Screenwriting Quote of the Day #113 (Straczynski)

Before J. Michael Straczynski created Babylon 5 or wrote the feature Changeling he wrote The Complete Book of Screenwriting back in the 80s. In 1996 he updated the the book. Straczynski didn’t attend film school but received degrees in psychology and sociology. He seemed to take the dream big, start small approach, “I cut my teeth on little community theater, local newspaper and radio stations.”

Now with hundred of produced credits to his name I’m guessing that he’s the most produced writer to ever write a book on screenwriting. (I’m sure there is a tip or two in there for you that makes the $1.46 plus shipping worth it to pick up from Amazon.) For the quote of the day by him I actually had to look up the word chockablock, which means exremely full, crowded, or jammed. (Don’t remember reading or hearing that word before.)

“The scriptwriting field is unpredictable and potentially hazardous to your sanity, chockablock with all the paraphernalia of warfare–booby traps, blast craters, land mines, poison gas and agents. Your best hope of survival is to begin the journey with as much information as possible about the landscape and the strange people who live hereabouts. Because, while there are certainly those among us out here who’d as soon shoot you as look at you, there are just as many happy to give aid and comfort to a weary soldier.”
J. Michael Straczynski
The Complete Book of Screenwriting
page 2

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Screenwriting Quote of the Day #24 ( J. Michael Stracynski)

The movie Changeling was nominated for three Oscars last week. It’s success has made the writer,  J. Michael Stracynski, an A-list writer in Hollywood. And though he had been writing for TV for 20 years before Changeling sold he recently wrote in Script magazine,”Nobody in features knew me from Adam.” 

They didn’t know about his Emmy winning work on Babylon 5, his novels, short stories, or comic book writing. What got him attention in the feature film world was a script that he spent a year researching going through 6,000 pages of documents. Now he’s been attached to projects with Ron Howard, Tom Hanks, Paul Greengrass and Brad Pitt to follow his Changeling story that attracted Clint Eastwood and Angelina Jolie. 

Because he saw first hand how one script can change people’s perception he wrote the following:

“It doesn’t matter if you didn’t go to the best schools, if you’re a kid or in your 50s. It doesn’t matter if, like me, when I moved to Los Angeles in 1981, you come at the business without friends or relatives in the business. It doesn’t even matter if you spent formative years digging carpet scraps out of dumpsters instead of going to film school. The only thing that matters is the quality of the storytelling. More than hearing about techniques, more than discussing the construction of dialogue, I think that’s the important message; that it’s possible.”
                                                                          J. Michael Stracynski
                                                                          Script
                                                                          Volume 15/ Number 1 
                                                                          Pages 38-39  

And though he was born in Newark and graduated from high school in the San Diego area he did live for a time in Kankakee, Illionis.Which is perhaps why he mentions Kanakakee in the video below.  And he was an early adopter (going back to the 80s) of using the computers to Interact with audiences.

Straczynski also wrote The Complete Book of Scriptwriting.

 

Scott W. Smith

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