johnaugust.com

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‘ll be leading a Q&A with the filmmakers, talking not just about the film but the challenges and opportunities in making and releasing a microbudget movie

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If both plotlines are key to your story, you need to make that clear in the logline. Otherwise, you risk future readers feeling like you bait-and-switched them.

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In books and in movies, increased sampling usually generates more sales than it costs.

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I’ve picked my Director of Digital Things.

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Adding up the publisher’s expenses shows there is plenty of room for flexibility in pricing.

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I’ve not written Alice in Wonderland three times. It’s a recurring motif, dating back to 1995 and the very start of my career.

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You’re naturally going to be drawn towards real-life people who are fascinating. That’s a good thing. Observe behavior. Figure out motivations and pathology. Then forget the real person.

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Producers and production companies aren’t necessarily going to be excited that someone else had the project before them. Yes, it validates their taste a bit, but they may worry that the script has already been burned out around town. If everyone has read it and passed, what are they going to do with it, exactly?

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I’ve culled 66 applications down to a final few candidates for the new Director of Digital Things job.

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In defense of fake tears and the emotional work screenwriters do.

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Another montage of movie tropes, this one involving medicine cabinet mirrors and their kin.

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I’m interviewed in a new book about screenwriters’ experiences.

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Tonight and next Wednesday, I’ll be hosting the Director’s Close Up panels for Film Independent. Tonight’s director is Jason Reitman, joined by cinematographer Eric Steelberg, editor Dana E. Glauberman and composer Rolfe Kent. We’ll be talking about Up In The Air, Juno and Thank You For Smoking.

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Index cards are a great tool for outlining. Use them wisely.

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When Amazon pulled Macmillan’s titles over the weekend, it was a dick move. With the iPad, Apple is setting itself up for a series of dick moves.

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I’ll be narrowing down my top choices for the Director of Digital Things job beginning Thursday, February 4.

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Scott wonders if his online filmmaking classes are teaching him what he needs to know.

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A few thoughts on Apple’s new tablet, and how we’ll be using it in a few months.

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I’ll be hiring a new full-time employee, a position I’m calling Director of Digital Things.

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One Too Many Mornings is lo-fi funny, a mumblecore Swingers, with a refreshingly clear sense of what it is.

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Yesterday, I flew up to San Francisco to watch the federal trial regarding Proposition 8.

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An indie at this year’s Sundance Film Festival will let you download the movie the day after it premieres.

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Chris works as an assistant at a studio? Do they own anything he writes?

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I’ll be moderating two panels for Film Independent this February at The Landmark in West LA.

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Netflix announced that it wouldn’t be shipping new releases from Warner Bros. until 28 days after street date.

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As an add-on to my earlier post, The Wrap has a detailed article about how nomination votes are tallied.

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This is my first year as an Academy member, and my first year voting for award. Since it’s all new to me, I thought I’d walk readers through the process.

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For the past few years, I’ve been aiming more towards “areas of interest” rather than true resolutions. That way, there’s no implied promise to be broken.

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Joseph Shoer looks at some of the uncomfortable science behind these science-fiction mainstays:

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Useful suggestions for screenwriters working on their first animated feature

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You’re almost never going to show the exact same thing twice. So don’t do it on the page, either.

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Lost in the discussion is that I never insisted ScriptShadow be shut down, but rather pushed it to stay true to its stated mission.

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Clarification on my comments policy. Be polite. Don’t say anything you wouldn’t say in my living room

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ScriptShadow reviews scripts to upcoming movies. And that hurts screenwriters more than anyone.

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Since I was name-checked twice this interview from the top-ranked Wharton School of Business, I feel some responsibility to point out a few fallacies and follies.

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Turn your laptop on its side, and hold it like a hardcover book. It works much better than you’d think, particularly with one of the unibody MacBooks.

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The 2.3 software update adds pdf support for older Kindles, but it’s not as excellent for screenplays as you’d hope.

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Zombies are more than the walking dead. They’re a useful paradigm for a range of common scenarios in many genres.

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Jessica Bendinger (Bring It On, Stick It) is hosting a competition centered around her new novel, inviting readers to adapt a bit from it into a scene.

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As the writer, you need to burn down houses. You need to push characters out of their safe places into the big scary world — and make sure they can never get back.

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WGAw screenwriters should have received an email yesterday about an online survey the Guild is conducting. Please find the email — it might get stuck in your spam filter — and click the link.

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This handy montage might make you think twice about letting one of your characters use the title of the movie in dialogue.

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For this coming year’s festival, Sundance will be taking eight features and their filmmakers out to eight cities across the country on January 28th — before the awards are even given out.

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For newcomers, I can offer a bit of a summary

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The full trailer is now up for Prince of Persia.

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A helpful thing to remember when plotting out stories with a clear antagonist: he probably doesn’t know he’s the bad guy.

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A handy and scary glossary to terms from the Mexican drug war.

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I have little sympathy for users outraged that Hulu is going to start charging.

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Final Draft adds a few useful features.

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Starting next month, you can watch instantly through Netflix on your PS3.

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Gary Whitta wrote in with his proposed moratorium: the wall of expository newspaper clippings.

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Double negative points for saying something quippy after being revived.

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Is it a good idea to focus on making a movie for Christian audiences?

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Todd Sklar is back with Range Life, taking eight indies on tour around the country.

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Really, wireless radio devices don’t need to be touched to work.

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Writers are making less money, and it’s part of a bigger shift in the industry.

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Jordan Mechner has posted the game-footage trailer we used when we pitched Prince of Persia to the studios six years ago

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Amazon’s Kindle, the e-book reader I adore, is now available in more than 100 countries.

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In The Matrix, why do the machines need humans? “As batteries” is a pretty lame answer.

