Author Archive
Jul
06
2011
 
Down and Out in Beverly HillsPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“There is a ginormous disparity between earnings of the average screenwriter and those at the top of food chain.” Scott Myers Go Into The Story “Most writers are middle class; 46% did not even work last year.” WGA (2007) By far, the number one most viewed post of all time on Screenwriting from Iowa is [...]
Jul
05
2011
“Don’t try and compete with Hollywood.”—Ed BurnsPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaThanks to Edward Burns for the retweet about the new blog I launch yesterday (E-Filmmaking). It helped give me a nice spike out of the gate. (Many years ago I did a 15-page paper on The Brother’s McMullen, so I’m a long time fan.) Today I came across a 2003 interview of Burns that helps [...] “Never in the history of the movie business has there been a better time for the Independents to be entrepreneurial.” Graham Taylor Los Angeles Film Festival keynote speech June 2011 “Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship.” Benjamin Franklin, Entrepreneur (And one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence) On [...]
Jul
03
2011
Screenwriting Quote #159 (Stuart Beattie)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaScreenwriter Stuart Beattie was born in 1972 in Melbourne, Australia and raised in Sydney. In 1990, while going to college in the United States he had some script ideas and began writing. It would take nine years of writing before he would become a full-time writer. In 2003, he received a story credit on Pirates [...]
Jul
02
2011
Writing Quote #26 (Waldo Salt)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“As writers true to ourselves, it will always be hard, and if we’re good, we’ll always be in trouble. Let’s be sure we deserve it.” Two-time Oscar-winning screenwriter Waldo Salt (Coming Home, Midnight Cowboy) Quote from his acceptance Speech for receiving the WGA Laurel Award for Screen Achievement, six months before he died. “Waldo Salt, the great screenwriter of Coming Home and Midnight Cowboy, among others, when asked about how he went about creating characters, replied that first he chose a simple dramatic need and then added on to it, and colored it until it became a universal chord common to Everyman.” Syd Field The Screenwriter’s Problem Solver “Art is a microscope which the artist fixes on the secrets of his soul and shows to people these secrets which are common to all.” Leo Tolstoy Yesterday I mentioned having had my shares of Days in the Sun. (The kind of days when you tell everyone on Facebook that life is good.) But like [...] “How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving and tolerant of the weak and strong. Because someday in your life you will have been all of these things.” George Washington Carver Rod Serling died at age 50. Today I turned 50. [...]
Jun
28
2011
Query Letter Strikeout (Part 2)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaWell, Christopher Lockhart read my post yesterday, Query Letter Strikeout, and had this email response that he agreed to let me post: “I think it’s important to understand that agencies don’t abhor “small” movies. Compared to THOR or the BATMAN franchise, your pitch is for a “small” movie. Yes, those kinds of projects can be [...] Keep in short. That’s the short version of this post on query letters and loglines. Keep it short. Unfortunately, it’s going to take one long post to explain in detail why to keep it short. (In fact, it’s going to be over 2,000 words—but there’s a lot to learn here. If you’re in college, you [...] |
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