Screenwriting From Iowa

In my last post I wrote about Missouri’s influence on Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lanford Wilson, and how he wrote his first play during lunchtime while working at an ad agency in Chicago. But those weren’t the only things that shaped him as a writer. When Wilson was 26-years-old he moved to New York City in […]

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“I wrote my first play at an advertising agency in Chicago during lunch hours around 1957. Actually, when I went to Chicago I thought I’d be a commercial artist…until I saw what commercial art was. Then I decided I’d be a painter. I did about ten paintings. They were terrible. At the same time, I […]

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“You need to have a lot of perseverance and persistence in order to get things through…” Producer Screenwriter Anthony McCarten (”The Theory of Everything”)

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Have you heard the news, everyone’s talking Life is good ’cause everything’s awesome Everything is Awesome!!! from The Lego Movie Okay, maybe not everything is awesome. In fact, if we just look at a few of last night’s Academy Award-winning films we’ll see a lot of the harder aspects of life represented; Birdman, Still Alice, American […]

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“[Foxcatcher] was kind of an orphan movie for a while. There was no financing. There were no actors, and we were just trying to get the script right.” Foxcatcher co-screenwriter Dan Futterman The Wall Street Journal  In the post Wrestling for an Oscar Nomination I wrote about screenwriter Jason Hall physically wrestling with someone while he […]

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Can you have a day job (or a night job) and still find time to write? Yes. “I was a sound engineer. That was my day job when I started writing. I sort of did my day job every night. I would write from ten to six every day and at six, leave my apartment […]

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“When anyone challenges this story or thinks that I didn’t try to put the whole story out there, I’m like, ‘You know what? I bled for this thing,’” Jason Hall on a wrestling confrontation with a Navy SEAL while researching American Sniper Time magazine article by Eliana Dockterman Here’s a little background on screenwriter Jason Hall […]

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“I want my movies to be about regular people that are caught up in extraordinary moments in their lives, usually by their own doing. It’s not like a meteor movie where something’s coming from space that the people had nothing to do with. The characters have to either go right or left—there’s no option for […]

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‘Whiplash’ is astounding. Believe the hype. My heart was still pounding 10 minutes after the credits rolled.” Diablo Cody November 26, 2014 Tweet by @diablocody Damien Chazelle has a few things in common with Diabo Cody. Both are screenwriter/directors, both have cool names with the initials D.C., and both were 29-years-old when they received their first […]

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If you check out the Whiplash screenplay currently on the Sony Pictures website this is how screenwriter/director Damien Chazelle starts the opening scene, followed by a New York Times video of Chazelle explaining what he was after beginning the now Oscar-nominated Best Picture: BLACK… We hear a HIT. A drumstick against a drum head. Crisp, sharp. Then a second […]

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