One of my favourite sites
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If you were on the blog late last night you might have seen a link to, and a cut-and-paste from, this site.
It’s a huge amount of brilliant screenwriting advice from Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott, the guys behind Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean and Aladdin (as well as this year’s less successful Lone Ranger).
Anyway, apparently my cut-and-paste fucked their site up, so now there’s just the link.
Click on it to find out about how ideas (not just screenwriting ones) live and die, the Raiders Of The Lost Ark method of cramming more words onto a page, and why letting your first excellent screenplay go unmade is a really smart thing to do.
Ben – have you read ‘Save the Cat’ by Blake Snyder? (You probably have.) It’s interesting and sometimes jaw-dropping, like when he argues that Miss Congeniality is clearly superior to Memento. (He makes a point of rubbishing ‘arthouse’ movies in general and ‘European’ is used as a term of opprobrium.) Worth a look, if only to get the rundown on the formula used to make formulaic Hollywood movies. And, as the writer of the classic ‘Stop or my mom will shoot’, Snyder knows what he’s talking about. (Interesting to speculate on whether such a formula could be devised for the formulation of a TV commercial, or a new business pitch.)
If you can’t be bothered to read the book, try this article:
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2013/07/hollywood_and_blake_snyder_s_screenwriting_book_save_the_cat.html
Thanks for the tip.
I haven’t read it but it’s next on my list when I finish this:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/18/difficult-men-brett-martin-review
I found Wordplayer.com not long ago and despite the 1995 design aesthetics the content is spot on. Only problem I find is I do a lot of reading and not enough writing!
After clicking on your link to Difficult Men I instantly bought it on Amazon and it just arrived. Looks great. Glad to see it’s not as big as Easy Riders Raging Bulls. Is it good?
It’s excellent.
I just need to finish The Emperor of all Maladies – A biography of cancer, then I’m on it.
Looking forward to something a little more light hearted.
Thanks for the tip.