writing - Devils' Lane, Hollywood, CA

The Editable "His Girl Friday" Screenplay in Final Draft, Fade In Pro, Fountain, and PDF Format

What's not to love about the legendary screwball caper from 1940? If you're new to His Girl Friday, you're in for a treat. It's one of the original "rapid-fire repartee" comedies which influenced Tarantino, Sorkin, and many others. The conversation is so rapid, it was declared the fastest in the

hollywood

The Black List's Back, And It's Worse Than Ever

Hollywood has a lot of lists. The Black List. The Blood List. The Brown List. The Brit List. The Next List. Every December, the results of a survey among execs is "published" as the Black List. It's definitely not being gamed as a circle jerk of votes-for-favours, it's definitely not

hollywood

Solving Velikovsky's Open Screenwriting Problems

In 2016, then-doctoral candidate Joe Velikovsky published his Ph.D thesis "Twenty-Four Open Problems In The Movie Screenwriting Domain", which was based on David Hilbert's 23 Mathematical Problems from 1900. An expanded version of the original idea appears on his website with forty-three items. Joe's work is extraordinary, in an

screenwriting

The Hollywood Writer's Wokescore™ - A Geiger Counter For Filtering Out Irradiated Garbage

We all know it when we see it. Audiences are experts in sensing – and ignoring - the intentions of writers and filmmakers when they attempt to surreptitiously program their perception of reality. Stalin became fascinated with it and made the industrial capture of the art form a top political priority.

academia

The Need For New Laws Dealing with Frivolous And/Or Malignant Scholarship

Outlawing Critical Race Theory and other "divisive concepts" in the education system is a welcome step, but it doesn't address the much bigger problem underneath. "Divisive" doesn't necessarily mean "bad", intellectually-speaking: Galileo and Darwin were divisive; debates divide at the end to discover the result. For sixty years, academics have

film

Fumigating The Radiation Poisoning Of Critical Theory From Screenwriting

Art is not about activism; drama is not about deconstruction; stories are not sociology; plots are not about propaganda or "power dynamics"; arcs are not "analysis"; ideas are not ideology; teleology is not "theory"; juxtaposition is not about "justice"; characters are not low-resolution caricatures; nature is not about "narratives"; writing

screenwriting

Story Plot Structures: How Plays, Games, And Movies (Don't) Work

A good story tells itself. If you are finding yourself stuck and attempting to force the events of a story, your story sucks. Or, you suck at telling stories. Stories with true narrative force are unstoppable. 99.9% of stories created today - even through the 36 situations - are

screenwriting

Story Catalysts: Accelerators, Instigators, Initiators, Inciters

You've got that dramatic arc you want to play out in the scene, but how do you start it? What kicks off or provokes the action? You need a catalyst or provocation which jumps starts a context for your plot point to exist within. In chemistry, catalysis is the process

screenwriting

Understanding How The Other Species Communicates: A Study For Life

Tucked away in Leigh Michaels' (LeAnn Lemberger's) excellent writers' guide, "On Writing Romance" (2007), is a fascinating snippet about male/female relations which wouldn't be amiss in the self-help section of your local bookstore. The concept of us being two different "species" is now so overplayed it's become a trope,