Why You Should Move to L.A.

“It was kind of a Cinderella night.” Emmy-Winning Producer Cherylanne Martin August 29, 2010 Why should you move to L.A.?—You might win an Emmy and get your picture taken with Tom Hanks. I’ll explain producer Cherylanne Martin’s journey in a moment. Yesterday, I wrote a post titled Why You Shouldn’t Move to L.A. which was geared [...]

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Why You Shouldn’t Move to L.A.

In light of the blog on TomCruise.com giving a nice mention to Screenwriting from Iowa, I posted that Mark Johnson, one of the producers of the Oscar winning- best film Rain Man, graduated from the University of Iowa. Then a friend reminded me of another Iowa connection to Rain Man and that is the original [...]

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Thanks for the Plug TomCruise.com

A few months ago Diablo Cody gave Screenwriting from Iowa a shout out on her Twitter account and I thought that was pretty cool. Today I just learned that the blog on TomCruise.com just gave a nice plug to my blog Screenwriting from Iowa. It took me about 15 minutes to be convinced that TomCruise.com/blog really was [...]

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Writing as an Aggressive/Hostile Act

“In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even hostile act. You can disguise its aggressiveness all you want with veils of subordinate clauses and qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and [...]

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Writing Quote #16 (Joan Didion)

“I write in time to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Joan Didion Essay Why I Write (adapted from Lecture at UC Berkeley) The Writer on Her Work, edited by Janet Sternburg

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Putting the Bust in Blockbuster

“The wolf is always at the door.” Don Henley New York Minute I don’t remember when I first asked myself, “How is Blockbuster going to survive?”—but it was a few years ago. Now with a debt load of over a billion dollars and stocks currently selling at 11 cents, everyone is wondering, “How is Blockbuster [...]

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What is Essential?

I picked up the book The Technique of Screen Writing (published in 1944) about ten years ago at a used book store in Baltimore, Maryland. Not to take anything from any screenwrtiting gurus, but contrary to belief screenwriting books did not begin with Syd Field’s classic book Screenplay, The Foundations of Screenwriting. Was Syd Field even [...]

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Cleveland Screenwriter Hits “Lottery Ticket”

An article by Julie Washington in The Plain Dealer says that before screenwriter 38-year-old Abdul Williams wrote the script for Lottery Ticket that the East Cleveland native was writing short stories as an eight year old. As a teenager he was in theater at Shaker Heights High School and went on to graduate from Ohio [...]

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Can You Identify?

This past Sunday night I turned on a preseason pro football game between Minnesota and San Francisco. My first thought was, “good I’ll get my first look at the great quarterback Bret Favre, in what is likely to be his last season.” But Favre was already out of the game and I quickly lost interest [...]

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Screenwriting Quote #144 (Syd Field)

“Writing should be an adventure, shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, blessed with amazing grace. In theory. of course” Syd Field The Screenwriter’s Workbook page 43

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