Screenwriting From Iowa

A couple weeks ago two young guys appoached me for some help on a commercial they were producing and when they pitched me the idea it sounded more like a mini-series than a :30 spot. I gave them a much simplier idea and they shot it the next day and all was right in the [...]

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The year 2008 was a good one for screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg. She was nominated for a Primetime Emmy as one of the writers of the TV program Dexter and the movie from her Twilight script made $191 million domestically.
“If someone sees a story at a certain point in their lives, they can see this character, albeit [...]

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Yesterday was an important day personally. I got a glimpse into the future. And, yes, it did involve illegal drugs.
I watched the documentary Cocaine Cowboys on immediate viewing on Netflix. The movie has been out for few years but I had never seen it before. Having attended the University of Miami in 1981-1982 the topic [...]

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When people think of how much professional football players make the tend to focus on the big numbers. Brett Farve’s $20 million dollar one year contract with the Minnesota Vikings. Payton Manning’s $99.2 million seven year contract with the Indianapolis Colts.. But the truth is most rookies in the NFL earn around $300,000 per year. [...]

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Before J. Michael Straczynski created Babylon 5 or wrote the feature Changeling he wrote The Complete Book of Screenwriting back in the 80s. In 1996 he updated the the book. Straczynski didn’t attend film school but received degrees in psychology and sociology. He seemed to take the dream big, start small approach, “I cut [...]

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“Alfred Hitchcock, the undisputed master of suspense drama once said, ‘There is no terror in a bang only in the anticipation of it.’  Anticipation is one of the  most important emotions scriptwriters can feel as they look forward to something that will happen in the future, whether it’s positive, like winning  a big prize, or [...]

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It’s been 50 years since the release of the great  Alfred Hitchcock film North by Northwest and Warner Bros. just released a Blue-ray 50th Annivesary Edition.
“During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Hitchcock went on one of the greatest winning streaks in cinema history, cranking out Vertigo, North by Northwest, Psycho, and The Birds in [...]

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“It’s unbelievable we’ve been able to do something so big, so fast.”
Joe  Herber
Million dollar Doritos commercial winner in 2009
A lot has happened in the last 20 hours. Yesterday the world celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall. Where were you in 1989? Do you even recognize the world from 20 years ago? Even if you [...]

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The great classical musican and conductor Itzhak Perlman was in Cedar Falls, Iowa last night to perform a fundraising concert for polio research. (He himself contracted polio as a child and uses crutches or a scooter to get around.) The violinist has played around the world and on many film scores including his work as [...]

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The other day I was driving to a shoot and listening to an old Robert McKee CD on screenwriting based on his book Story and I stumbled upon this little passage that made me stop and repeat it three times:
“Success in the Art Film genre usually results in instant, though often temporary, recognition as an [...]

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