Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 391st installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other…
Time for the 391st installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.
Verve Broke With the Big Agencies and Signed the WGA’s ‘Code of Conduct’
Gavin Polone: This Is the Beginning of the End of TV Agents
Cannes Report, Day 1: ‘The Dead Don’t Die’ Star Bill Murray Calls Fest ‘Frightening’
Cannes Report, Day 2: ‘Les Miserables’ and ‘Bacurau’ Start Strong, John Carpenter Takes a Bow
Cannes Report, Day 3: ‘Rocketman’ Gets Standing Ovation, Mati Diop’s ‘Atlantics’ Is ‘Dazzling’
Cannes Hot List: 16 Titles Set to Heat Up the 2019 Market
Cannes: Can Female Directors Break the Action-Thriller Glass Ceiling?
Cannes: The Secrets (and Scandal) of Hollywood’s Favorite Riviera Hotel
Cannes: Image Nation, MBC, Majid Al Futtaim Team for Mideast Film, TV Projects
What Did Bill Murray Whisper in Selena Gomez’s Ear at Cannes?
How a Nintendo 64 Pokémon Game Helped Set the Stage for ‘Detective Pikachu’
Five years? A decade? Here’s how much of the MCU’s future is mapped out
Pixar Reportedly Focusing Only On Original Films After ‘Toy Story 4’ & Other Recent Sequels
‘Toy Story 4’: Rashida Jones, John Lasseter Among 8 Who Will Share “Story By” Credits
Layoffs Hit Both Disney and Fox Film Groups
Is This Peak Disney? Entering 2020, There Could Be a Financial “Hangover”
Jake Bloom Steps Down From Namesake Law Firm as Johnny Depp Trial Nears
Ryan Kavanaugh Resurfaces With China Film Production, Studio Deal
Stacey Abrams Offers Hollywood an Alternative to Boycotting Georgia Over Heartbeat Bill
Alejandro González Iñárritu Has Words for Hollywood
Upfronts 2019: Networks Prep for Big Changes, as Streaming and Synergy Make Their Mark
TV Upfronts: A Supersized Disney TV Studios Makes a Strong Debut
ABC’s Upfront Gets Buried in Walt Disney TV Excess
Evolution of the TV Upfronts: How a Platform-Agnostic Approach Is Winning Over Ad Buyers
Bazinga! Streaming Deal for ‘The Big Bang Theory’ Comes Into Play
‘Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’ Redefined Songs in Musical Comedy With One Showstopping Number
How ‘Game of Thrones’ Defined a Decade
How Game of Thrones Lost Its Perspective
Why It’s Virtually Impossible to Prevent Game of Thrones Leaks
What to learn about screenwriting from Game of Thrones
‘Game Of Thrones’ Creators David Benioff & D.B. Weiss Shop Global Overall Deal
I Ignored ‘Game of Thrones’ for 8 Years. Then Inhaled It in 5 Weeks.
Will the Fox-Netflix Poaching Fight Upend Sports?
With Full Control of Hulu, Disney Shows It Doesn’t Fear Comcast
Hulu Insiders Upbeat After Disney Takes the Reins
Why Hollywood’s Streaming Wars Sparked an Ontario Soundstage Surge
How a Gay Character on Arthur Reflects Changing Norms in the U.S.
Golden Globes Rule Changes Address Resurgence of Episodic Anthology Series
Facebook Struggles to Recruit Top Talent After Scandal-Filled Year
Mark Zuckerberg Strikes Back at Critics: Says Breakup of Facebook Wouldn’t ‘Help’
U.S. Extends Tepid Support for Accord to Curb Extremist Content Online
Sony and Microsoft Reveal Gaming and AI Partnership
Supreme Court Rules Against Apple in Case Alleging App Store Is a Monopoly
How Google’s privacy moves will spur changes to ad tech
Woodstock 50 Is Back On as Judge Nixes Cancellation Bid
In China, a Podcast Inspired by ‘This American Life’ Gives Voice to the Real
My Time Making ‘Shaft’ With John Singleton
Internet Sensation Grumpy Cat Dies at 7
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week — Prep: From Concept to Outline — “It works!”
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 27. 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 from Dawn LeFever who worked with me in the Prep workshop:
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 10 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 2019!
The first session starts May 27. The second session begins July 8.
Enrollment is limited on a first come, first served basis.
To check out the Prep: From Concept to Outline workshop, go here.
I look forward to the opportunity to work with you!