Screenwriting From Iowa

There’s been a big surge this month on my post Screenwriter/Saleman Pete Jones.  Why would there be a surge from a post written over four years ago? I haven’t seen the rebooted Project Greenlight, but I have a felling it’s connected to that since Jones was the person who wrote and directed the first Project […]

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“I remember very distinctly [while shooting Forrest Gump] where I’d go through waves of absolute terror. I’d go, “This is the worst movie I’ve every made. How is this ever going to work?” Director Robert Zemeckis (The film would go on to be a box office hit and win six Oscar Awards including Best Picture, […]

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“My story is like an American dream story. I grew up on the south side of Chicago [in a] working poor family…I was a freshman in high school when I saw Bonnie and Clyde, and I remember very profoundly there is a scene where Gene Hackman’s character gets shot in the head and he’s in this […]

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“The advice is if you want to direct, direct. And even easier—if you want to write, write. Writing is one of the only things that can be done with very little resources.” Writer/director Guillermo del Toro “Mexico is still a very violent place. So I do think that some of that element in my films comes […]

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“Nobody knew anything. We were just a bunch of kids making a movie.” John Carpenter on making Halloween when he was 29-years-old The fun part about embracing your limitations is seeing where it will take you. What kind of odd connections can you make that will be fresh and interesting? My post yesterday (The Perfect Ending) […]

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“Game of Thrones broke a huge Emmys record at Sunday night’s ceremonies. With David Nutter’s win for best director of a drama series, the HBO show snagged its tenth Emmy this year, the most any series has ever won in a single year.”  Eliana Dockterman, Time, September 20, 2015 (Game of Thrones would finish the […]

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“I couldn’t be prouder of Grindhouse, I couldn’t be prouder of both of our films, but it was the first one I’d had that was a flop. It didn’t shake me as far as my feelings for the movie, it did shake me to think I may never have a hit again. ‘Cause actually when […]

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“Once you actually start thinking about directing if you look at something like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly or Once Upon a Time in the West—well, that’s directing. You can literally see what the director does and the way the characters enter frame and exit frame, and the way the camera does it’s […]

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“As proud as I am of my movies, I think writing has become more, and more, and more, and more important to me. That first real flash of excitement is always when I’m writing something that should go this way, and all of the sudden inspiration happens and it goes somewhere else. And I’m party […]

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“The way I write is really like putting one foot in front of the other. I really let the characters do most of the work, they start talking and they just lead the way. I had heard that whole speech about the Sicilians a long time ago, from a black guy living in my house. […]

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