Saturday Hot Links

Time for the 342nd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.

Cannes 2018: No Matter the Backlash, This Year’s Festival Gives Us Hope for the Future of Cinema.

Cannes 2018: Christopher Nolan On Why He’s ‘A Pain in the Ass to Everybody’ On His Sets.

Cannes 2018: Brian Grazer & Ron Howard Launch Global Content Accelerator Imagine Impact.

Cannes Faces Existential Crisis: Evolve or Fade?

Cannes Film Festival Signs Pledge for More Women Directors, More Transparency.

How Marvel Broke Storytelling.

‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Beats Out ‘Jurassic World’ As the Biggest Summer Movie Ever.

‘Infinity War’ and Overkilling Death.

Marvel Boss Teases New Movie Featuring Muslim Female Superhero Ms Marvel.

‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Screenwriters On Potential Sequels and Designing a Script Full of ‘Possibilities For Future Adventures’.

‘Solo: A Star Wars Story’ Screenwriters: Replacing Lord and Miller Was an ‘Excruciating’ Process for Everyone Involved.

Is STAR WARS: THE LAST JEDI’s Fan Backlash A Problem Of Disney’s Own Making?

A Comprehensive Look at the Alcohol Consumed in ‘Book Club’.

Can Disney/Pixar find a #MeToo middle ground with a John Lasseter comeback?

Rashida Jones Says ‘Toy Story 4’ Departure ‘Was Complicated,’ Cites Pixar’s Bad Track Record of Women Directors.

Benedict Cumberbatch Asks Male Actors to Turn Down Roles If Female Co-Stars Aren’t Paid Equally.

Geena Davis: ‘Shame On Us’ If Hollywood Doesn’t Make More Diverse Films After ‘Wonder Woman’ and ‘Black Panther’.

The Blumhouse Effect: Why Jason Blum is the Smartest Producer In Hollywood Right Now.

‘The Shape of Water’ Screenwriter Vanessa Taylor is About to Be a Household Name.

Is Your Script Gender-Balanced? Try This Test.

MoviePass Owner Hits Back at Reports Service Is Dying.

Will Subscription-Based Moviegoing Survive the Death of MoviePass?

Why NEON Is The Hot New Distributor In Town.

How 30West Is Fueling Indie Films & Progressive Media Businesses.

How Onscreen Sex Sounds Are Made, From Kissing to Hand Jobs.

What It Was Like to Attend the First Academy Awards.

The Cinematic Legacy of Salvador Dalí.

TV Facts on Pacts: Who’s Scored Overall Deals.

Fox Scorecard: Complete Guide to What’s New, Renewed and Canceled.

NBC Fall Schedule Strives for Year-Round Stability, Plots All-’Chicago’ Wednesdays.

CBS Orders Four Dramas Including ‘Magnum PI,’ Plus Comedy ‘Fam’ Starring Nina Dobrev.

TV Pilots 2018: The Complete Guide to What Lives, Dies and Still Has a Pulse.

Yes We Can: Female Broadcast Drama Directors Excel With Better Pilot-To-Series Batting Average Than Male Helmers.

Here’s What Writers On The Original “Roseanne” Think Of The Trump-Loving Revival.

How Can Traditional TV Networks Compete With Streaming Services’ Mega-Deals?

New 2018–19 Broadcast Shows Slowly Inch Toward Parity.

The Story Behind How ‘Brooklyn Nine Nine’ Was Canceled and Rescued in 31 Hours.

ESPN Upfront: ‘SportsCenter’ Future and 3 More Takeaways From Network’s Presentation to Advertisers.

ESPN Chief Wants to Cultivate Younger Sports Viewers.

Inside ‘Westworld’ With Executive Producer and Director Lisa Joy.

Does Westworld’s Second Season Kinda Remind You of … ‘Lost’?

13 Apple Original Series Currently in Production or Development.

Facebook Suspends About 200 Apps That May Have Misused Data.

