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Understanding Screenwriting #125
By Tom Stempel. What Did They Forget? Still Alice (2014. Screenplay by Richard Glazer and Wash Westmoreland, based on the novel by Lisa Genova. 101 minutes.) Julianne Moore as Alice Howland in Still...
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The House of Many Colors
By Tom Stempel. A standard complaint about American television from the beginning that there are too few shows, especially comedies, that deal well with race. From 1951 to 1953 there was a show on CBS...
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Eli Attie: From the White House to the West Wing
By Lauri Donahue. Eli Attie It’s a credit to Aaron Sorkin and John Wells that West Wing is a world where speechwriting is a sexy noble job, which is never how it was in the real White House. One of the...
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“Learn to love all forms of storytelling.” Nunzio DeFilippis and Christina Weir
By Heather Hale. Life has a way of getting in the way of writing. How much of our own writing we get done depends on how and where we’re earning our income, our personal responsibilities and our...
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Ripper Street: “Not Hidebound by History”
By Ramona Zacharias. Richard Warlow British writer Richard Warlow knows that the “Jack the Ripper period drama” has been done before. Which is why his critically acclaimed television series Ripper...
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Understanding Screenwriting #127
By Tom Stempel. Letty’s Back. Well, Sort Of. Maybe… Furious 7 (2015. Written by Chris Morgan, based on characters created by Gary Scott Thompson. 135 minutes.) Paul Walker as Brian O’Conner and Vin...
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Tenured: One-Upping the Script
By Michelle Houle. Chris Modoono Tenured, penned by Chris Modoono and Gil Zabarsky, premiered at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival this past April. The film tells the story of depressed, elementary school...
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Understanding Screenwriting #128
By Tom Stempel. How The Hell Can We Figure Out What Went Wrong? Effie Gray (2014. Original screenplay by Emma Thompson. 108 minutes.) Dakota Fanning as the eponymous Euphemia ‘Effie’ Gray As you may...
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“I’m not a big lover of fantasy, generally.” Peter Harness on Jonathan...
By Ramona Zacharias. Peter Harness It’s not often you hear a body of work referred to as “unfilmable” these days. But that was precisely the reputation attached to Susanna Clarke’s epic novel Jonathan...
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Julian Fellowes on Downton Abbey
By Shanee Edwards. “Another clang in the march of time.” – Mrs. Patmore. Julian Fellowes. Photo by Nick Briggs With less than 3 months of filming left at Highclere Castle, the stand-in location for...
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Understanding Screenwriting #129
By Tom Stempel. It Certainly Passes the Bechdel Test Clouds of Sils Maria (2014. Written by Olivier Assayas. 124 minutes.) Juliette Binoche as Maria Enders in Clouds of Sils Maria As we were coming out...
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Understanding Screenwriting #130
By Tom Stempel. Has Nobody Here Ever Read the Book Understanding Screenwriting? Jurassic World (2015. Screenplay by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Colin Treverrow & Derek Connolly, story by...
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Ed Burns: An Independent Force
By Christopher McKittrick. Ed Burns Out of all of the independent film success stories to emerge from the Sundance Film Festival in the 1990s, writer/director Ed Burns has done the most of any of his...
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Alec Berg on Silicon Valley
By Donna Marie Miller. Alec Berg Screenwriter and producer of HBO’s current smash hit series Silicon Valley Alec Berg, who formerly worked on television sitcoms Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm,...
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Silicon Valley on Silicon Valley: Blake Ross’s Viral Spec Script
By John Rhodes. Blake Ross Like many people in the industry, I saw some tweets early this week about a spec screenplay for HBO’s hit comedy series Silicon Valley, written by an actual Silicon Valley...
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Understanding Screenwriting #133
By Tom Stempel. Too Much Bait, Not Enough Switch Irrational Man (2015. Written by Woody Allen. 95 minutes.) Emma Stone as Jill and Joaquin Phoenix as Abe in Irrational Man When I saw the first trailers...
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Joss Whedon: The Master at Play
By Jason Davis. Joss Whedon arguably needs no introduction. Screenwriter, producer and director, not to mention composer and graphic novelist, he is the creator of television shows such as Buffy the...
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“Idea is Everything”– David Lynch
By Christian Divine. David Lynch is an audio-visual artist whose primary canvas is celluloid. His enigmatic films are perhaps the closest the American cinema has come to capturing the otherworldly...
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Narcos: “I can’t help it, I like this guy.”
Chris Brancato By Brianne Hogan. Look up Chris Brancato on IMDb, and you’ll find a slew of television and film credits ranging from his start with Aaron Spelling on “90210” to “Species 2,” “Law &...
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Sam Shaw’s Manhattan
By Brock Swinson. Sam Shaw Making the transition from a prose writer and journalist, Sam Shaw has shifted into becoming an expert in suburban deception, metaphorical slang, and the relevant period...
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Alan Tudyk’s Con Man
By Sam Roads. Alan Tudyk If you aren’t familiar with Alan Tudyk’s vast acting resume, including roles on Joss Whedon’s Firefly and Dollhouse, you probably know his voice work, from films like I, Robot...
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Understanding Screenwriting #135
By Tom Stempel. Office Porn, Not Kitchen Porn The Intern (2015. Written by Nancy Meyers. 121 minutes.) Robert De Niro as Ben and Anne Hathaway as Jules in The Intern You generally do not want to start...
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Write Like It Will Never Get Made: 24 Hour Rental
By Brianne Hogan. Al Kratina and George Mihalka. Image by Jeanette Kelly The days of the video store might be dead in real life, but it’s alive and well in the dark comedy TV series, 24 Hour Rental....
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Understanding Screenwriting #136
By Tom Stempel. Not Marvin. The Martian (2015. Screenplay by Drew Goddard, based on the novel by Andy Weir. 144 minutes.) Matt Damon as Mark Watney in The Martian You should know up front that my...
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John Yorke: “What You Don’t Do Is David Copperfield II”
By Sam Roads. John Yorke has been at the forefront of British TV drama for over twenty years, as showrunner on popular soaps such as Eastenders and The Archers. He has also been behind dramas like the...
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Understanding Screenwriting #137
Nuances Are Us. Brooklyn (2015. Screenplay by Nick Hornby, based on the novel by Colm Tóibín. 111 minutes.) Saoirse Ronan as Eilis Lacey in Brooklyn. Photo by Kerry Brown. © 2015 Twentieth Century Fox...
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Understanding Screenwriting #141
By Tom Stempel. The Financial Maguffin. The Big Short (2015. Screenplay by Charles Randolph and Adam McKay, based on the book by Michael Lewis. 130 minutes.) Christian Bale as Michael Burryin The Big...
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Vince Gilligan on Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul
By Ramona Zacharias. It’s not every day one has their work referred to as quite possibly the greatest television series of all time. And creator Vince Gilligan may humbly compare the success of...
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Taking Dramatic License with the Bible: Chris Brancato on Of Kings and Prophets
By Brianne Hogan. Chris Brancato The new biblical drama Of Kings and Prophets has everything you might expect from a premium cable series: sex, violence, and bloodshed. Except it isn’t on a premium...
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Avoid the Formulaic: Gale Anne Hurd and Natalie Chaidez on Hunters
By Donna Marie Miller. Natalie Chaidez Gale Anne Hurd. Image by Jason LaVeris / FilmMagic “They are many. And they are angry,” reads the tag line for the new television series, Hunters, which premieres...
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