perch in public radio, working at This American Life and Planet Money, I saw podcasting exploding around me. It went from a tiny niche activity, to a behavior embraced by tens of millions of Americans, and many more millions worldwide. And every year, more listeners adopted the habit. Essentially, on demand behavior — […]

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This post was originally written in 2014 as Finding Authentic Emotions: “Just because it’s a worthy cause doesn’t make it interesting.” Audio journalist Alex Blumberg Alex Blumberg is a rock star. At least a rock star in finding authentic emotions. Between Thursday and Sunday night I caught chunks of Blumberg’s live (and then rebroadcast) CreativeLive seminar […]

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Note: This post originally ran in 2014 as Finding Authentic Emotions (Part 1). On Monday I will do an update on Alex Blumberg and Gimlet Media which has been on a podcasting tear the last couple of years. “What is a story, exactly?” Alex Blumberg What were you doing at 4:16 this morning? I was […]

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The moment came at 64 minutes and 11 seconds into episode #300 of Scriptnotes when Chris McQuarrie explained the differences between screenwriting and film directing in just 18 words: “Screenwriting is pushing a rock up a hill, and directing is running downhill with a rock behind you.” Writer/ director Chris McQuarrie (The Usual Suspects, Mission Impossible-Rogue […]

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“We tend to overestimate what we can do in one year, and underestimate what we can do in ten.” Richard Foster (Quote often attributed to Bill Gates, but I believe Foster wrote the line years before Gates wrote or said it.) Screenwriter Dana Fox was 2 for 2 when she followed her career trajectory question to Rob […]

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“I never saw myself as a sitcom person, but I was waiting tables and I was like I have to figure out something and I wrote this script that was super dark, but when I put it into Charlie’s [Charlie Day] hands or Glenn’s [Glenn Howerton] they made it funny and I realized this could […]

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“Locations can be another character in a movie, and St. Petersburg was a character in ours.” Cocoon producer Lili Zanuck When Ron Howard was directing the movie Cocoon back in 1984-85 he called St. Petersburg, Florida “Burbank by the sea.” It wasn’t a slam. Howard, who grew up in Burbank, was just noticing the similarities […]

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“I’m a take your grandpa’s style, I’m a take your grandpa’s style.” Macklemore & Ryan Lewis/Thrift Shop I don’t know if writer Jack Kerouac ever visited the St. Petersburg Shuffleboard Club when he lived at 5169 10th Ave. N. in St. Petersburg. But the last year of his life he lived less than five miles away. […]

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“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” Jack Kerouac Some of the Dharma

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