Childish Gambino’s ‘This Is America’ Is YouTube’s Biggest First Week Debut This Year.

Listen: Scriptnotes (Episode 350).

Tom Wolfe, ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ Author, Dies at 87.

Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week

I’m only offering two Prep workshops this year, so check them out.

The next session of my Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop begins Monday, May 28. I love teaching it because it’s exciting to dig into a new batch of stories and the process we use has a transformational effect on writers, a wonderful thing to behold. For example, here is an email sent to me from Dawn LeFever who worked with m in the Prep workshop in October-November 2014:

Hey Scott –

Hope you and your family are well. I know you are about to begin another prep course and I thought I’d give you a little insight you might want to share with your new students.

Since taking the course last year at this time, I not only wrote the script I prepped in class, but have written three more since then, having just completed the first draft of the third one yesterday. I LOVE this process and it feels really organic to me.

Every time I begin a new project, I pull out my notebook with the reading assignments and work through the process just as we did in class. I sort of begin the brainstorming list from day one and just add to it whenever anything comes to me while working through the process. I also use note cards before going to outline because it helps me with pacing.

Then, when I’m writing, I have both my script and my outline on my screen and just write away, checking back at the outline to stay on track. More than a few times, as I’m writing, I think about a line of dialog or an action and then look back at my outline and realize what I have in the outline is much better than what was occurring to me in the moment.

At other times, while writing, I will find ways to weave moments in the script that foreshadow what happens later, because I know what’s coming thanks to the thorough prep process.

In other words, as you say, I do truly break the story in prep, which makes the writing so much easier and (hopefully) deeper and richer. I easily knock out 10 pages a day with this process.

I know there are as many different ways to approach writing as there are writers, but, for me, your process makes everything click and, even more, allows me to get really excited to finally sit down and write.

In the past year, I have had some encouraging responses — I was in the top 15% of the Nicholl Fellowship screenplays and was in the top 50 for the ISA Fast Track Fellowship. I made the quarter finals for the Screencrafting Comedy Competition with two scripts (One of them a rewritten version of Smoker’s Choice).

So… forging ahead and having a blast!

Thanks again for everything and tell the folks IT WORKS!!!

All the best,
Dawn

When Tom Benedek and I launched Screenwriting Master Class 7 years ago, the very first course I created was Prep: From Concept to Outline. Why? Because no one else was teaching story prep for screenwriting. That struck me as crazy because most professional screenwriters I know and all TV writers break their story in prep.

Since 2010, I have led over 30 online sessions of Prep and worked privately with dozens of writers. The response has been almost universally like the sentiments expressed by Dawn above.

In fact, Christian Contreras whose script “LAbyrinth” made the 2015 Black List is a Screenwriting Master Class alumnus, having taken this same Prep class with me back in 2014. Verity Colquhoun, an Australian writer who did a private one-on-one version of my Prep class in 2011, let me know the script she wrote (“Wonderful Unknown”) landed a director and is slated to go into production. And David Broyles, who participated in the very first Prep workshop I led back in 2010, was named as one of 25 Screenwriters to Watch in 2016 by the Austin Film Festival. When I emailed David to congratulate him, he sent back a note with this comment about Prep: From Concept to Outline: “I loved that workshop!”

I literally tell writers at the beginning of every Prep workshop: “If you do the work… it works.”

It’s not magic. It’s just a proven, professional approach to develop your story, stage by stage, from concept all the way to outline, beat sheet, or treatment, whichever you prefer.

Consider joining my next session of Prep. But whether you take a class with me or not, it’s imperative you learn some sort of approach to story prep.

Can you imagine routinely writing 10 pages per day? Can you imagine being able to write 3 full-length screenplays in a year? Can you imagine actually enjoying the page-writing process?

As Dawn suggests, all of that can happen if you wrangle your story before you type FADE IN.

I WILL ONLY BE TEACHING THIS PREP WORKSHOP TWICE IN 2017!

The first session starts May 28. The second session begins July 9.

To check out the Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop, go here.

I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!