By far the most read post on this blog is How Much Do Screenwriters Make? In fact, I just Googled that phrase and out of the 1,070,000 results, my 2009 post was on the first page. In that post I contrasted working screenwriters and NFL football players and made this observation: “While reading over the WGAw report I […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
“When people mouth of about how Hollywood has changed I remind myself of a correspondence I once perused between the great Bertolt Brecht and the legendary agent Spud Weed, who departed the hills and valleys before I came to town. “Neither Brecht nor Spud Weeb bothered with long philosophical exchanges. The letters between them—notes, really—were […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
“Follow your curiosity. Stories are sometimes found in the most unlikely places.” Producer Laura MacDonald (Gladiator) (That’s the drum that I’ve been beating on this blog since 2008.) Yesterday the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences dropped the above video giving advice to screenwriters. Here are a few of my favorite thoughts from that […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
When it’s a warm and sunny November day in Orlando it’s the perfect time to put the top down and take your car for a boat ride. I took this photo yesterday at Downtown Disney where tourist pay $125 for a unique 30 min trip. While I’d seen pictures and videos of the Amphicar before […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
Today concludes Garry Marshall month and I’ll end with a post that originally ran on October 31, 2012 under the title Garry Marshall Survivor: “Kindness is free.” Garry Marshall Garry Marshall survived bad health as a child. He survived long cold winters in Chicago as a college student. He survived a tour of duty in […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
“A producer has to make friends fast. A producer’s nothing without a writer, without a director, so go out find them. Get the ones who are coming up and work with them. A producer has to integrate people. A producer has to convince people of the basic sports theory that sometimes you gotta work with people, […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
“A lot of people direct one movie and then never do it again, because it’s a pretty strange job. Very difficult in the sense that you can’t keep a consistent emotion. As a producer you can keep a consistent emotion. A producer has to be an adult. That’s why I became a producer at first. […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
This post first ran in 2012 with the title Offensive & Defensive Screenwriting: “The biggest lesson a screenwriter can learn is how to master a rewrite of his own script, or someone else’s, and make the change a studio wants without destroying the story. It’s like a football game: If you think of writing an original […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
This post first ran in 2012 under the title Telling the Truth=Humor: “Just when I thought I understood how to write a good line, Phil Foster headed me in a different direction. He was one of the first comedians to break out of the traditional one-line joke format and venture into personal narratives. He would talk about […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
This post originally ran in 2012 under the title Flaming Rejection: “Be prepared at all times for rejection, even after you break in. One night I was backstage at Jack Silberman’s International Nightclub in New York City. I nervously handed a page of jokes I had written to a famous veteran comedian. He read my jokes […]
Original Source…
No Comments »
