Who won the Academy Award for Best Screenplay at the first Oscars? Ben Hecht. 1929. The movie was Underworld. Considered one of the earliest, if not the earliest gangster movie ever made, you’d think that would be enough of an achievement for a lifetime. But this is Ben Hecht, and he was just warming up. […]
Let’s carry on with my unconventional list of the best sex scenes in mainstream movies. Remember from the first go-around, the Orson Well quote: “Ecstasy … is not to be communicated by a couple of people, or one person, or any combinations there of, unless it’s actually happening … [Ecstasy] is really not part of […]
Good Reader, another week, another confessional… If there’s one thing I’ve mastered over the years– being Southern Italian and Type A– it’s “hating” well. Hating artfully. To quote The Sound Of Music, here are a few of my least favorite screenwriting things– circa my article this week in Script Magazine. The only thing I hate […]
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 […]
