Screenwriting From Iowa

  “What jumped out at me (about the 14 page treatment for Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires) wasn’t Facebook. Facebook wasn’t something I knew a lot about when I started. Frankly, it’s not something I know a whole lot about now. I know more about Facebook in 2003-04 than I do in 2010. But [...]

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“Yeah I think I know what my father meant when he sang about his lost highway…” Hank Williams Jr. All My Rowdy Friends (Have Settled Down) “You must break from cliché. You must ‘Give us the same thing…only different.’” Blake Snyder Save the Cat The movie Country Strong is no Tender Mercies. And there are [...]

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One of the great things about listening and reading about writers talking about the writing process is you see how everyone’s approach is different. Some write in the morning, some at night, some write quickly in bursts and others methodically take their time. Rod Serling (The Twilight Zone) was very successful writing from theme, but [...]

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“I thought if (Harvey Pekar, American Splendor) could write comic books about real people maybe I could write plays about real people.” Rick Cleveland Though The West Wing won 27 Emmys in its seven year run it only collected one for best writing. Just one.  And that one program, In Excelsis Deo, was written by [...]

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“I think boxing’s pretty dumb, and I’ve never been a boxing fan.” John G. Avildsen Oscar winning director of Rocky AFI lists the character Rocky Balboa on their all-time movie hero list at #7 and the film Rocky as the #4 most inspiring film of all time. Writer/actor Sylvester Stallone has understandably gotten plenty of [...]

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“Ultimately, it all comes down to one of the grand old rules of screenwriting: whenever possible – show, don’t tell.” Ray Morton Script magazine  “IF YOU PRETEND THE CHARACTERS CANT SPEAK, AND WRITE A SILENT MOVIE, YOU WILL BE WRITING GREAT DRAMA. IF YOU DEPRIVE YOURSELF OF THE CRUTCH OF NARRATION, EXPOSITION,INDEED, OF SPEECH. YOU WILL BE FORGED TO WORK IN ANEW MEDIUM - TELLING THE STORY IN PICTURES (ALSO KNOWN AS SCREENWRITING). David Mamet Memo to The Unit writers   [...]

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“When a hero starts his life as an orphan, it is to show he has nothing to lose. He is unattached and unencumbered by family ties and social obligations, so he is usually portrayed as an orphan to indicate that he is not saddled with the normal attachments the rest of us have. This sense of [...]

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“Well. nobody’s perfect.”
Classic last line of Some Like it Hot
“In story terms, the main character’s persona is plagued with a flaw, and as this flaw is tested throughout the story, the main character integrates a greater understanding of overcoming the flaw through the lessons of life that are expressed by the story.”
Kate Wright
Screenwriting is [...]

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“Let me tell you the super story that Cliff Robertson told me a dozen years ago, and I think I’m giving the credit properly. It was a story he had been told by Rosalind Russell. I think he met her during the filming of Picnic. She said, ‘Do you know what makes a good movie?’ [...]

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The Craft of the Screenwriter was one of the first books I ever bought on screenwriting. It’s older than some of the readers of this blog. I picked it up when I was in film school in 1982 when screenwriting resources were limited. (The Craft of the Screenwriter is worth having in your library and [...]

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