In the last couple of years I’ve read about how some writers write with music playing (Cameron Crowe, Stephen King, and Nancy Myers). Now you can add Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor (the writing team behind Election) to that list: Jim Taylor: Music is very important to Alexander. He has a musical sensibility that’s unusual and particular [...]
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Sep
05
2011
 
Filmmaking Quote #22 (Lucas)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaToday on my blog about Entrepreneurial Filmmaking I wrote a post about E-Filmmaker (George Lucas): “Today’s upheaval is both economic and technological. Just as the coming of age of the baby boomer audience in the seventies helped define the type of films that got made, digital technology is now making production far more democratic. As [...]
Sep
05
2011
Writing the Struggle in lifePosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaAt the end of last month I finished watching the first season of the TV program Friday Night Lights that first aired in 2006, and this week I’ll finish the strike shortened second season. Since I don’t write about about TV writers much (or hardly watch TV at all) I thought now that it’s football [...]
Sep
03
2011
Screenwriting Quote #163 (Chris Columbus)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaIf you like simplicity in screenwriting advice, then you’ll like this exchange from MovieMaker magazine issue 84 Vol 18: Jennifer M. Wood: As producer, what are three things you look for in a script? Chris Columbus: Conflict, great characters and a gripping storyline. Simple, right? Scott W. Smith “I can understand the validity of showing people the ugliness of the world, but I also think there is a place for movies to leave people with a sense of hope. If your film isn’t going to do that, I just don’t think it’s worth making.” Producer/Director/Writer Chris Columbus Last weekend “The Help” again took [...]
Sep
01
2011
“The Lord of the Rings” FailurePosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“All filmmakers spend time on aborted projects… At any one time in Hollywood 90 percent of the writers and directors are busy working on scripts that will not get made.” Writer/Director John Boorman What’s worse that a Box Office Failure? The much more common practice of writing a screenplay that never gets made. (Or the [...] “Any filmmaker who tells you s/he ‘doesn’t read reviews’ just doesn’t want to admit how much they sting.” Screenwriter Sean Hood Yesterday, I wrote about Spectacular Failures in general—today we’ll look at what happens when a screenwriter has a box office failure. The $90 million Conan the Barbarian movie was released earlier this month and stumbled out of [...] “If you aren’t prepared to fail, you’ll never do anything creative. So you have to put yourself in a position to go outside of what you know, and when you’re there you’ll fail, and when you fail you’ll learn, and then you’ll become a better artist. And then you can even fail harder the next [...] Yesterday I mentioned that one of the 100 plus writing credits for screenwriter Jules Furthman was To Have and Have Not. There were a few hands in that pot; The novel was written by Ernest Hemingway, Howard Hawk directed the movie that starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and novelist William Faulkner is credited alongside [...] “There should be no sorrow at this funeral because The Great Santini lived life at full throttle, moved always in the fast lanes, gunned every engine, teetered on every edge, seized every moment and shook it like a terrier shaking a rat.” Pat Conroy A Fighter Pilot’s Eulogy Today the Thunderbirds where in Waterloo, Iowa. [...] |
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