Screenwriting From Iowa

I took this iPhone photo this morning shortly after sunrise. The thing about these kinds of shots is you only have about 10 minutes when the right conditions come together and then it’s gone. Scott W. Smith Tagged: Iphone

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Let’s say you work at a taco joint and think to yourself, “Man, I’d sure like to make a feature film,”—where would you start? Oh, and the problem is you have little money and no real film experience. Were would you start? There are many options including going to film school, working as a PA […]

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“Gardens are not made by singing ‘Oh, how beautiful,’ and sitting in the shade.” Rudyard Kipling  

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’77 was the year young filmmakers—college students, for the most part—started writing me about the stories I’d published (first in Night Shift, later in Skeleton Crew), wanting to make short films out of them. Over the objections of my accountant, who saw all sorts of legal problems, I established a policy which still holds today. […]

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“The Woman in the Room remains on my short list of favorite film adaptions.” Stephen King If you’re a filmmaker just starting out, don’t compare yourself to Frank Darabont’s The Shawshank Redemption—or his most recent work in creating The Walking Dead—look at what King was doing in his early twenties when he made the short […]

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“Geology is the study of pressure and time. That’s all it takes, really. Pressure and time.” Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins) in The Shawshank Redemption Just as my post yesterday mentioned that Jordan Peele had the idea kicking around for Get Out five years before he sat down and pounded out the script, Frank Darabont acquired the rights to […]

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“I’m the kind of guy who wants to know the entire movie before I write it.” Screenwriter Jordan Peele (Get Out) Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith podcast P.S. Peele also said on that podcast that while he wrote the first draft of Get Out in 2 1/2—3 months, the idea had been kicking around in his […]

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If you weren’t alive in 1977 this is what was popular before the internet came along: “To me, The Gong Show was the simplest and most elegant of TV shows. The anti-game show. The anti-variety show. A hot mess of street performers and buskers and B-list celebrities who all appeared to be in on the […]

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“One of the lessons I took from Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner—which is one of the influences here—is that one of the reasons that film was so effective in its discussion with race is because it started with a situation that was universal. Take the race out of it, everybody can relate to the fear […]

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“I think the greatest scare in horror is turning the corner in The Shining and finding the girls at the end of the hallway. It’s the same scare as when you first meet Hannibal Lecter [in The Silence of the Lambs]. You come down the hallway, and he’s just waiting for you. It’s the protagonist in […]

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