Yesterday I had an opportunity to visit the National Art Gallery in Ottawa to see special exhibits of two favourite artists, Alex Colville and M.C. Escher. I didn’t realize until viewing the juxtaposition of their works that they shared a structural methodology. (more…)
Gestures Come in Clusters:
“Each gesture is like a word in a language. In order to be understood in a language, one must structure his words into units, or ‘sentences’, that express complete thoughts… Some sincerely believe that a cursory exposure to the world of non-verbal communication equips them to speak the ‘language’ fluently. On the contrary, this only serves to bring their awareness to a conscious (more…)
The First Taste of Success – careful what you wish for:
(a) “I’ve seen a lot of writers who have gotten that first big break, and then they have gone off and partied and hung out and gone to lunch with everybody in town. Six months later, they’ve been having lunches and they haven’t done the work. It’s very important to keep doing the work, because you’re a writer. That is now your career…. And then I’ve seen people who have a lot of success act like, you know, they’re the Second Coming – and they never are.” (more…)
The First Taste of Success – timing:
(a) “The first few years I was writing low-budget movies. I worked (for) entities making movies for next to nothing. It was great because they actually got made. You finally hear how dialogue sounds in the mouths of actors, and get a sense o (more…)
The First Taste of Success – with agent:
(a) “It takes a lot of work for an agent to break in a new writer, so the things they’re gonna look for are really straight-forward. One, a really good personality, because they have to put you in a room with people. Two, that you have very (more…)
Yesterday I participated in a conference call presentation concerning the keys to writing what was termed the ‘profound’ screenplay.
The importance of having a profound impact is not only the intrinsic value to the writer, insofar as unveiling a more layered, and thus impactful story, but also the enhanced marketability to the screenplay reader, then to the potential project producer. (more…)
The Marketplace – the reader’s perspective:
“My goal is to assess every script that I get from two standpoints: Is this a strong story and is this a commercial product? I look at the concept and the premise, and then I examine the execution, the structure, and the storyline. Then I’m going to look at the stakes and the tension, the characters, the relationships, the dialogue, whether the material is emotionally resonant, thematically relevant. (more…)
The Marketplace – the buyer’s perspective:
(a) “I had a project…and they thought it was too violent, but it was a really, really good script. Later the guy said, ‘I really liked it, but I had just come aboard as the production head…I couldn’t say yes to a violent film like this because I was really scared of it at the time’… He’s doing the job he has to do as a suit… It’s a complicated deal, this whole issue of you going in and trying to get somebody interested in a project. You have to know what they want just as much as you (more…)
The Marketplace – selling stories:
(a) “I had no idea that selling oneself was going to be such a huge part of the process, and that your ability to write is secondary only to your ability to walk in to a room and present your idea… a script is already a description of a thing. It’s a description of a movie. So to be describing the description of a thing… But that’s how you get the job.” (more…)
the watch of time 
Memorable Quotes: Tales of Screenwriters – Part Eleven
The First Taste of Success – the agent’s point of view:
“In representing writers, my function is to sell their screenplays, secure employment for them, and negotiate the terms of their deals. The time from when I get handed a script, to getting it made could sometimes be five, seven, ten years – and the large majority of scripts never get made. I probably sell ten to fifteen out of every fifty scripts. But then out of every twenty that I sell, maybe two get made. Because those are the stats, every time you’ve actually gone through that process…it’s a certain kind of high, you know. (more…)
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