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I did an interview this afternoon with Sam Heer at BlogTalkRadio’s 123Film station, in which we talked about Go, The Nines, the Burton movies and screenwriting in general.

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No! Stop and re-assess. There are at least three options, but simply stealing the plot and characters isn’t one of them.

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SpeedCine indexes movies available through iTunes, Crackle, Hulu and Amazon VOD, letting you know where you can find any given title

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This compilation clip demonstrates what a hoary cliché it has become to explain why movie characters can’t use their cell phones.

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Is it okay to include a brief list of characters for a particularly complex and character-rich script?

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I’m working on a new incarnation of the site, so I checked Google Analytics to see which browsers readers are using.

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A quick look at Adobe Story, the new screenwriting application from the Photoshop folks.

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A new article by Peter Broderick articulates a lot of the points I try to make to filmmakers with truly indie films.

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While most WGA members have already taken a look at the results, other readers might be curious to see the results of the WGA election.

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I twittered about it while it was happening, but if you missed it, author Steve Hely gave a nice interview on NPR’s Fresh Air this afternoon.

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The Nines will be airing on Britain’s SciFi channel several times this month — not to be confused with the U.S. SyFy channel, or the other international outlets with similar names.

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Deadline for ballots is the 17th.

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I handed in a script today, and thought it might be helpful to talk through my best practices when finishing up a draft.

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Most people shouldn’t run their own blogging software.

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New York Times writers offer suggestions for incoming college students.

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When I was buying a house, the rule of thumb was that you could afford a home three to four times your annual income. It feels like there should be an equivalent rule of thumb for how much you can spend on your education versus average salary of your studied profession.

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Looking through the candidates’ statements and endorsements, I want to explain my priorities for this election.

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A reader asks if a planned DVD crosses into dangerous copyright territory.

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Somewhat remarkably, the top two movies in America have subtitles. Lots and lots of subtitles.

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It’s the wrong kind of question, but you don’t know that at the start.

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MakingOf has part two of my interview up on the site, in which I talk about work habits, writer’s block and 20-minute timers.

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An observation made halfway through a five-hour meeting in Beijing: in the movie Groundhog Day, it is never explained why Bill Murray’s character is stuck in a time loop.

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When I published The Variant for 99 cents, I invited readers to explain why they should get it free. Here are some of the requests.

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John H. McWorter’s book Our Magnificent Bastard Tongue is a worthy look at how English came to be.

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Steve Hely’s book is fast, funny, and will likely become the next movie I write and direct

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Screenplays don’t cite references because they don’t quote things.

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An LA Times article about the island of Pagasa makes a great case study in the difference between an interesting setting and an actual movie idea.

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A new online anthology features short stories written by top screenwriters.

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We’ve got a winner and a slew of honorable mentions in the Superheroic Scene Challenge.

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This time, the goal is to write an action scene/sequence suitable for a summer blockbuster — or to subvert this intention so ingeniously that we can’t help but be impressed.

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Brian Lowry cautions against [taking Comic-Con buzz too seriously.

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It’s interesting to note how much better the Kindle sales have held up than the downloads — likely the self-fulfilling nature of being on the best-seller list for its genre.

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I’m busy working on Preacher, and it’s no spoiler to say that it features a gunfight or two. Last night, I twittered to ask what people’s favorite gunfights were, Western or otherwise.

I got a lot of replies, but one name that kept coming up was Michael Mann. He consistently finds ways to send thousands [...]

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A heads-up that a new Scene Challenge will be coming early next week. In anticipation of Comic-Con, this one will be focused on superheroic action.

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Since you released “The Variant” independently, how’d you get the nifty cover art?

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The Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal on the Cablevision case, allowing the Second Circuit Court’s decision to stand. Cablevision can begin introducing its service.

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It’s easy to pick numbers that show how a plumber who saves diligently will out-earn an egghead saddled with student debt.

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MakingOf has an interview up with me in which I talk a bit about my writing process, the challenge of adaptations, and why one’s career is often as much about the scripts you didn’t write.

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…for inviting me to join.

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Indies have high per-screen averages because they’re on so few screens, not despite it.

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Any sort of application, whether it’s for a grant, for college or for a job, needs to do exactly three things.

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My first movie, Go, will finally be coming out on Blu-ray on August 18th.

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Two meetings, a good hike and a chocolate shake made for a good day at the Sundance lab, my last full day before flying home tomorrow afternoon.

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As a counterpoint to the utopian bliss of the Sundance Filmmakers Lab, I’ll direct your attention a speech given by James D. Stern] last week on the present and future of indie film.

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The projects change, but the work is largely the same — helping writers (mostly writer/directors) get their scripts into their best shape before shooting.

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Helpful audioclip from productivity guy Merlin Mann.

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NPR’s All Things Considered tonight has a piece by Alex Cohen about how artists use Twitter, including me with my short story The Variant.

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Film is a hundred different skills and disciplines, and no one person is going to be great at all of them.

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Since the last update, sales for The Variant have been much stronger for the Kindle version than the downloadable version.

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At a screenwriting panel last week, Robin Swicord said something that reframed the issue in a very helpful way.

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The update fixes a rare compatibility issue with the new WordPress 2.8.

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Jonny Sommers has a job many readers want — or at least, think they want: the assistant to a successful and busy TV showrunner.

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This comes from Greeks, a comedy I never finished — and barely started, honestly. It’s set in ancient times, and would have retold several of the great myths in significantly less epic ways.

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Josh Friedman recounts the cancellation of his excellent show Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.

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New Hampshire makes it official.

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If we can get to 40 Amazon reviews of The Variant by noon (LA time) on Thursday, I’ll share a scene from my never-finished comedy Greeks, a collegiate buddy comedy set in mythological times.

