Screenwriting From Iowa

“I tell new writers to study old scripts. Dig up a copy of ‘On the Waterfront.’”—Jerry Lewis

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“I’ll tell you what I did to become a film-maker. I had this drive and I was curious.” Jerry Lewis Actor, producer, director, writer, composer, etc. “You’ll be unstoppable if you become technical as well as creative.” Robert Rodriguez Writer, producer, director, editor, cameraman, composer etc. “Where do you start? There’s no Monopoly board. No […]

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“Chaplin was both the shlemiel and the shlimazel. He was the guy who spilled the drinks-the shlemiel-and the guy who had the drinks spilled on him-the schlimazel.” Jerry Lewis

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In the past year and a half I’ve been giving away boxes of my screenwriting and productions book to high schools and colleges. Last week I went through by bookshelf again and came up with two more boxes of books to give away and this batch includes William Froug’s Screenwriting Tricks of the Trade which […]

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“I also think you can learn to be a good writer. Like I was a bad, actively bad, and I willed myself to get better. I really tried to learn what are the building blocks of a good story. And I think often people who aren’t naturally good writers, you’re just intimidated because you feel […]

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“Fear forces executives to make your screenplay perfect. Perfection is the enemy of art. It’s the enemy of character. It’s the enemy of anything that’s dynamic and interesting.” Nick Kazan

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“I never studied writing. I never studied screenwriting. I just hear voices and I see visions, and instead of being locked up I’m a screenwriter.” Nick Kazan The Dialogue Interview: Learning from the Masters (Part 1) interview with Mike De Luca “I don’t like roller coasters.” Kevin Hart In the first part of that interview on […]

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“Chainsaw captures the syntax and structure of a nightmare with astonishing fidelity. The quality of the images, the texture of the sound, the illogic by which one incident follows another —all confirm to the way we dream. No one’s done that before, at least not in a commercial, mass market movie…What makes Chainsaw interesting is […]

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“It’s a strange moment, the moment of creating characters who up to that moment have had no existence. What follows is fitful, uncertain, even hallucinatory, although sometimes it can be an unstoppable avalanche.” Harold Pinter (1930-2008) I planned to start a run of posts on screenwriter Nick Kazan today but as I was listening to […]

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After LeBron James announced in a letter to Sports Illustrated he was returning to play basketball in Cleveland, comedian Frank Caliendo read the letter on ESPN’s Mike and Mike show in the voice of Morgan Freeman. I decided it would make a nice mash-up to combine all of those with a few scenes from The […]

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