News From The Web - Writer Archive
Plan Your Journey - You Can't Make the Trip if You Don't Know How to Get There
Simon Kinberg - X-Men: Apocalypse Q&A
Jeff Goldsmith
The Q&A with Jeff Goldsmith
Jeff Goldsmith interviews screenwriter-producer Simon Kinberg about X-Men: Apocalypse.
“Se7en” Writer Andrew Kevin Walker’s Screenwriting Wisdom on Handling Adversity
Ken Miyamoto
Screencraft
Once in a great while, a genre — which we detailed in Do You REALLY Know What Genre Your Screenplay Is? — will have a defining film that continues to resonate with the industry and the audience for decades. There are few examples that compare to the impact that Se7en continues to make.
Ray Panthaki Interviews Screenwriter Matt Charman on How He Wrote Bridge of Spies (Video)
Ray Panthaki
BAFTA Film Sessions - BAFTA Guru on YouTube
Screenwriter Matt Charman, who was BAFTA-nominated alongside the Joel and Ethan Coen for their screenplay for Bridge of Spies, discusses his path into the industry in conversation with actor, director and Breakthrough Brit Ray Panthaki.
IN CONVERSATION: CHARLIE KAUFMAN
Adam Sternbergh
Vulture
The writer behind Being John Malkovich,Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and, now, Anomalisa — a stop-motion animated dark comedy about a depressed customer-service expert who falls in love on a business trip, which Kaufman co-directed — discusses where his ideas come from, the TV shows he can’t get made, and the finer points of puppet sex.
'Closet Screenwriter' Michael Arndt Comes Into the Light
Anne Thompson
The Hollywood Reporter
Look up Michael Arndt on the Internet Movie Database and you'll find just one credit: "Little Miss Sunshine." So how did a rookie screenwriter hit a classic comedy home run his first time up? Simple, it took only one year to write and 100 drafts -- and another five years before it went into production.
Bill Kelly: How to Make It As a Working Hollywood Screenwriter
David Flores
Indie Film Hustle
I recently had the great pleasure of interviewing Bill Kelly, the screenwriter of the Disney film Enchanted starring Amy Adams. His other screenwriting credits include Premonition with Sandra Bullock, and Blast From The Past with Brendan Fraser. As we noshed on breakfast he graciously answered those questions that I had about being a working Hollywood screenwriter.
WATCH: 9 Oscar-Nominated Screenwriters on How They Got Their Start, Their Writing Process, and Much More
Anne Thompson
Thompson on Hollywood
Representing eight of the 10 films nominated for Original and Adapted Screenplay at this year's Oscars, there's a very good chance that at least one of the nine screenwriters on the Santa Barbara International Film Festival's "It Starts with the Script" panel will be on stage at the Dolby Theatre later this month.
FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN: Mark L. Smith, Screenwriter of ‘The Revenant’
Andrew Bloomenthal
ScriptMag.com
The Revenant trails legendary frontiersman Hugh Glass, who crawls 200 miles through the frozen untamed West, after suffering a brutal bear attack and the abandonment by his own hunting team. It might be said that Glass’s relentless can-do spirit equally applies to screenwriter Mark L. Smith, who wrote this story as a spec script a decade ago, and subsequently shepherded it through multiple iterations.
Watch Amy Schumer, Aaron Sorkin & More Sit in a Room & Talk Screenwriting
Micah Van Hove
No Film School
For this year's THR Writer Roundtable, Amy Schumer (Trainwreck), Aaron Sorkin (Steve Jobs), Emma Donoghue (Room), Tom McCarthy (Spotlight), Meg LeFauve (Inside Out) and Nick Hornby (Brooklyn) talk about screenwriting — but the conversation doesn't end there. They discuss the nature of new media, journalism in the internet world, thecult of the amateur and their biggest lessons as screenwriters.
Robert McKee Says These 4 Things Keep Bad Writers from Being Good
V Renée
No Film School
Does your plot make sense? Are your characters dimensional? Does your story structure work? Really, the list of criteria is virtually endless, so maybe looking at what makes a screenwriter bad is a little more helpful. In the video below, screenwriting guru Robert McKee details four things that he thinks keeps bad screenwriters from being good. Check it out.