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First, avoid it if possible. But if you have to, here’s how.

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How many books does Amazon sell on Kindle each day? Is there a classic long tail — and is it even worth being on it? Amazon is incredibly opaque with the details, even when you’re publishing on their system.

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I really had no idea what people were getting paid for short stories, so I asked Matt to dig up some numbers.

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The NY Times has an article today about The Variant, the Kindle, and my Twitter followers.

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Every May, newcomers to LA inevitably ask, “What the hell are those purple trees?” They’re called jacarandas

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My short story has been on the market for a week. As promised, here’s an update on how the 99-cent experiment has gone.

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Partially-redacted sales data for The Variant is available for curious data-miners.

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I flew up to Oakland yesterday for lunchtime lecture and Q&A at Pixar. And wow. It’s really nice up there.

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Story lessons from Star Trek, from the mouths and minds of the writers.

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If you feel comfortable hand-coding a site, you can get a book on Kindle in 30 minutes or less.

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My short story The Variant is now available for download, including Kindle.

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Some readers had questions they didn’t get to ask on the call-in show last night, so I answered them this morning.

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I’ll be doing a live call-in interview with ScreenTalk tonight at 6PM PDT.

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You shouldn’t just answer questions. Get rid of them before they’re asked.

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Do you ever get sick of working with the same script that you are loathe to even look at it anymore? Yes.

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I can’t reduce it to some simple “He’s Just Not That Into You” formula, but two months is far beyond the limit.

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I met Jerome Schwartz during the WGA strike. Afterwards, I asked him to keep me apprised of how his career was going.

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Italics are a good choice for sign language.

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Final Draft 8 is largely identical to FD7, with some better chrome. If you’re happy with FD7, the addition of a fairly useful navigator and a new XML file format may or may not be enough reason to upgrade.

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Alvin Sargent’s advice: If you have a problem, give it to the character.

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Nice to have you, Maine.

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Screenwriting isn’t a career that only happens in hermit-mode.

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A scriptcast on how to begin a scene for more impact.

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What makes one high-concept idea more execution-dependent than another?

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Synthian Sharp taped my Q&A in Rancho Mirage, and has it available on Vimeo.

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Your hero doesn’t have to fix The Big World Problem by the time the end credits roll.

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While it’s great to have an extra brain helping to write a script, you’re unlikely to always agree, and compromises may not always make sense.

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At the gym yesterday, we were discussing which language would be the best foreign language for a native English speaker to learn. Specifically, can you make a compelling case for any language other than Spanish or Mandarin?

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A parallel set of articles written in a subset of English is remarkable cool.

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Writer Elizabeth Gilbert discussing healthier ways to look at the creative process.

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Many great movies feature characters struggling against their demons, or attempting to find themselves. But that’s not plot.

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Two good write-ups on an incident in which many smart people became swept up in moral outrage based on flimsy evidence.

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Generally, no. Try to make terms understandable in context.

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With an adapted screenplay, it’s not altogether obvious what awesomeness came from the screenwriter, and what came from the underlying material.

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A site featuring tons of TV pilot scripts.

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I almost invented this word today. But didn’t.

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Norman Hollyn, head of the editing track at USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, has a blog post up about “crowd-editing,” the post-production equivalent of crowdsourcing.

Right now, the Advanced Editing class at USC is made up of 11 students who have each taken the dailies of the feature film THE NINES (the really [...]

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If you live in the Palm Springs area, you can join me this Tuesday night for a lecture/screening thing at the Rancho Mirage Public Library.

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A new screencast (scriptcast?) on writing action beats.

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If you say “on accident,” you’re very likely under 30 years old. In fact, among Americans in that age group, it’s more becoming more common than the traditional “by accident.”

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Yes, you can have characters talk about people like Michael Bay without getting permission.

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They filed with SEC, noting “substantial doubt” about their ability to continue.

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Now including Vermont.

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We rarely refer to women as assholes.

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The present progressive tense can be your friend.

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A YouTube lesson on making more-readable scene description.

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Clip and save this handy U.S. map.

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I asked Adam Davis, a young alum from Drake University, to write about his first year starting out in Hollywood. He’s back with a follow-up.

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An article about Redbox, whose kiosks rent DVDs for a dollar a day, isn’t quite the beacon of doom it’s made out to be.

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A correction in the LA Times points to a deeper flaw in English.

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Changing the subtitles for Let The Right One pissed off a lot of fans.

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Don’t turn up your nose to actual paid writing for a company that makes movies.

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Is one reader’s frustration indicative of the Hollywood culture, or specific to him? Likely both.

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In a precautionary move to ward off pirates, Paramount supplied only dubbed prints of “Monsters vs. Aliens” to Russian and Ukrainian theaters.

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The Nicholl Fellowship has a strong track record and good follow-up.

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Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants take on the challenge of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April.

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In February, I linked by Eric Morris about pervasive Los Angeles transportation myths. Here’s a follow-up.

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Following up on my post about getting your kid into preschool, a reader tipped me off to an upcoming documentary on the subject.

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Clay Shirky’s piece “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” is worth all the links it’s been getting:

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With a few simple instructions, you can turn nay normal sentence into a David Foster Wallace super-sentence.

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I’ve been asking around to find more information about studios’ anti-piracy efforts.

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Readers will follow you down almost any rabbit hole provided you can convince them something rewarding awaits.

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They’re not a terrible idea, as long as they’re approached with the right expectations.

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Nearly every browser lets you “View Source,” showing how the page was constructed…up to a point.

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Screenwriting continues to be the most transparent and opaque part of moviemaking.

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For every alcoholic drink, drink a glass of water. Trust me.

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“Based on an idea by” is a rare credit, for good reason.

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You buy and pack most of the same things every time. So make a master list.

