Understanding Screenwriting #131
Dope, Tangerine, Inside Out, A Little Chaos, Mr. Holmes, Minions, Night Moves.
By Tom Stempel. A Good “Write About What You Know” Movie…As Opposed To… Dope (2015. Written by Rick Famuyiwa. 103 minutes.) “Write about what you know” is advice given to beginning writers, and it has produced more bad movies (and novels) than good ones. A lot of the bad ones are in the category of […]
Understanding Screenwriting #130
Jurassic World, Mad Max: Fury Road, Pitch Perfect 2, Spy, The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared, Gemma Bovery, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl, Bessie, Olive Kittridge.
By Tom Stempel. Has Nobody Here Ever Read the Book Understanding Screenwriting? Jurassic World (2015. Screenplay by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver and Colin Treverrow & Derek Connolly, story by Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver, based on characters created by Michael Crichton. 124 minutes.) In my 2008 book Understanding Screenwriting: Learning from Good, Not-Quite-so-Good and […]
Understanding Screenwriting #129
Clouds of Sils Maria, I’ll See You in My Dreams, Kings Row, Chariots of Fire, Mr. Arkadin, Mad Men.
By Tom Stempel. It Certainly Passes the Bechdel Test Clouds of Sils Maria (2014. Written by Olivier Assayas. 124 minutes.) As we were coming out of the theatre after seeing this movie, I said to my wife, “I can’t wait to go check out the reviews of this aggregated on Rotten Tomatoes and see if […]
Understanding Screenwriting #128
Effie Gray, The Rewrite, Pride, The Writers: A History of American Screenwriters and Their Guild (book), Richard Corliss: An Appreciation, Don M. Mankiewicz: An Appreciation, Justified.
By Tom Stempel. How The Hell Can We Figure Out What Went Wrong? Effie Gray (2014. Original screenplay by Emma Thompson. 108 minutes.) As you may have been able to tell from her picture appearing on the cover of the 2000 edition of my book FrameWork: A History of American Screenwriting, I am a big […]
Understanding Screenwriting #127
Furious 7, While We’re Young, Woman in Gold, Kingsman: The Secret Service, For Greater Glory: The True Story of Christiada, The Nun’s Story, American Crime.
By Tom Stempel. Letty’s Back. Well, Sort Of. Maybe… Furious 7 (2015. Written by Chris Morgan, based on characters created by Gary Scott Thompson. 135 minutes.) You may or may not remember that in Fast & Furious 6, Chris Morgan, who had taken over the writing of the Fast and Furious series, managed to bring […]
