Screenwriting From Iowa

There was [Wizard of Oz actor] Bert Lahr sitting with the cast of his latest vehicle . . . Stash [Prager] introduced me, saying ‘This is Doc Simon. The kid’s written a funny play Bert.’ Bert looked at me an said quite earnestly, but still in that Cowardly Lion’s voice, ‘Is it about anything? If […]

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This exchange between playwright Neil Simon and Terry Gross is from a 1996 Fresh Air interview: GROSS: You have a theory that you write about in [your book Rewrite:A Memoir] that your mind doesn’t know, when you’re writing, that it’s only fiction. Your mind thinks you’re actually living through whatever you’re putting on paper. SIMON: […]

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“Did I relax and watch my boyhood ambitions being fulfilled before my eyes? Not if you were born in the Bronx, in the Depression and Jewish, you don’t.” Emmy, Tony and Pulitzer Prize-winner Neil Simon When I heard that playwright/screenwriter Neal Simon died over the weekend I thought back to when I read that back […]

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  Yesterday producer Ted Hope (@tedhope.fanpage on Facebook) gave a nice shout-out to this blog, so I thought I’d use that to wrangle together 10 Hope-centric quotes from various places. Many are from his Hope for Film book. ‘A new and vibrant cinema’—Ted Hope  ‘If I ran a film school  …’ — Ted Hope You vs. […]

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I know there is a lot of noise and distractions out there— in regard to finding filmmaking information and inspiration—but I’m enjoying Ted Hope’s Facebook post recently. Here’s just a short excerpt from yesterday’s post. “To make a great film, you generally have to make a good one first — and to make the good […]

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“In the initial writing I’m just trying to crack the story and make the characters as interesting as I can, and make it feel like a movie story.” Scott Frank If you just look at three productions—Minority Report, Marley & Me, Godless— that Scott Frank’s worked on as a writer and/or director you’d have to […]

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Back in the ’70s actor Lee Majors was The Six Million Dollar Man. I don’t know what $6 million dollars in 1974 would be worth today, but Kenya Barris’ $100 million dollar deal with Netflix makes him—if not bionic (like Lee Majors character)—quite a wealthy writer/producer by any measure. And Barris wasn’t hurting for coin. The […]

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“I didn’t think my songs would become anthems for women. But I’m delighted. Women probably immediately feel compassion and relate to the lyrics. We can all learn a little something from each other, so whatever people can take and be inspired by where my music is concerned is great.” Aretha Franklin (1942—2018) Time interview  

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“You get tired of going to the movies and seeing stuff that you don’t want to see or not seeing the stuff you want to be dealt with. When the subject matter you love is not being done right, you have to make your own movies.” Writer/director Spike Lee (I don’t remember where I first […]

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“When we shoot these films, I don’t move my lips very much. I keep my mouth kind of closed so that when I see the film before we finish it, I can change the dialogue and make it better.” Marlon Brando during ADR session for The Godfather (via editor Walter Murch) “There’s a movie you […]

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