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No, really. Most athletic shoes can and should be washed.

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For LA, preschool is the new college.

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The New Yorker has a terrific piece about screenwriter-director Tony Gilroy.

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No, this is not a metaphor for story structure. Change your lightbulbs!

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A new series of posts will give advice about non-screenwriting issues.

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It’s time for the studios to meet the demands of the international audience and avoid piracy at the same time.

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Lessons on screenwriting in action, straight from George, Steven and Larry.

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Taking generals: how to turn a get to know you meeting into paid work.

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Long rumored, and now here. It’s free, and pretty darn good.

The Whispersync feature suddenly makes a lot more sense. If you’re reading a book on your “real” Kindle at home, but find yourself with ten minutes to kill at the car wash, you can open the book to the exact same place on your iPhone.

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Terms that will save you some embarrassment on set, unless — writer — you start throwing them around like you know what you’re talking about.

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Kindle 2: great for books, but not ready for screenplays.

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Answer Finder is a new way to navigate through the hundreds of answered questions on this site.

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Matt gives the full report from a WGA panel about the film industry.

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Cory Doctorow makes many of the points I would about the Authors’ Guild’s grumpiness over the Kindle’s text-to-speech function.

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WGA hosts a panel and Q&A on studio feature development.

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After playing around with it for an hour, I’m pretty happy with the Kindle 2.

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I flew to Paris for a meeting this weekend.

That’s absurd, of course, spending 22 hours in the air just so I could sit around a small table with two other jet-lagged people. But it was an important meeting, a kind of reality-check on a project everyone wants to see done right. As a [...]

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Don’t just think about who “owns” what. There are more practical considerations.

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Sluglines can be more specific, but only when it’s important for the reader.

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Do you give them a name, even if they haven’t shown up on-screen yet?

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Traditional period costume drama + alien crash landing = the definition of high concept.

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I’d recommend writing the one that has the best ending.

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Whenever a family member forwards an email with a warning about an urgent peril to my health, I immediately visit Snopes.com to confirm my suspicion that it’s a hoax. I then copy a link to the article and send it back, with a gently-worded request to please check Snopes before sending out similar emails.

Today’s [...]

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MTV released its final list of top-ten badasses, which included contributions by me and a lot of other folks.

Dirty Harry – “Dirty Harry” Ellen Ripley – “Alien/Aliens” John McClane – “Die Hard” Mad Max – “Mad Max” Walker – “Point Blank” Sarah Connor – “Terminator” Pike Bishop – “The Wild Bunch” Khan Noonien Singh – “Star Trek” Boba Fett – “Star Wars” John J. [...]

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This article by Eric Morris in today’s Freakonomics blog addresses some common myths and assumptions about Los Angeles that I often see brought up by writers who say they could never live here:

Exactly one of the following statements about transportation in Los Angeles is indisputably true. Two are (at best) half-truths, and the [...]

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MTV’s Movies blog asked me to come up with my choices for best movie bad-asses, which I took to encompass both heroes and villains. You can see my list here.

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In his lengthy essay about e-books, John Siracusa makes a good point about how new technologies rarely completely replace what came before them.

Take all of your arguments against the inevitability of e-books and substitute the word “horse” for “book” and the word “car” for “e-book.” (…) “Books will never go [...]

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A few weeks ago, I expressed exasperation upon seeing demos of iMovie 09, which seemed to be working hard to fix exactly the wrong problems. Now that I have it installed, I’ve been able to spend a few days playing around with it. And you know what?

It’s actually a lot better.

Yes, that could [...]

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The Kevin Williamson Problem, explained.

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The thin line between unlimited DVR and video-on-demand.

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Great lesson in how comic books distinguish action, dialogue, and all the rest.

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Last month, a visitor made an unwelcome appearance in our kitchen, eating oranges on the counter. He was first caught virtually by my laptop’s iSight camera, then later physically by a classic spring-lever trap.

It was loud; it was unsettling; it was over.

I actually like rodents as pets. I grew up with gerbils and hamsters, [...]

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In Banging a chainsaw against a tree, I expressed my frustration at those who complain how unfair it is that screenwriters in, say, Duluth, aren’t taken seriously. It got a lot of responses.

Mike writes:

Why can’t he complain if no one takes a screenwriter in Duluth seriously? If he wrote a damn good screenplay that [...]

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My favorite episodes of Intervention are the follow-up ones, in which they track what’s happened with the addicts in the months and years after treatment. Some have stayed clean, others are off-the-rails disasters. I always guess wrong.

Here on the site, I rarely do follow-ups. In fact, once an entry gets pushed off [...]

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My advice to recent film school grads. What did you do today to get closer to your goals?

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A clip from my 2003 pilot, directed by Kim Manners.

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Mourning one of TV’s great directors: Kim Manners.

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I might as well confirm the news: I’m writing a big-screen version of Preacher.

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I was happy to get such a strong reaction since posting the pilot for The Remnants. Every few days, we get a surge of hits as new sites link to it. A fan even set up Draft The Remnants to get people to pledge their love.

For something that’s been sitting on a shelf for [...]

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With the Macintosh now 25 years old, several sites have been discussing which was the best Mac ever. I made up my mind fully before clicking through, and was happy to see so many people agreed with me.

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After eight long years in hiding, the semicolon’s glorious return.

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Ten of the 80 short films featured this week at the Sundance Film Festival are available free on iTunes until January 25th. It’s a great way to see some work you’d almost certainly never catch.

Visit itunes.com/Sundance to check out trailers and download. (Link opens in iTunes store.)

I’m happy to see shorts featured this way, and [...]

