Three life lessons in the invocation I delivered Saturday to a graduating class of university students. I was asked to deliver the invocation to open yesterday’s graduation ceremony at the DePaul University College of Computing and Digital Media celebration. Here are my comments. Welcome. Today we gather to celebrate. Celebrate a milestone as each of you graduates from one chapter of your life to another. Celebrate the years of dedication and hard work in learning a profession, a craft, a calling, discovering who you are … and who you are becoming. Celebrate connections created  ..read more

I know the source of this mantra. It was one of my online screenwriting students. During a weekly live-chat session. I was going on and on about the importance of writing tight, taut, lean scene description, make it easy on the eye, clean on the page, really getting on my bully pulpit. Then a student typed: Minimum words, maximum impact? Here I had been guilty of the very thing I was decrying, then — boom! The perfect comment. Four words. And maximum impact indeed! Screenplays are a unique form. Unlike novels which can be hundreds, even thousands of pages long, a feature length ..read more

Billy Wilder is my all-time favorite filmmaker. Consider just some of his movies: Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), an oeuvre that demonstrates an incredible range in a filmmaking career that went from 1929 to 1981. One of the best books on filmmaking and storytelling is “Conversations With Wilder” in which Cameron Crowe, a fantastic filmmaker in his own right (Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) sat down with Wilder for multiple hours a ..read more

Screenplay by James R. Webb, novel by John D. MacDonald A trailer for the movie: https://medium.com/media/5c89e993f7286fffb94b550117eabd89/href You may read the screenplay here. FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! Page One is a daily Go Into The Story series featuring the first page of movie and TV scripts from the classic era to contemporary times. Comparing them is an excellent way to study a variety of writing styles and see how professional writers start a story. For more Page One posts, go here. Page One: “Cape Fear” (1962) was originally published in Go Into The Story on ..read more

I.A.L. “Izzy” Diamond and Billy Wilder Billy Wilder is my all-time favorite filmmaker. Consider just some of his movies: Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), an oeuvre that demonstrates an incredible range in a filmmaking career that went from 1929 to 1981. One of the best books on filmmaking and storytelling is “Conversations With Wilder” in which Cameron Crowe, a fantastic filmmaker in his own right (Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) sat down with Wilder ..read more

Script Analysis: “American Hustle” — Scene By Scene Breakdown Here is my take on this exercise from a previous series of posts — How To Read A Screenplay: After a first pass, it’s time to crack open the script for a deeper analysis and you can do that by creating a scene-by-scene breakdown. It is precisely what it sounds like: A list of all the scenes in the script accompanied by a brief description of the events that transpire. For purposes of this exercise, I have a slightly different take on scene. Here I am looking not just for individual scenes per se, but a scene or set of scenes that co ..read more

Written by John Michael McDonagh A trailer for the movie: https://medium.com/media/26e236ee32e565fa2f0de47423badb66/href You may read the screenplay here. FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY! Page One is a daily Go Into The Story series featuring the first page of movie and TV scripts from the classic era to contemporary times. Comparing them is an excellent way to study a variety of writing styles and see how professional writers start a story. For more Page One posts, go here. Page One: “Calvary” (2014) was originally published in Go Into The Story on Medium, where people ..read more

One of the most important narrative elements screenwriters have available to us is set-ups and payoffs. The basic idea is this: We establish something that pays off later. Here are some examples: Aliens: In an attempt to make herself useful, Ripley sets up how she can control a power loader. This pays off later when she engages the alien ‘mother’ in combat and delivers her classic line, “Get away from her, you bitch!” The Dark Knight: At dinner with Bruce Wayne, Harvey Dent provides a set-up when he says, “You either a die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villai ..read more

Joe E. Brown, Jack Lemmon in “Some Like It Hot” Billy Wilder is my all-time favorite filmmaker. Consider just some of his movies: Double Indemnity (1944), Sunset Blvd. (1950), Stalag 17 (1953), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Apartment (1960), an oeuvre that demonstrates an incredible range in a filmmaking career that went from 1929 to 1981. One of the best books on filmmaking and storytelling is “Conversations With Wilder” in which Cameron Crowe, a fantastic filmmaker in his own right (Say Anything, Singles, Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous) sat down wit ..read more

Think character. Think plot. Think theme. But when you sit down to write, don’t think… feel. Photo by hannah grace on Unsplash The Atlantic runs a series called By Heart in which authors share and discuss their all-time favorite passages in literature. Here is one by author Kathryn Harrison: The line also defines writing, at least writing the way I experience it. For me, writing is a process that demands cerebral effort, but it’s also one informed by the unconscious. My work is directed by the needs of my unconscious. And through that dark, opaque process, I can restore what might ot ..read more