Yesterday’s post was long, so I’ll make up for it today. “Writing fiction or plays or poetry seems to me to be a very messy business. To be a writer requires an enormous tolerance for frustration, for anxiety, for self-doubt.”
—Writer Harry Crews (A Feast of Snakes)
Original Source…
|
Jun
07
2020
 
REVISITING THE FAMOUS DAVID MAMET MEMO TO ‘THE UNIT’ WRITERSPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaNote: I forget where and when I first read the memo from David Mamet to the writers of The Unit, but I know I wrote a post about it back in 2010 titled DAVID MAMET’S BOLD MEMO (?) The question mark was there because I could not confirm any sources where Mamet acknowledged that he actually […] “The best work that anybody ever writes is the work that is on the verge of embarrassing him, always.” —Arthur Miller(Death of a Salesman) “A screenwriter friend of mine said your number one goal is to get to the end. So write it fast; don’t look back. If you have to have characters yak about […]
Jun
05
2020
Fishing for Ideas with David LynchPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“I love the idea of catching ideas. And they’re out there, millions and millions of ideas, and we don’t know them until they enter the conscious mind. And then we know them. And we see them and hear them and feel them. We know the mood of them, even if it’s just a small fragment […]
Jun
04
2020
Postcard #191 (A Beautiful New Day)Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaI took this photo at 6:27 AM yesterday following a day and night of social unrest around the country. It was a nice reminder that there is still much beauty in the world. May it give you some respite from your newsfeed. Scott W. Smith “I don’t think writers are sacred, but words are. They deserve respect. If you get the right ones in the right order, you might nudge the world a little or make a poem that children will speak for you when you are dead.” Above quote spoken by character Henry in The Real Thing: A Play written by […]
Jun
02
2020
Lorraine Hansberry and the Seeds of ‘A Raisin in the Sun’Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaWhat happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun? —Langston Hughes Harlem
Jun
01
2020
‘Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream’Posted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From IowaNote: I can’t think of a week in the past 12 years where I haven’t written a single post on this screenwriting and filmmaking blog. But that’s what happened in the last week of May. George Floyd died on May 25th shortly after being detained by police. The video of an officer with his knee […]
May
22
2020
How ‘Night of the Living Dead’ Got Made: Everyone Kick in $600. and Let’s Go to a Farm and Shoot Film Until We Run Out of MoneyPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“We were making industrials and commericals and all that, and of course, our passion was to make a feature film. So ten of us got together, the four of us from our company, Karl Hardman and Marilyn Eastman who are two of the actors in Night of the Living Dead (1968)—they played Helen and Harry […]
May
18
2020
Mr. Rogers, Mr. Romero, & Zombies in Pittsburgh —and a Not So Beautiful Day in the NeighborhoodPosted by: screenwritingfromiowa in Screenwriting From Iowa“While there have been better-made horror movies in the 50 years since, some even directed by Romero himself, and there have been bigger budgets, better actors and more scares, there may not be any single denouement and message more frightening than the one George Romero leaves us with at the end of Night of the […] |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