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A reader writes in requesting a reexamination of my post “The Perils of Coincidence” in light of an acclaimed movie which is already a screenwriting award contender:

This weekend, I saw Slumdog Millionaire, a story that is succinctly described by the equation: “I knew the answer to this obscure question because this farfetched event happened to [...]

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When you’re auditioning actors for a role, the scenes as scripted are sometimes not especially useful. The solution: write new material specifically for casting.

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Anne Thompson’s Variety article on the challenging market at Sundance this year is worth a read for anyone considering the indie route.

I’ve written several times about my festival experience with The Nines, and how the classic paradigm of how indie films get bought and distributed is almost a myth. Most Sundance movies don’t sell, [...]

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As a guy who runs a blog about the nuts and bolts of screenwriting, I sometimes get frustrated by aspirants who only want to dip their toes in, or believe they should be able to have a thriving film career in Duluth. The don’t want to commit fully to the form or the craft.

A [...]

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A couple of techniques for letting the audience know that two things are happening at the same time.

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Clear sluglines help to weave in and out of animation.

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Hollywood folk are savvy enough to realize that the guys who wrote Saw aren’t any sicker than most screenwriters.

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Hey SAG, back away from the crazy.

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How technology could upend the economics of filmed entertainment.

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It’s a lovely word, and a nice alternative to the similar unctuous.

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On Wednesday morning, we came into the kitchen to find an orange slice on the stove and a tomato that seemed to have exploded. This was obviously troubling.

My initial thought was that one of us had sleepwalked, and acted out some rage issue against fruit. I realize this is a strange explanation to [...]

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A reader from Belgium writes:

I am a dedicated user of Sophocles. Indeed, my new film, its breakdown, call sheets, budget and whatnot have been generated with that software, which I find the best, most complete, film-minded and reliable that I have ever used (and I used or tried about everything that is out there since [...]

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I showed a snippet back in October, but here is the full web pilot I shot during the strike. If you click through to Vimeo, you can see it in full-screen HD.1

For the past few months, the pilot has been shopped around to advertisers and other possible sponsors, but given the economy and my schedule, [...]

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If it were optional, the studio would make sure you didn’t take that option.

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You can see the full list here, including all the TV nominations. Special kudos to picketing-mate Irene Turner, whose An American Crime got a nod in longform.

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A pet peeve and a losing battle with popular meaning.

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Among the products Apple announced today is iMovie 09, an update to their entry-level video editor that I currently find completely unusable. They have demo videos up showing some of the new features, which range from very helpful (stabilization) to fairly gimmicky (the animated maps).

What’s most clear, however, is that they’re sticking with the bizarre [...]

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In the comments thread to my post on Charlie Brown, advertising, and whatever comes after postmodernism, reader Michael makes an important point:

If everything is a reference to a reference to a reference, as so much creative work is currently, then audiences are forced to either “get” everything, or else be alienated by everything. [...]

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Several readers wrote in this morning to point out that The Nines is suddenly now available on Netflix’s “Watch Instantly” feature. If you have a Netflix account, that means free streaming in roughly two clicks.

I’m not sure how the Netflix streaming gets accounted for in terms of residuals, but I’m glad to see another legal [...]

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Before the holidays, I promised a post-mortem on Shazam!, the big-screen adaptation of the DC comic I’ve been working on since early 2007. In case you’re not familiar with the character, here’s what I wrote when I first announced the project:

Captain Marvel is a superhero roughly as powerful as Superman, minus the heat-vision and [...]

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Augusto Pascutti writes in with news of a new Scrippets plug-in, this time for the Habari blogging platform.

You can check out Augusto’s plugin here.

I hadn’t heard of Habari either, but it’s PHP-based like WordPress, and looks like it’s trying to incorporate several newer features of the language.

As always, if you’re a coder who feels like [...]

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The Nines is now available through Amazon’s video-on-demand, with options for download or streaming within the browser window. It’s very straightforward, and I’m always happy for another outlet.

But it costs $14.99. That’s simply too much.

Amazon sells the physical DVD with all the special features for the same price, at considerably more cost to the [...]

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Kudos to the National Film Registry, who just added Terminator to the permanent collection at the Library of Congress. Years from now, when Skynet is defeated, humankind will be able to look to Cameron’s masterpiece and realize, shit, we shoulda known.

Other laudable additions include Deliverance and A Face In the Crowd. If you haven’t seen [...]

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What a mash-up indicates about genres and modern storytelling.

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Thanks and good riddance.

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Read this before you cash that first check.

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Online video service Hulu is now featuring my first movie, Go. If you haven’t seen it — and you live in U.S., and you’re over 17 — it’s worth a look.

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I’m finally over the annoying illness that’s kept me on a reduced schedule these past few weeks. I’m calling it bronchitis, though my doctor never used that term, and it’s possible it was something else entirely. In general I’m not a person who gets sick for more than a day or two, so [...]

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Connect with your Trojan brethren.

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Sometimes there’s good reasons why original writers leave and return to their projects.

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Formatting radio chatter.

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Knowing the answer is part of the craft, just like a cabinetmaker promising a delivery date.

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The combination of family travel, lingering illness and Fallout 3 has kept me away from the blog this week, but I should be back to a normal schedule beginning Sunday.

There’s actual news, including my next writing project and an update (post-mortem?) on Shazam!. Plus, I really want to write something about this misguided memo from [...]

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The sweet, dark gravity of jetlag has subsided, so it’s time I put up a link to the rest of my pictures from France. They’re not all labeled at the moment, but proper titles are coming.

For those who don’t recall, I joined a group of nine American screenwriters on a program organized by Film [...]

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Knowing when to cut and run.

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Is it okay to put a drawing into a script?

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Rifle or shotgun approach to getting an agent?

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I have photos up from the first two days of the screenwriters’ trip to Paris.

