Saturday Hot Links
Time for the 393rd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other…
Time for the 393rd installment of Saturday Hot Links, your week’s essential reading about movies, TV, streaming, Hollywood, and other things of writerly interest.
ATA Launches “Agents For Artists” Website As Battle With WGA Continues
As Writers Crowdsource Jobs, Some Could Land a Lawsuit Instead
Box Office: ‘Aladdin’ Soars to Massive $113M Memorial Day Weekend
Box Office: ‘Booksmart’ Gambles With Wide Release and Stumbles
How ‘Booksmart’ went from a 2009 script collecting dust to this year’s must-see movie of the summer
The Box Office Failure Of Olivia Wilde’s ‘Booksmart’ Is A Sadly Predictable Tragedy
Box Office Preview: ‘Godzilla’ Eyeing $50M-Plus, ‘Rocketman’ to Fly to $20M
Cannes: Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 20 Best Films of the Fest
The Best Movies of the 2019 Cannes Film Festival
At Cannes, the Heartfelt and the Scathing Exist Side by Side
Todd McCarthy: A Quiet Cannes Film Festival Grasps at Relevance
Georgia faces exodus of major film studios over controversial abortion law
Netflix Becomes the First Major Hollywood Studio to Pledge to Fight Georgia’s Abortion Bill
Hollywood is rethinking Georgia, sort of. What changed?
Bob Iger: “Very Difficult” for Disney to Work in Georgia If New Abortion Law Enacted
Disney’s Culture War Bob Iger doesn’t help his company with boycott threats
Disney Likely to Leave Georgia if Anti-Abortion Legislation Becomes Law
Rewriting the Past Won’t Make Disney More Progressive
Media Outlets Employ Twice as Many Male Critics as Female Critics
Grand Opening, Grand Closing: The Rise and Fall of the Hollywood Mega-premiere
Hollywood’s Changing As Fast As It Ever Has — Can Industry Lifers Change Too?
How Hollywood Agencies, Studios Are Going Green for “Long-Term” Industry Change
Endeavor’s IPO Could Add Fuel to Hollywood’s Merger Mania
CAA Asks Court to Toss Writer’s Lawsuit Over ‘Main Justice’
Sweden backs bigger-budget female scripts
AMC Stubs Membership Crosses 20M Household Milestone
Black Excellence: Four Black Writers Chosen For The 2019 HBOAccess Writing Fellowship
Feminists with a bullet: how the ageing heroine became screen gold
Marvel Exec Victoria Alonso Welcomes a Female “Future of Hollywood” at Archer Film Festival
Ava DuVernay Says Studios Don’t Offer Her Genre Films Because She’s A Woman
‘Heartbroken’: Weinstein Accusers Say $44 Million Settlement Lets Him Off the Hook
Tiffany Haddish, Jane Fonda and The Hollywood Reporter Comedy Actress Roundtable
Boy George Movie in the Works at MGM
The Long, Still-Bending Arc of George Clooney
Harrison Ford Says That Indiana Jones Dies with Him
‘Family Guy’s’ Seth MacFarlane was attacked by this conservative TV watchdog. Now they’re friends
Miyazaki’s ‘Spirited Away’ to Finally Open in China After 18 Years, Eyes Anime Box Office Record
Midnight Cowboy at 50: why the X-rated best picture winner endures
‘Alien’ at 40: Ridley Scott Explains Why ‘You Don’t Show the Monster Too Many Times’
Can Viacom Leverage Pluto TV Into a Major Streaming Video Business?
