Screenwriting From Iowa

“The Hollywood we were driving to that fall of ‘63 was in limbo. The Old Hollywood was finished and the New Hollywood hadn’t started yet.” Andy Warhol Popism Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is a strange mixtape of the ups and downs of the movie industry. Writer/director Quentin Tarantino could have picked any […]

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I’ve been preoccupied for the past few days so I missed writing a post for the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 mission.  But watching the lunar landing and Neil Armstrong walk on the moon was transformative for me as an 8-year-old growing up just an hour away from where the rocket launched from in Central […]

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“I have 25 years of starving for praise. Just give me my week. That’s all I ask. Just give me my week. I’ll be back to self-loathing before you know it.” Craig Mazin (joking about his writing success on the miniseries Chernobyl) Scriptnotes podcast, “Live at the Ace Hotel” “I set out to tell the […]

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“I really don’t feel like I’ve grasp the essence of cinema.” Writer/director Akira Kurosawa In 1990 upon receiving an honorary Oscar award after a 40+ year career “One thing that distinguishes [Kurosawa] is that he didn’t make one masterpiece or two masterpieces. He made, you know, eight masterpieces.” Writer/director Frances Ford Coppola

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“In the Sixties, each of the major Japanese studios—Toho, Shochiku, Toei and Nikkatsu—had their own theaters in Los Angeles, in which they played their films for Japanese audiences. An Autumn Afternoon was made in 1962 and Ozu died the following year, but the film played in 1969 at the Shochiku in Los Angeles. I saw it in the afternoon, […]

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“If you polled the world’s film critics, asking them who was the most universal and beloved of all directors, Ozu would rank at or near the top of the list, along with Jean Renoir, Orson Welles, and Alfred Hitchcock.” Roger Ebert (in 1993) Saluting a Master of the Cinema, Yasujiro Ozu Over the weekend I watched Ozu’s 1953 […]

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This will be my last post from my recent trip out west. Yesterday I was reminded that July 2 is the anniversary of when Hemingway took his life in Ketchum, Idaho. A few days ago I wrote a post about his gravesite, but today I thought I’d show a couple of photos I took of […]

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One of my stops in my recent trip to the Northwest was in the beautiful city of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. While the lake there the gets more press I was captivated by the beautifully restored hand carved Coeur d’Alene Carousel. Parts of the Sundance Film Festival winning movie Smoke Signals (1998 ) were shot in the area. […]

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The biggest surprise on my recent trip out west was Wallace, Idaho—a old mining town east of Coeur d’Alene on the border of Northern Idaho and Montana. According to Wikipedia, the filmed part of Dante’s Peak (1997) in Wallace. Scott W. Smith  

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