Day One

We arrived at 5:30 in the morning, and after meeting our hosts, promptly got on police boats to see the city from the Seine, including a trip under La Bastille and a welcome lunch on a barge.

The afternoon included a [...]

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I’m off to Paris with nine other screenwriters. I’ll be checking in occasionally, but the schedule they have us on is packed, so there may be some lost days.

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There’s a strong likelihood that the networks (and the internet) will announce the presidential winner before the polls close in California. But if you’re headed to vote after work — or if you’re waiting in lines for hours — I’d urge you not to head home just because the big race has been decided. [...]

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Following up on my earlier post about alternative distributions for indies, Splinter has its debut on HDNet Movies tonight, in anticipation of its theatrical roll-out this weekend. (And in competition with a certain presidential candidate’s national address.)

I haven’t seen the movie, but it got a nice review today in Variety, and awards at Screamfest.

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An editing class will recut The Nines from scratch. Final film unseen.

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I’m going to be one of the judges for the 2008 Insomnia Film Festival, an Apple-sponsored competition for U.S. high school and college students. Entrants get 24 hours to write, produce, edit, score and deliver a three-minute short film incorporating specific elements they only announce on the day.

The competition begins at 9:00 a.m. on [...]

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This past week, I trekked down to Norwalk for early voting. I hadn’t originally planned to, but I kept envisioning getting hit by a car on my way to the polls, and watching the returns from a hospital room with two broken legs, despondent that I missed my chance at exercising my democratic right, and [...]

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Friend and occasional writing partner Jordan Mechner has been tinkering on a website for a few months, and is now ready to invite the world in. He has a lot to share about 20 years in the videogame industry, and the transition from designer to screenwriter.

Basically, my plan is to blog, post [...]

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Along with nine other WGA writers, I’ll be headed to France in November to get a backstage tour of Paris and Marseille, in the hopes of finding cinematically interesting people and places. It’s all sponsored by Film France in the hopes of getting more big Hollywood movies shooting there.

It’s a clever idea, one I suspect [...]

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How some are navigating distribution of indie fare.

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Your first script is like the first time you have sex. It’s not the best sex you’re ever going to have. In fact, it would be sad if it were.

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I’m headed to Austin tomorrow to participate in four panels at the Austin Film Festival. They have me scheduled very tight, so if you’re inclined to introduce yourself, it’s generally easier to catch me at the start of a session than the end of it.

As I’ve written before (“Are you somebody?”), in daily life [...]

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Old questions, dusted off and answered.

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The complete script for The Remnants pilot, along with the accompanying character bios, are now up in the Library.

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Yesterday, a Google News alert informed me that the web pilot I wrote and directed way back in February has been dis-embargoed. I’ve been deliberately sketchy on details about the project, but since Variety has the story, there’s no reason to be coy.

It’s called The Remnants.

It’s a comedy about a group of squabbling survivors [...]

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Patrick Goldstein’s article about Hollywood’s Oscar obsession is worth a read:

The Oscars have become a circular firing squad, touted and debated by a small coterie of Oscar publicists, bloggers, marketers, agents, producers and antsy studio executives–all talking to themselves. The public has grown bored with the whole charade. They’d rather be watching “American [...]

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Do millionaires dream of being billionaires?

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On storytelling in games.

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How the writer, actor, director and audience work together.

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The unstoppable Nima has a put together a Scrippets plug-in (sorry, “product”) for the very popular vBulletin forum system. It’s free, and you can find it here. Many thanks to Craig Mazin for his help in the process.

If you’d like to start using scrippets on your favorite messageboard, check the footer to see if [...]

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Results are in, and here are the eight members elected to the WGA Board:

John Bowman Katherine Fugate David Goodman Howard Michael Gould Mark Gunn Karen Harris Kathy Kiernan Aaron Mendelsohn

Katherine Fugate, Karen Harris and Howard Michael Gould are new to the Board; the other five are incumbents. Congrats to all of them.

In particular, I’m happy to see Howard Michael Gould, Mark Gunn [...]

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David Mamet argues that even high-minded goals like social commentary ultimately become Cameron Diaz’s swirling ass — attractive distractions that ultimately lessen a movie. And he’s got a point.

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I have a head cold today, so it ended up being a better day for reading than writing. And ’twas lucky, because more than 110 entries came in for the most recent scene challenge. I’m happy to report that most were quite solid — significantly better than last time, though that was probably because the [...]

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The Scrippets plug-in for WordPress seems to be working well for self-hosted blogs, but it’s no use to folks who use services like Blogger, Tumblr and the like. For people on these on these platforms, the cost of simplicity is customization — they’re easy to use and hard to modify.

But in an effort to share [...]

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Now that Scrippets are up and working, it’s time for the fourth-ever Scene Challenge.

For the first one, Masturbating to Star Trek, you had to write an entire scene. For the second one, Make Your Introduction, you had to introduce one character. The third time involved derivatives, and frankly wasn’t that spectacular.

So [...]

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With Scrippets now in place, we’re well set up for a new Scene Challenge. But I didn’t want to launch one late on a Friday, when many people may not be checking in to the site.

So look for a new one on Monday morning. (You’ll get at least 36 hours of turnaround.) This time, [...]

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A play by play of how it should go down.

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So forgive any wonkiness for the next few minutes. I’m hunting for a single blank line.

UPDATE (2:03 PM): The problem was a single blank line at the start of the XML file, introduced by extra blank lines at the end of the (hacked) Live Comments Preview plug-in.

I took advantage of the downtime to move all [...]

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There’s now an official Scrippets plug-in for WordPress, available here.

It’s been working well in the test sites we’ve seeded it to, but if any issues come up in its wider release, plug-in creator Nima Yousefi will be able to send out one-click upgrades. 1 So if you’re running a WordPress blog, by all means [...]

