If you’re like me, you want to see smart, capable, females up on that big screen. You want to see female characters through an accurate lens. To write in the dark, ignorant of 50% of the population just because that’s the way it’s always been, is no longer acceptable.
If I were an executive over at AMC, I’d be a little nervous. What, with Mad Men and Breaking Bad all wrapping up, and to mention the producers of The Walking Dead talking about moving the show more towards a Cop Rock vibe and all. It’s a general truism for we in the screenwriting class (or at least, true enough) that nervous suits with … Read more
One of my writing partners and I are working on a new horror feature script, and we’re in the outlining/beat sheeting stage right now. Our characters aren’t quite gelled yet, and we’re both firmly entrenched in the belief that character begets plot, so outside of a few key visual sequences we’ve sketched out, our plot … Read more
“This is the golden age for television,” said my friend Steve. I debated him on that declaration, citing the 1950s: Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Lucille Ball, et al., until we could agree with a revised version of his proclamation: “This is a new golden age for long-form storytelling.” And, heck yes, we hold this truth … Read more
If I’m a producer looking to churn out an AFM style straight-to-DVD picture, I love the talking because it’s cheap to do, but I’m not gonna be able to sell this finished film to anybody unless I can get some gunplay, fucking, fights, or explosions in there before page 10.
Nietzsche deserves the opportunity to rattle our cages, here, a century later. Harness the spirit of his life and intentions and his words to tell a good story; don’t get bogged down in the historical accuracy of his life.
I’m in good hands I can tell, because the writer uses the term “micro beer.” A minor thing for me to say, perhaps, but when I know the writer cares enough to use details like that, it tells me a lot about the character in one phrase: “He takes a pull of his micro beer.”
Keep your chaos and your craziness. That’s what makes the story interesting and the writer’s voice shine. But speak the language of the idiot script reader, or idiot producer’s assistant. Try to make it make sense to them. Ease us into it, or this is a dead project.