For Those of You With Aspirations
For those of you who dream of getting paid to write (or direct or production design or shoot or whatever else), I highly recommend reading Kelly Oxford’s recent Tumblr post. A little background info: Kelly Oxford is a super-smart writer whose Twitter feed has earned her over a hundred thousand followers. Big whoop, right? Wrong. […]
Interview Prep
I had an interview yesterday for a writer’s PA gig on a new TV show. My last few interviews have gone pretty well, so maybe I walked in a little too cocky. It turned out to be my worst interview in years. Part of it were elements beyond my control. While in the lobby, I heard […]
Connecting
Mr. Hart replied to a post from earlier in the week: Ok so lets say you have a well written screenplay or you are in the process of writing one, how does one go about selling it? For example, I am a PA on a television series and what if I wanted to write a […]
A Time to Write
I’ve finally come to the conclusion that I can’t work a sixty-five hour work week and work on my screenplay at the same time. I sold a dollar option last summer, but I haven’t had a chance to develop the screenplay since I’m at work ALL THE TIME. So the other day, I told myself, […]
Fear No More The Heat O’ The Sun
It was a hot, hot Fourth of July weekend, succeeded by a hot, hot fifth of July. The production office’s air conditioning went down yesterday. We have (barely) survived the day on copious amounts of water and popsicles. All day, I struggled to muster the motivation to write a post for today. “It’s too hot!” […]
Maybe I Should Quit
Here’s how I tell if someone is smarter than me– when they tell me something, I think to myself, “That makes perfect sense, and I never would have thought of it.” Case in point: I suspect a lot of people aren’t sure what’s the top idea in their mind at any given time. I’m often […]
All Done
Holy cow. It’s been a while since I’ve posted, but I’ve got a good reason. For those of you who don’t know, NBC, ABC, and Fox have programs for writers starting out in the business. All three are due today or tomorrow. To apply, ABC and NBC want you to write spec scripts, while Fox […]
What TV Does Best
Last night, I watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother called, “The Wedding Bride.” If you don’t watch the show, that title is probably meaningless to you. It may be meaningless even if you do watch the show. See, “The Wedding Bride” was a throw-away joke from an episode last year, “As Fast […]
Authorship II
Based on emails and comments, a few people missed the joke at the end Thursday’s post. The three movies my friend listed were all written by the same screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman; each film had a different director. Clearly, the writer leaves a consistent mark. Several people concurred with Do You Come With the Car: Titanic […]
Authorship
I was talking with a friend the other day. Well, actually I was talking at him. Railing, really, against the injustice of auteur theory. A large part of my argument is that normal people don’t really care about what a director does. People care about characters (which is at least 50% the writer’s doing) and […]
Believe in Yourself!
I really enjoy the Creative Screenwriting Magazine podcast, despite the fact that their interviewer, Jeff Goldsmith, is a massive tool. (That’s a post for another day.) The most recent one features several of this year’s Oscar-nominated screenwriters, and I highly recommend it. One problem I have with this sort of panel, though, is the constant […]
The Curse of the Origin Story
Not everyone starts their career the same way.