What Keeps Hollywood’s Oldest Restaurant Running
Alibaba plans bumper $20 billion HK listing to boost investment war chest
TV Long View: Streaming Future Suffers From Lack of Transparency
If You Want to Understand Disney+, Start by Thinking About Disneyland
‘Barry,’ ‘Good Place,’ ‘Kominsky Method’: How Death Became TV’s Laughing Matter
‘Killing Eve’ Season 2 Stumbled Where ‘Barry’ Soared
The board of CBS is preparing for deal talks with Viacom
Cable Answers Cord-Cutters With Half-Price Cellphone Service
CNN chief Jeff Zucker may be at war with Trump, but the new bosses at AT&T don’t mind
‘Game of Thrones’ Creators Fire Managers on Eve of New TV Deal
What It’s Like to Write a Finale Your Fans Hate
As ‘Game Of Thrones’ Ends, HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ Quietly Becomes IMDB’s Highest Rated Show In History
What 4 Showrunners Look for When Staffing a Writers Room
ESPN’s Star Deals Blurring Lines Between Bottom Line and Journalism
Hollywood Studios Say They’re Quitting Netflix, But the Truth Is More Complicated
How Spike Lee Spends His Sundays
“Either You F — k Me, or I’ll F — k You”: How Zuckerberg’s Billionaires Club Can Atone for Facebook
Wall Street Isn’t Buying What Silicon Valley Is Selling
Inside the Apple Team That Decides Which Apps Get on iPhones
Apple Needs Its Hometown Crowd
‘Linear cannot exist by itself’: OpenAP wants to help TV ad sellers contend with Google, Facebook
Sports Illustrated, the Brand, Is Sold for $110 Million
‘We’ve just gotten smarter’: Why ESPN is rolling out more Snapchat shows
Broadway’s 2018–19 Season Breaks Attendance, Box Office Records
Why the Music Industry Is Betting on Biopics and Documentaries For Its Next Revenue Burst
As the Times Clamps Down on Reporters Going on MSNBC, Is This a Liberal-Media War?
Screenwriting Master Class tip of the week — Pound Out That First Draft!
Go from FADE IN to FADE OUT in my upcoming online writing workshop. Starts June 10th!
As far as I’m concerned, there’s only one rule about a first draft and it’s this: “Get the damn thing done!”
Easy to say. Hard to do.
That’s why I created the Pages I: Writing the First Draft workshop, a structured online environment — 10 weeks, 10 lectures, 10 writing assignments — to empower a writer to get from FADE IN to FADE OUT.
The Writing the First Draft workshop consists of:
- Weekly due dates to compel you to knock out script pages
- Lectures to help steer you through the writing process
- Feedback and support from a community of fellow writers
- Weekly analysis of pages from a pro screenwriter and educator (me!)
- Teleconferences to drill down in your story and the craft of screenwriting
I have found the approach we use in the workshop, breaking down each weekly assignment to 10 pages or so makes the writing much more manageable. That in combination with several other factors make the success rate in my writing workshops — writers actually completing their scripts — quite high.
Some testimonials from writers who have participated in the workshop:
“Having read almost every screenwriting book out there, none can hold a penny to Scott’s approach of story driven by character, which can not only have you confident in your writing abilities, but can also solve the worst case of writers block (as it did for me).” — Aarthi Jayaraman
“A great experience. I didn’t just get a 99 page first draft out of it, I got all the notes, comments and ideas to start my second draft.” — Michael Waters
“I would highly recommend the Pages I course. I was hesitant to spend the money, but Scott Myers is a fantastic instructor: knowledgeable, encouraging, genuine, funny, and generous. The class set up and size is optimal. And although, personally, I was unsure how much I would get from the peer feedback — I found that incredibly rewarding as well.” — Stacey Fernengel
Consider enrolling in the upcoming Pages I workshop. Instructor: Yours truly. It begins next Monday, June 10.
Go here to learn more.
Let me end with some writer quotes about first drafts:
“First drafts are for learning what your story is about.”
— Bernard Malamud
“The first draft is nothing more than a starting point, so be wrong as fast as you can.”
— Andrew Stanton
“Then comes the great leap which is the first draft, I call it ‘the muscle draft,’ where you just muscle it out. You don’t worry about what you’re missing, you just get through it, get to the end.”
— Darren Aronofsky
“Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. That first draft is just spaghetti on the wall.”
— Dennis Lehane
“The first draft, the first structure is really important… Do it fast, don’t get stuck.”
— Oliver Stone
“No matter what you write, good or bad, it’s an improvement to a blank page.”
— Chris Sparling
“Sometimes you’re swinging your way through a first draft like a blind miner with a pick-axe. That’s OK. Get it done, nothing else matters.”
–Justin Marks
If you can write 1 1/2 pages per day, you can end up with draft of your original feature length screenplay and make this summer a productive one!
What if you’ve started a draft, but never completed it? Or have a draft, but feel like you should start from scratch? This workshop is constructed to help those writers as well.
This is the only time I will be offering the Pages I: Writing the First Draft workshop in 2019, so I encourage you to enroll now.
This summer, I have space for a few private script workshops, one-on-one writing courses with me as your mentor. If you are interested, email me.
Don’t forget Prep: From Concept to Outline, the popular online story prep workshop I created in 2010 and have led over 30 sessions with outstanding results for the writers who have participated in it. I’m only offering two sessions this summer: One started May 27, the other begins July 8. For information, go here.
I look forward to the opportunity to work with and support you in knocking out that first draft!