According to his New York Times obituary, when Syd Field died in 2013, the license plate on his BMW read “PLOT PNT”– his contribution to Humanity. Syd has influenced millions, including myself. I was one of the legion to read his book Screenplay, to outline my scripts using index cards, to learn about his “paradigm” […]
“Tragedy is when I have a hangnail. Comedy is when you accidentally walk into an open sewer and die.”– Mel Brooks Years back I wrote a play, Sounds of Silents: The Essanay Years. Researching it, I essentially lived in the microfilm room at the Harold Washington Library here in Chicago. They would throw me out […]
Hello again, Good Reader. I have braved the four corners of the screenwriting hinterlands to bring you back these rare nuggets of wisdom. Translation: Too much homework this week. So we’ll hit the Links again. There’s some good stuff here. I hope you can use some of it in your own quest to get that […]
In search for my favorite sex scenes in the movies, it occurred to me there were a bunch which are flat out horrible–I mean Ed Wood bad. If I Googled it I’m sure I’d find a list of Worst Sex movies but my list will be a bit different. As with the Best Sex scene […]
Last night teaching at Chicago Filmmakers we were looking over a script loaded with action line verbs like she realizes and he thinks, which, of course, triggered the Unfilmables debate. It always does. The student pointed out several professional screenplays that broke the rules. Being a rule breaker from way back, I was aware of […]
