It looks like 2011 is going to be the year of the clones. Not in terms of movies in the theaters (because that’s always the case), but in terms of my exploring the topic from a screenwriting perspective. “You don’t get to be a Hollywood hitmeister like (Michael) Bay — 200 Zillion Tickets Sold! — without [...]
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Archive for the “Screenwriting From Iowa” Category“I have read from cover to cover, books like Leonard Maltin Movie Guide, which contains thousands of plot, character, and movie ideas. I encourage my brain to try to mix these themes together in the hope that my mind will meld a new form. These process id called ‘bi-association.’ the joining together of two forms [...] “The aesthetics of film are 80 percent visual, 20 percent auditory…The best advice for writing film dialogue is don’t. Never write a line of dialogue when you can create a visual expression.” Robert McKee Story “The silent pictures were the purest form of cinema; the only thing they lacked was the sound of people talking [...] I didn’t intend to spend several days exploring movie cloning, but it’s turned into quite a rabbit hole of information. On top of the words that I listed in part 1 that explain why some movies remind you of other movies (remake, update, homage, rip-off, mash-up, inspired by, parallels, movie mapping, story patterns, story echo, [...] “Stop me if this seems familiar: There’s a new cop comedy coming out that pairs a loose-cannon SNL veteran with a growling, resentful partner in a semi-sendup of the 80’s buddy comedy genre. “ Kyle Buchanan The Other Guys Trailer: Cop Out with Jokes I didn’t see Cop Out last year, but I’ve read that it [...] “Long ago, when wishing still could lead to something, there lived a king….” Grimms’ Fairy Tales, The Frog King “The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a certain king, who made a marriage feast for his son….” Matthew 22:1, a parable told by Jesus Half of the time I read Joseph Campbell (The Hero [...]
Jan
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2011
 
Movie Cloning (Blake Snyder)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“Listen to Spielberg or Scorsese talk about movies. They know and can quote from hundreds. And I don’t mean quote as in ‘recite lines from.’ I mean quote as in ‘explain how each movie works.’ Movies are intricately made emotion machines. They are Swiss watches of precise gears and spinning wheels that make them tick. [...]
Jan
14
2011
Movie Cloning (Aaron Sorkin)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in 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 [...]
Jan
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2011
Movie Cloning (Avoiding Cliches)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“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 [...]
Jan
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2011
Aaron Sorkin on Theme, Intention & ObstaclesPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaOne 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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