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Want to Write Your Own Screenplay?

February 21, 2009 in film by Claire | 2 comments

First buy a book . . .

It’s awards season, the time when people all across our great country are thinking, “I could write a better screenplay than THAT.”  In an incredible show of goodguyship, my husband Rob took a break  from writing episodes of “The Simpsons” to read and review some of the top screenwriting how-to guides for those who want to plunge in.  The rest of this post is all him:

Aspiring novelists who walk the fiction aisles at the bookstore wonder how it must feel to finally have a book published after years of hard work, and then they all have the same thought:  maybe I should just write a screenplay.  Movie scripts are a lot shorter, pay a LOT better than novels, and if you do sell one, you’ll have time and money to write your novel, for which, of course, you’ll write the screenplay.  Or maybe you should just write the screenplay first.

The problem is, how do you go about writing a script?  Might there possibly be a book out there that tells you in insufferable detail how to go about the process?  Actually, there are several hundred of those–leading to the thought that maybe the aspiring writer should skip both the novel and the screenplay and go right to publishing his own writing guide.

Anyway,  Claire and Kim asked me to come up with a list of the best screenwriting how-to books, but after agreeing, I realized that I haven’t bought one of these books in years.

So I headed over to The Writer’s Store in Los Angeles.  I spoke with Anthony, one of their extremely knowledgeable salesmen, and asked him to name their top-selling screenwriting book.  He immediately said, “Save the Cat” and pointed to a big empty space on the shelves where it sits when it’s not sold out.  I bought several others he recommended, found my old favorites, and borrowed Save the Cat from a friend, knowing full well that just because it was the flavor-of-the-month didn’t mean it belonged on my list.  From those choices I compiled my top-five list of screenwriting books: Read the rest of this entry »

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I Predict Slumdog Millionaire will Win the Oscar for Best Adapted Writing

February 19, 2009 in film, Uncategorized by Kim | 1 comment

UPDATE: Slumdog Millionaire wins the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay!

Not that this prediction is risky, ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ won the writing award at the Golden Globes, the Writer’s Guild Association Awards and at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards.  It won all of those awards before I read the book, originally called Q&A by Vikas Swarup, or saw the movie.  I  wondered, why the hat trick?  As a I wrote in previous posts, ‘The Reader,‘ ‘Frost/Nixon,‘ and ‘Doubt’ are fine examples of writing in their original format and  the screenplays did a good job of portraying the story.  ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’ irritated me because it wasn’t that story, it was a different one.  But I hope it encouraged people to read F. Scott Fitzgerald and Brad Pitt will be pretty to look at on Sunday night.

I kept hearing different opinions about the movie, a girlfriend told me it was uplifting, a story of hope, and a review called it a present day fairy tale.  But standing in the bathroom line at the movie theatre (men miss out on bathroom line conversations) a woman said it’s the most depressing movie she had seen all year (I wanted to ask if she had seen ‘Revolutionary Road’ or ‘The Reader’ or even ‘Doubt,’ but I waver on whether or not I can contribute to line conversations).  Then, the conversation between Claire and Catherine in the comments section of a previous post described the movie as painful to watch, Claire couldn’t, Catherine squirmed the whole way through.  The Indians are not happy with the movie.  But, it’s winning awards everywhere and not just for writing, it’s sweeping the non-actor major categories.

After reading the book and seeing the movie, I understand better.  I agree, Read the rest of this entry »

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For Shame

February 3, 2009 in book review, film, Uncategorized by Kim | No comments

The Reader as a Book

Like most of the world, my continuing response to the Holocaust is “how could that be?”  Where was human decency?  I’ve learned that there isn’t one answer, but many large and small ones.  The Reader by Bernhard Schlink provides an insight.  When Hanna answers the judge with a truly wondering “what would you have done?” the reader (or viewer in the movie) has to live in her shoes and, hopefully, truly wonder.  It is a question from Hanna to everyone who stands by in life, and it is a question from the Nazi era generation to future German generations.

The Reader is the story of Micheal, a teenager who has an illicit affair with Hanna, a woman more than twice his age.  They have sex (Kate Winslet has her own sex sub-genre this year between “Revolutionary Road” and “The Reader”) and he reads to her.  Hanna suddenly disappears largely due to a desire to keep her own secret.  Years later, Michael attends a Nazi criminal trial and Hanna is one of the plaintiffs.  He discovers her secret, knows that it would reduce her sentencing, possibly her culpability (I don’t think so, personally) and yet says nothing.   Hanna receives a life sentence while her fellow plaintiffs receive four years.  For years, he reads into a tape recorder and sends Hanna the tapes.  He does not interact with her until just before her release over twenty years later. Read the rest of this entry »

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How could the Oscar for Writing Adapted Screenplay possibly go to “Benjamin Button?”

January 6, 2009 in book review, film by Kim | No comments

As I discussed earlier with regard to “Revolutionary Road,” Claire and I are going to try to predict which screenwriter will win the award for Best Adapted Screenplay.  Now, I should be perfectly clear, we have absolutely no qualifications to do this, but so what.  While I don’t know which screenplay I’ll pick to win, I know it won’t be for “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.”

I read the story of the same name by F. Scott Fitzgerald before I saw the movie not worrying that it would ruin the story; the previews already tell the story of a baby born old and growing younger in body.   In any event it was irrelevant, the only thing adapted from the short story to the movie was the title, that’s it.  Not a single fact is the same.  Moreover the concept is different.  In the Fitzgerald story, the baby is born mentally and physically old and both aspects of his life grow younger.  The story familiar to all of us who read The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer of goola baby born physically old and mentally young, then grows younger in body but matures mentally with age, that is the ”Benjamin Button” movie plot line.  Mr. Greer explains that he didn’t know of the movie or the short story and the movie didn’t know of him until his book was published, which explains why the movie wasn’t named after Max.  However, it doesn’t explain why the movie is entirely different from the short story, yet still used its title.  If this concept intrigues you, I recommend the Tivoli book, it’s a nice read. Read the rest of this entry »

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