Screenwriting From Iowa

Yesterday’s post—George Miller Masterclass in Visual Storytelling—was one of the most viewed and shared posts I’d written all year and a fitting end to a month of posts centered around Austin, Texas—based filmmaker Robert Rodriguez. The only other time I’ve done something like that was back in 2012 when I ran a month of posts […]

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“The perfect movie doesn’t have any dialogue. So you should always be striving to make a silent movie.” David Mamet On Film Directing  “One of my notions [in making Mad Max] was that if I make the action sequences as a silent movie, and it reads as a silent movie, then it can only get […]

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“I saw Dr. Strangelove in 1963 when I was in Madison, Wis., where I was an undergraduate, and it was a revelation. What struck me is that it was possible to make a film as a real auteur for a mass audience….I don’t know how many times I’ve seen Strangelove but it’s as fresh and exciting today as it […]

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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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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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