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Hope to be 100% in a few hours.

Surprisingly, it all seems to be working okay. Even the wiki, which I was certain would break.

If you notice anything broken, leave a comment, or email ask (you know the symbol) johnaugust (dot) com.

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Explorations of ownership in a corporate environment.

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Thanks to the hard work of Nima Yousefi, Will Carlough and Andy Maloney, we have a Scrippets plugin that seems to be working pretty reliably. It’s installed at this site now, and we’ll be seeding it out to a few other screenwriting-oriented websites over the next few days to make sure it plays well [...]

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You made a movie. Get the most you can out of it, then get cracking on doing the next project.

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I won’t throw around terms like “beta,” but if you’re interested in checking out what we have working on the scrippet front, you can visit the test blog and leave a comment to see how it works.

You can leave feedback either here or there.

There’s still more testing to be done to make sure it works [...]

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UPDATED. See below.

For the past four years, I’ve been including little blocks of formatted screenplay examples in my posts, such as…

INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY As the phone RINGS, Gary dozily reaches one dirty-socked foot off the couch to sit up — and suddenly finds himself falling. He lands hard, dazed. We REVEAL that the [...]

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Ways to keeping the reader engaged and clear when you’re skipping around in time.

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Superhero politics should remain abstract.

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Two unrelated questions answered. 1. Clarifying young and old versions of characters. 2. How much research to do before writing.

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Because it also happens to be mine. And it’s today. So in lieu of a brand new article, here’s a brand new plug-in: Random Post.

(Comments are closed, but thank you.)

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The WGA announced this afternoon that all three proposed revisions to the Screen Credits Manual passed handily, ranging from 83 to 90 percent yes votes.

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Formatting for a specific character’s point of view.

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IMDb has message boards for every film and every filmmaker. I would strongly advise you to never read them, and in particular, don’t read them for any film you’ve worked on. You will walk away feeling a little worse about yourself and humanity.

But today, while looking up the name of an actor in Go, [...]

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You can do it, but know the facts and consequences.

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It’s been weirdly under-reported, but Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that seeks to amend the California constitution to ban same-sex marriage, had its official language changed earlier this month. It used to read as follows:

LIMIT ON MARRIAGE. CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT.

Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman [...]

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I’m headed to Seattle tonight for a quick screening of The Nines. I’m packing almost nothing: my iPhone, my Kindle, toiletries and a change of undies. Over the past year, I’ve found I am packing less and less, to the point that it’s become a sport to see how little I can get by with. [...]

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A quick trip to London over the weekend gave me 20+ hours of plane time to catch up on reading. I finished three books. The first two had been sitting on my Kindle1, while the last is dead-tree-only at the moment.

As I’ve mentioned before, screenwriters spend an inordinate amount of time thinking and talking [...]

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Just a reminder for WGA members: ballots are due Thursday for the three screen credit proposals, which I wrote about in more detail a few weeks ago. It’s an easy Yes for all three. They’re basically just closing loopholes.

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One writer, five questions.

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A plug for staying involved in WGA politics.

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And suddenly, we’re up. Honestly, we could have probably been up earlier if I hadn’t mucked around with some things. If the site goes down again over the weekend, don’t despair. Why not see WALL-E?

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Simplicity is not the same as idiocy, or pandering.

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This Distracted Globe has a new look back and review of my first movie, Go.

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The first episode of Joss Whedon’s three-part web series, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, is available on iTunes, and definitely worth checking out. It’s goofy and specific and huggable.

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Making your movie. Keeping your soul.

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The survival of dayplayers benefits us all.

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Why did Edward Bloom leave Ashland? Does beginners luck exist? Shocking answers revealed, inside!

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Todd Sklar, who I know from his work up at the Sundance Labs, wrote in to agree with a lot of the points I raised in my post-mortem of The Nines. His experience with the indie film he made and self-released is alternately inspiring and exhausting, but worth careful attention for anyone considering making [...]

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I want to expand, redirect and challenge some of the discussion on my earlier post about Sundance, The Nines, and the death of independent film.

For starters, many in the P2P world were all too happy to declare victory over, well, logic. (The Nines Director: Forget Sundance, Use P2P Instead). That’s incorrect on a lot [...]

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Llittle choices are what form your style, and developing a narrative voice is a crucial part of your career as a writer.

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A long hard look at distributing independent films.

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On Saturday evening, one hundred friends and family members got together for our wedding at a house in the hills. There were rings and toasts and food and cake. It’s all a bit of a blur. The photos I’ve seen so far have me grinning idiotically, which I’m sure I was.

We had [...]

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A useful visual reference for that adventure tale you can’t work out.

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I’m back from Utah, where I was working as an advisor at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab. I had five projects in three days, which made for a lot of reading and meeting, picking-apart and putting-back-together.

The scripts this year were as emotionally challenging as ever — of the projects I covered, three involved the rape [...]

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Having a cold in the age of the internet gives you none of the TV-watching, bed-resting benefits. You’re typing and clicking just a little more slowly than usual.

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Just as important, what NOT to do when trying to cut length. Don’t cheat.

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Why is Puzzle Farter so gassy?

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Challenges and fixes to the WGA arbitration process.

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The brand to content relationship has come full circle.

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Killing backstories, writing out lyrics and why you will always want to be writing something else (amongst other topics), explored.

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Let’s look at what we can learn from the first batch of summer movies.

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Short answer: yes. But be realistic about the chance of it getting made.

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Always treat your readers like audience members, and think about it from their perspective.

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This morning’s decision by the California Supreme Court means I no longer have to be an unwed father. And for a change, even our Governor is onboard:

I respect the court’s decision and as governor, I will uphold its ruling. As I have said in the past, I will not support an amendment to the constitution [...]

