Dear Screenwriter,
you gotta be willing to kill your puppies.
Here’s a quick rule that is deceptively simple, very powerful and utterly crucial. This is a rule none of us can escape. This applies to every scene in your script:
If a SCENE does not:
Louis C.K. in "Louie" on FX
I’ve hired a lot of writers… The more original, the more unique your stuff is, the better, I think, rather than trying to hit a certain place that’s going to get you employed. That usually just makes you like everybody else.
Continuing my coverage of FX Networks programming, I took part in a conference call interview with comedy veteran Louis C.K. who is premiering his new 30-minute comedy show “Louie” tonight.
Louis had some great insights into comedy writing and, for my money, elucidated the problem with network television and why it’s been getting its ass kicked by cable television for the past decade. Louis C.K.’s credits include Late Night with Conan O’Brien, “TV Funhouse” on Saturday Night Live, Lucky Louie on HBO and the cult hit movie Pootie Tang.
Premieres June 24, 2010/11:00 p.m. PDT
Dan Calvisi: You are listed as the only writer on IMDB. I don’t know if I missed some press materials where it lists other writers, but if that’s the case, what exactly is your writing process for writing these episodes?
Louis C.K. I am the only writer. That was a decision I made because I just wanted to write and make the show. Writers’ rooms, they kind of gravitate towards a certain place. There’s a need to perfect things in a writers’ room, and that can take a lot of fun out of a show sometimes. It’s a struggle. It depends on your personality. Some people love working with a writing staff. I had a great writing staff on Lucky Louie, but it sometimes felt like Congress or something. It’s like if you’re the president and you have the ability to just fire Congress, life would get kind of fun all of a sudden. Read more
A while back, I was sent an advance copy of Tales from the Script: 50 Hollywood Screenwriters Share Their Stories and I can report that is a fantastic book that gives you the inside word from the best, most influential and most legendary screenwriters in the business. If you’re working on your first screenplay, have written 50, or you’re just a movie buff, this is an invaluable glimpse into a segment of the industry that is absolutely CRUCIAL but rarely explored in such detail.
From Mike Binder to Nora Ephron to Steven E. de Souza to John August to Paul Schrader to Mick Garris to Frank Darabont to Larry Cohen to Josh Friedman… there’s bound to be a writer in here that changed YOUR life with their words that were translated into film. So don’t just worship the actors and directors; work a little harder and learn about the scribes that the pretty people need but will never give their due credit.
There’s a reason why that anti-gravity hallway effect in Inception looks so amazing.
It’s because that shit is real.
No CGI. It’s a giant rig that rotates 360 degrees and it must have cost a fortune. It’s another example of how and why Christopher Nolan is this generation’s James Cameron.
Like Cameron, Nolan insists on spending millions of the studio’s money on creating real, physical spectacles, sometimes for only a single shot.
This is why those aerial IMAX shots in The Dark Knight looked so amazing; those weren’t sets, they were real skyscrapers in Chicago and Hong Kong.
When we see Batman riding his batpod motorcycle…it’s real. They didn’t just hand off the scene to a bunch of animators.
A team of engineers spent months (and a batload of Warner Brothers’ cash) designing and building a new vehicle that a stuntman could actually drive.
Let’s be clear: they invented a vehicle. For..one scene? Yes, for one scene (okay, two and a half scenes, geeks).
Because this A-Team does not help people in trouble. They’re only out for revenge.
This A-Team did not serve time in the same military unit and then escape from a prison camp, thus bonding them together for life. In fact…
This A-Team doesn’t make any sense, whatsoever.
And it just got pitied like a fool by The Karate Kid, which made DOUBLE its gross in their mutual opening weekend.
At this time last year, “The Hangover” and “Up” were going gangbusters at the box-office — both ORIGINAL scripts.
But, wait, The Karate Kid is also a remake of a piece of campy 80s material. So why did it fare so much better?
