Screenwriting From Iowa

You may not know the name Michael Muller, but you probably know his work. It would be hard to miss the ubiquitous face and claw of Hugh Jackman on the movie poster for X-Men Origins; Wolverine. Muller is the photographer who took that photo.
Muller started out getting paid to shoot as a fifteen year old [...]

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“There’s a million different reasons to write. It took cancer to help me find the best reason in the world.”
                                               David Michael Wharton
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Last Friday my travels took me through Rochester, Minnesota which is located just a little bit above the Iowa-Minnesota border. Rochester is, of course, known for being home to the Mayo Clinic which is one of the most respected medical centers in the world.
It is also home to the coolest Barnes & Noble Booksellers building [...]

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“There are an awful lot of Scott Smiths running around the world.”
                                                                          Scott B. Smith
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Most screenwriters don’t jump onto the world stage like Diablo Cody who won an Oscar for the first screenplay she ever wrote. More often than not they follow a 20 year journey like screenwriter John Logan who was 40 years old when he received an Oscar nominated for his part in writing Gladiator. 
Logan was born [...]

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The 1985 film Witness is one of those movie that’s pops up again and again in screenwriting books as a fine example of writing. But like Rainman there are a lot of reasons why the film works and it is an example of a collaboration at it’s best. It was a perfect storm of talent and it resulted [...]

Original Source…

The 1985 film Witness is one of those movie that’s pops up again and again in screenwriting books as a fine example of writing. But like Rainman there are a lot of reasons why the film works and it is an example of a collaboration at it’s best. It was a perfect storm of talent and it resulted [...]

Original Source…

“Are you something else I’m going to have to live through?”
                                                                     Erin Brockovich 
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You’d think since I’ve written a couple posts on the film industry in Michigan and another post just on Grand Rapids that I would have mentioned screenwriter Kurt Luedtke at some point, but I haven’t. But the the Oscar winning screenwriter of Out of Africa was in fact born in Grand Rapids. Actually, he was off my radar [...]

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Screenwriter David Franzoni (Gladiator, Amistad) might as well be living back home in Vermont (or here in Iowa): 
“In this town (L.A.), if you’re a screenwriter, the two biggest things that are important (are): One, get a life, because the only stuff that’s any good is writing about the life you’ve led, not about the movies [...]

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