Screenwriting Quote of the Day #62 (Kevin Smith)

Yes, I am going from seven days in a row expounding about the virtues of Sunset Boulevard to quoting writer/director Kevin Smith. While he’s no stranger to controversy, raunchiness, and profanity, and you may not care for his films—but you have to at least give the guy credit for launching a career by making Clerks for [...]

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Screenwriting from Sunset Boulevard (take 7)

 “Somebody came up to Arthur Miller after an opening and said ‘That was a nice play, but couldn’t you call it Life of a Salesman?’ But a play is not nice things happening to nice people. A play is about terrible things happening to people who are as nice or not nice as we are [...]

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Screenwriting from Sunset Boulevard (take 6)

She stood there bright as the sun on that California coast He was a Midwestern boy on his own She looked at him with those soft eyes, So innocent and blue He knew right then he was too far from home he was too far from home                  [...]

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Screenwriting from Sunset Boulevard (take 5)

“The Wilder message is don’t bore – don’t bore people.”                                                     Billy Wilder   By the time Billy Wilder directed Sunset Boulevard he had already worked on over 40 feature films. [...]

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Screenwriting from Sunset Boulevard (take 4)

The thing that often gets lost when we talk about the outstanding career of writer/director Billy Wilder is the contribution of screenwriter Charles Brackett who wrote 13 films together with Wilder. Brackett won three Oscar awards over the years, as well as a lifetime achievement award from the Academy in 1959.  Brackett was 14 years older [...]

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Screenwriting from Sunset Boulevard (take 3)

Did you know the Midwest had a big part in the success of Sunset Boulevard? Not only was Gloria Swanson born in Chicago and William Holden born in O’Fallon, Illinois (just east of St. Louis) but Nancy Olson who received and Academy Award nomination in her supporting role in the film was born in Milwaukee, [...]

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Screenwriting from Sunset Boulevard (take 2)

There is so much ground to cover with Sunset Boulevard I think I’ll focus on it a few days. And while we’re looking at a movie about a screenwriter who is thinking about moving back to Ohio I thought I’d find a quote from a real Hollywood screenwriter who actually did move back to his [...]

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #61 (Jonathan Winters)

Mentioning yesterday that the character William Holden played in Sunset Boulevard was a screenwriter from Dayton, Ohio triggered in my mind an actor/comedian with Dayton ties, Jonathan Winters. Winters was born in Bellbrook, Ohio, raised in Springfield, Ohio and went to Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio (where Paul Newman also attended) where he studied acting [...]

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Screenwriting from Sunset Blvd.

It’s been many years since I watched the classic Billy Wilder film Sunset Boulevard. I don’t recall seeing it in the over five years since I moved to Iowa. What I realized seeing it recently is that perhaps the most famous on-screen screeenwriter had Midwest roots.  “As I drove back into town I added up [...]

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Screenwriter Millard Kaufman (1917-2009)

Screenwriter Millard Kaufman who died last week at age 92 was twice nominated for an Oscar for writing Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) and Take the High Ground (1953), but he may be more remembered for writing Raintree County which starred Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift. And for those unfamilar with those movies or Kaufman [...]

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