Screenwriting From Iowa

I took this photos a few days ago on the Valencia College campus in Orlando and it seems like a fitting colorful Easter day/springtime photo. It’s golden trumpet tree that blooms in the spring here in Central Florida. Especially pretty on blue sky days. Scott W. Smith

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“One of the essential components of drama is tension…Drama, so said drama critic William Archer, is almost always the effect of ‘anticipation mingled with uncertainty.’” Writer/Director Alexander Mackendrick (1912-1994) Hot off the presses just minutes ago. How’s this for a beginning, middle, and end? Bringing an end to perhaps the longest continually running reality show. […]

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“The advice I give for filmmakers starting out is don’t wait for me. Don’t wait for the industry… It’s a mistake to wait for Hollywood to tell you you have a good idea. If you have a good idea, try to make it on your own as cheaply as possible… on your phone.” Producer Jason […]

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It’s interesting how a few words written by William Goldman in his Misery screenplay (based on a Stephen King novel), and translated more than 25 years ago into a movie with two actors (Kathy Bates, James Caan) under the director Rob Reiner can still make you squirm just thinking about it as the scene walks […]

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“If you take the occasional seminar and come away with one great tip you didn’t know before, that’s a good thing. But I’ve come to believe you only learn on your own by doing it, by trying to tell stories that work. When you write 14-20 screenplays, you begin to internalize a sense of timing […]

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“Documentary challenges you constantly to find a new way of telling a story. That’s what I love about it: to start a journey without knowing where I’m going to arrive. At first I have to encounter a place. Then within the place I have to encounter people.” Gianfranco Rosi One of the staples of documentaries […]

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At 23, 24, I was starting to make films. I knew someone who knew [sculptor Louise Bourgeois] very well, and he invited me to visit her studio. It was this huge, huge loft in Brooklyn, and she talked about every single sculpture, every single thing. She has a huge table, full of objects — things […]

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“I wrote at least a thousand words a day every day from the age of twelve on. For years Poe was looking over one shoulder, while Wells, Burroughs, and just about every writer in Astounding and Weird Tales looked over the other. I loved them, and they smothered me. I hadn’t learned how to look away and in the […]

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Zest. Gusto. How rarely one hears these words used. How rarely do we see people living, or for that matter, creating by them. Yet if I were asked to name the most important items in a writer’s make-up, the things that shape his material and rush him along the road to where he we wants […]

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I thought about the short film Transform by Zack Arias today. Hard to believe he first did this almost 10 years ago. It was shot with a flip camera if I recall correctly. It not only holds up today, but it’s an inspirational classic. Tagged: Zack Arias

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