Screenwriting From Iowa

Yesterday I visited the Kennedy Space Center for the third time in my life and I realized my visits mirrored three important eras of space travel. The first being an elementary school trip in the 70s during the Apollo era, a visit in the 90s during the shuttle era, and yesterday’s trip which is in […]

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“I think I’ve developed a special talent for getting access to people. My wife is a family therapist, and she has said that when you first meet a subject, if your gaze is an empathetic one, you’re all set. And that process of empathy should continue all the way through the therapy. That’s precisely the […]

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For those of you who read my last post—“You Aren’t Special”—and found screenwriter Malcolm Spellman’s words offensive, bitter, and/or negative I hope this almost G-rated post balances things out. You are my friend You are special You are my friend You’re special to me. You are the only one like you. Like you, my friend, […]

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“Here’s the real cautionary tale; We all think we’re special. Every screenwriter I know thinks they’re better than all the [other] screenwriters. And it doesn’t mean shit. And your heat doesn’t mean shit. And you aren’t special. “I consider myself a ‘real writer,’ meaning I do something interesting and unique on the page and people […]

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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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“I see only one requirement you have to have to be a director, or any kind of artist: rhythm. Rhythm, for me, is everything. Without rhythm, there’s no music. Without rhythm, there’s no cinema. Without rhythm, there’s no architecture. The cosmos is a system of rhythms that come in many ways: Images. Sounds. Colors. Vibrations… . […]

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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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