Shanee Edwards graduated from UCLA Film School with an MFA in Screenwriting and is currently the film critic for SheKnows.com. She recently won the Next MacGyver television writing competition to create a TV show about a female engineer. Her pilot, Ada and the Machine, is currently in development with America Ferrera's Take Fountain Productions. You can follow her on Twitter: @ShaneeEdwards
You may know some of Thurber’s films that aren’t in the action genre. Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Central Intelligence all land in the comedic zone, so how did he finally get to make Skyscraper?
The new documentary Whitney, about the life and death of Whitney Houston drops numerous bombshells about the singer’s troubled life and family. Oscar-winning Scottish director Kevin Macdonald (One Day in September, The Last King of Scotland) takes the audience on an emotional rollercoaster in this honest, raw, sometimes incredibly frustrating film that is a must-see for every Whitney Houston fan. I sat down with Macdonald to explore the details behind telling this powerful story.
As Hollywood and technology change, so do the ways in which you need to market yourself as a screenwriter. The old days of sending query letters - snail-mail or email - to agents, managers and production companies is pretty much over. These days, you have to be savvy, know how to use social media and, most importantly, have a market-ready, ...
I’ve found four examples of movie dialogue I believe encompass all these requirements. They are: The Social Network written by Aaron Sorkin; Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino; Casablanca by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein and Howard Koch and The Silence of the Lambs by Ted Tally and Thomas Harris.
You probably know British writer Ian McEwan best for his award-winning novels like Atonement, Black DogsandThe Comfort of Strangers. But he also writes plays and screenplays, and his novella On Chesil Beach has now been adapted for the screen by none other than McEwan himself. Dialing in from England, we chatted about the film, and the differences between writing a novel and a screenplay.
Comedy writer and actress Natasha Leggero, star and co-creator of Comedy Central’s Another Period, has a brand new standup comedy special on Netflix called The Honeymoon Standup Special. Not surprisingly, it’s hilarious. But I’d expect nothing less from the woman who owns every comedy roast where she flings scorching zingers from the dais. Check out the barbs she throws down in this roast of Justin Bieber:
Written by Melissa McCarthy and her husband Ben Falcone, Life of the Party is really a love story between mother and daughter. We sat down with Falcone, who also directed the film, to find out the inspiration behind the story and what the married couple’s writing process is like.
Though I Feel Pretty might sound like the brainchild of Amy Schumer herself, it wasn’t. The idea was all Kohn and Silverstein’s and when they pitched it to Schumer, she loved it. But there was one element of the story that needed to be addressed: after Renee hits her head and believes herself to be appealing in every way, does her on-screen physical appearance actually change? Would Schumer’s image be replaced by that of a size 2 supermodel?
We all want to write amazing dialogue, but it can be deceptively difficult. The rub is that few people actually say what they mean. Society, religion and class all put constraints on our desires, creating fear and shame that forces us to sensor our words. For the most part, that’s a good thing because it helps maintain the stability of society. But if you want to write complicated characters, you need to understand the juxtaposition of what they are saying versus what they mean. This is called subtext.
Robertson-Dworet had the opportunity to hone her comedy-writing skills writing for the National Lampoon when she was at Harvard. But her dream was to want to write action movies. It seems her dream has come true. In addition to Tomb Raider, she is working on the upcoming Captain Marvel starring Brie Larson, Silver & Black, and Dungeons & Dragons, all set to release over the next three years.
As screenwriters, we can learn a valuable lesson from director Ava DuVernay, and ultimately Disney’s decision to go with a multi-ethnic cast. Though the book A Wrinkle in Time specifies that Mrs. Murray is white, that doesn’t mean Mr. Murray can’t be of a different race or that their children can’t be adopted, opening up the possibility of being a different race.
The first scene in a movie has many jobs to do. Not only must it nail down the tone, time and place where the story is being told, it must also tease the journey ahead. It’s no wonder some writers spend months conceiving and writing the first five pages of their screenplay.