Aaron Sorkin on Adapting the Film ‘Steve Jobs’
Susan Kouguell
Script Magazine
Director Danny Boyle, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, Walter Issacson, (writer of the authorized Jobs’ biography), along with actors Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, and Michael Stuhlbarg took to the stage after the New York Film Festival press screening of Steve Jobs. The conversation centered on creating the characters of this film based on the actual people and making them their own and not a caricature.
The Avengers Director Tells You The 5 Things Your Script Has To Have
Allanah Faherty
Moviepilot
Joss Whedon was part of a roundtable discussion hosted by actress Lily Cole forImpossible. It's a website and global community which aims to help people out by sharing ideas, objects and - more importantly - time, by matching an individual's skills to someone who needs them. Considering Joss it one of the hardest-working guys in the business it's so awesome he was able to take time out of his busy schedule and share his wisdom about screenwriting. This time it was five aspiring writers who benefited and got to hear Joss's enlightening words.
Podcast: Screenwriting for Studios with Corey Mandell
Corey Mandell
Indie Film Academy
IFA talks with screenwriter Corey Mandell. Corey got his start when he was still in school and ended up pitching the script for Metropolis to Ridley Scott. IFA aska Corey what it’s like to write at the studio level and how other screenwriters can break in.
The Notes Behind 'Network'
Sheryl Garratt
New York Times
Thirty-five years after the release of “Network,” the unpublished notes of the writer Paddy Chayefsky document the angst and animus that he channeled into the film’s Academy Award-winning screenplay. View some of these documents below and click on the highlighted areas for notes that provide a closer examination.
Notes of a Screenwriter, Mad as Hell
David Itzkoff
New York Times
LAMENTING the lack of “satirical clarity” in the screenplay he was laboring on in the early 1970s, Paddy Chayefsky was mad at himself and American television viewers at large. He was seeing the venomous spirit of the era of Watergate and the Vietnam War infiltrate every program the broadcast networks offered, from their news shows to their sitcoms, and he concluded in a typewritten note to himself that the American people “don’t want jolly, happy family type shows like Eye Witness News”; no, he wrote, “the American people are angry and want angry shows.”
Can You Really Teach Screenwriting?
Richard Walter
Movie Outline
Years ago I was invited to lecture at a screenwriting craft conference sponsored by the Writers Guild at the UCLA Conference Center at beautiful Lake Arrowhead in the mountains high above Los Angeles. There were several practitioners and educators offering presentations. The guy preceding me, an under-loved, overfed, burned out and embittered used-to-be successful TV writer told the audience that screenwriting cannot be taught.
The Martian: How a self-published e-book became a Hollywood blockbuster
Sheryl Garratt
Script
In 2009, Andy Weir, a computer geek with a chronic fear of flying, turned his musings about a human mission to Mars into an online book that became a phenomenon. Sheryl Garratt travels to Northern San Francisco to find out how it changed his life.
HEY! WE ALL HAD TO START SOMEWHERE: an interview with Nicole Jones-Dion, author of Dracula-The Dark Prince and Tekken 2
Howard Rasner
Rantings and Ravings
This is the next post in a series of interviews with writers who have had their first films, web series, television assignment, etc. make it to the big or small or computer screen. It is an effort to find out what their journey was to their initial success.
TV LEGEND NORMAN LEAR TELLS A STORY ABOUT HOW HE BEAT WRITER'S BLOCK
Teressa Iezzi
Fast Company
When Norman Lear appeared on The Daily Show at the end of last year, Jon Stewart spoke for just about all of the show’s more grizzled viewers when he greeted the famed TV producer with the words: "I want to thank you for raising me."
An Interview with Screenwriter Phillip Hopersberger
Jim Vines
The Working Screenwriter
Q: Phillip…when did you write your first screenplay?
A: I wrote Something Gray in 2011-12, based on a true story about a slave and his Confederate colonel friend from childhood, and the tension in their relationship going to war together for a cause that would continue his slavery. Here’s the logline: “Based on a true story, a conflicted Confederate colonel risks his life to stop Lincoln's assassination when friendship trumps slavery.”