“[Eddie]Van Halen was not just an awesome guitarist. He developed a repertoire of techniques that transformed the way that the guitar was played.”—Steve WaksmanNPR music You’ve heard about the 10,000 hour rule, right? It’s the theory developed by Dr. K. Anders Ericsson and popularized in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers: The Story of Success. The essence […]
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Note: Check out my new paperback or eBook Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles to help support this blog. As I continue to digitize some old files during this pandemic I came across some old film school notes that were from a cinematography class I took 38 years ago. While some of the notes about film stock […]
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Besides using some downtime during the coronavirus global pandemic to finish my book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles, one of the things I’ve been doing is digitizing old files of photos, papers, and the like. Brings back lots of memories. Today’s post is kind of a photo journey that I hope helps some of you who […]
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Talent is talent. It doesn’t matter if it’s college football players or Hollywood filmmakers. I’m calling it the talent tree, but others have used the pyramid analogy. It both cases the smallest part of the tree/pyramid is at the top (where the most talented and accomplished hang out), there’s a thick middle, and a wide […]
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Note: My new book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles is available on Amazon in both paperback and eBook. Years ago when I traveled more for productions than I do today, I started this postcard section where I shared various shots on the road. And that also gave me a break from writing a daily posts. So […]
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When singer/actor Mac Davis died this week most people talked about his hit songs that he wrote for Elvis (In the Ghetto, A Little Less Conversation), his own hits (Baby, Don’t Get Hooked, Stop and Smell the Roses), or his popular 70s Tv show The Mac Davis Show. But I flashed to his debut film […]
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“Darling trotted back, smiling, breathing deeply but easily, feeling wonderful, not tired, though this was the tail end of practice and he’d run eighty yards.”The Eighty-Yard Run by Irwin ShawFirst published in Esquire magazine on January 1941 This is how my dedication page reads to my book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles: To Annye Refoe, Ph.D.—who […]
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“There is a tendency to think that art is finally the place where there are no rules, where you have complete freedom. I’m going to sit down at the keyboard and it’s just going to flow out of me onto the paper, and it’s going to be pure art. No. What you’re describing is finger painting. Rules […]
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“You can’t learn bull riding, except by getting on the bull.”—David Mamet Several years ago I wrote a post titled Can Screenwriting Be Taught? and I used parts of that for the introduction to my book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles. Some say writing is a natural gift like a bird taking flight, and others say […]
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As I watched the Miami Hurricanes football team beat Florida State on Saturday I smiled when I saw the new brass knuckles-like rings that Miami used to celebrate to touchdowns this year. Here’s the preface to my book Screenwriting with Brass Knuckles. The book is kind of a greatest hits of the more than 3,000 […]
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