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If I’ve only read 38 on the list of 1001 “Books You Must Read Before You Die,” does that mean I’ll live a long time?

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I’ve written about the importance of a good title before. A great script with a crappy title faces an uphill battle. That’s why I always make sure I have a title I like before I type “FADE IN,” even if I later change my mind.1

So yes, I’d pay for a great title. Today’s LA [...]

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I’ve added two .pdfs to the Library. (Which is the rechristened “Downloads” section. Thanks to whichever reader suggested renaming it.)

The visual FX breakdown for two of the sequences — the end of Part One, and the end of Part Three. Both are spoilers, so skip them if you haven’t seen the movie yet. The shooting schedule. [...]

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“Paul from LA” wrote in with this link to a site I kind of remember using when we were picking a name for my daughter. It lets you type in any first name and graphs how popular it has been (in the U.S.) over the past 130 years. What’s less obvious is that if you [...]

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Y’know, I think we learned something today: Derivatives were maybe not the best choice for the third-ever scene challenge.

I deliberately picked something tough because in real life, screenwriters are often faced with challenging topics to explain. For example, last night I spoke with Ron Bass about the Einstein project he’s working on. Quick: Show special [...]

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I’ve closed comments on the Derivative Challenge to begin judging the 84 entries. Should have a winner this afternoon.

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Dedicate one day a week to disassembling good movies.

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Following up on my article about How to Explain Quantum Mechanics, I think it’s high time for the third-ever Scene Challenge.

For the first one, Masturbating to Star Trek, you had to write an entire scene. For the second one, Make Your Introduction, you had to introduce one character. This time, it’s [...]

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Done just right, jargon helps ground characters in their setting, much the way medical-ese makes you think those pretty people on TV could actually be doctors.

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I’ve made some tweaks to Off-Topic, including adding comments. For those who never click over there, Off-Topic is largely a list of things I find amusing and/or interesting, including a lot of videos.

The section is experimental, with the explicit goal of trying new things that are prone to failure. It’s not even hosted [...]

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Following a reader’s suggestion, I added a 101 section to the sidebar to highlight some of the introductory how-to articles on screenwriting.

This site houses about 950 posts, of which more than 500 are of the non-expiring educational variety. I’d love to find a way to guide new visitors (and aspiring screenwriters) through them without annoying [...]

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My post on the six-hour scene dovetails nicely with this speech by Clay Shirky, which argues that we’re living in an era that’s wrestling with a cognitive surplus:

So how big is that surplus? So if you take Wikipedia as a kind of unit, all of Wikipedia, the whole project–every page, every edit, every [...]

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Having trouble with a scene? Here’s six questions to ask yourself.

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I offer this an explanation and apology for why there will be few blog posts in the coming weeks. Fewer hours spent with friends and family. And an increased number of times I reach for my weapon rather than discussing matters calmly.

GTA IV comes out next week.

Here’s the thing: I’ve never even played I-III. I’m [...]

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On Friday afternoon, WGAw President Patric Verrone and WGAE President Michael Winship sent out an email to members that embarrassed themselves and both organizations. In it, they slammed the “puny few” who bailed on the WGA to take fi-core status, thus allowing them to write for pay during the strike. They provided a link [...]

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You need good readers. Here’s how to choose and keep them.

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When the subjunctive shows up, there’s almost always drama.

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Moment by moment; what to expect and how to behave in meetings.

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Derek Frey recently traveled back to Montgomery, Alabama, and took some great shots of the remaining sets from Big Fish. You can see them all here.

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foot clutter: the tendency for people’s feet to get stacked up unnaturally when combining single shots together to form a group shot.

Example:

This is from the promo materials in development for the web pilot. Each character needs to be in its own layer, so they can stack up for animated graphics.

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Just noticed that The Nines is now available for rental on iTunes.

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A pioneer explains how 3-D changes (or doesn’t) cinema.

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Here’s a useful bookmark: click it and it will generate a first name and last name from the U.S. Census data. Refresh to try again.

So far, I’ve ended up with Michael Nickle, Sandra Gray, Jeffrey Silva and Tricia Lenz. Those might not be names for my theoretical deep-sea cowboy, but for That Guy in The [...]

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My agent leaves me to head HBO. Yeah Sue!

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I spent five days in Maine, writing and researching my next project.

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I’m headed east for a very long weekend, so updates are unlikely until Thursday.

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What the heck is a two-handed comedy? Google turns up lots of two-handed comedies, but no one explains what that means.

– jb

I don’t know if Variety invented it, but it shows up in their slanguage dictionary:

two-hander — a play or movie with two characters; ” ‘Love Letters’ has been one of the most [...]

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Sometimes, you only see one side of a conversation. That’s okay.

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Script Frenzy is starting April 1st. I don’t know enough about it to endorse it, but some readers might find the faux-competitive nature of it motivational.

Script Frenzy is an international writing event in which participants attempt the daring feat of writing 100 pages of scripted material in the month of April. As [...]

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Try replacing the question of what the character wants/needs with, “Why is the character doing what he’s doing?”

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How to expose, fund and distribute your pilot appropriately.

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I was very surprised and saddened to read that writer-director Anthony Minghella has died. His adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley is both justly acclaimed and criminally under-appreciated: every shot, every line, every performance is dead on. Every time I watch it, I’m filled with envy and self-doubt — a strangely empowering combination when seen [...]

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Answering the tricky questions elegantly, so your audience can remain focussed on the story.

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Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, died this morning at age 69.

I haven’t played the game in 15 years, but it remains the single biggest influence in my career as a screenwriter. And I’m not alone: a quick poll of my writer friends revealed a huge number of teenage rangers and [...]

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DIY audience screenings help your product and save you money. Here’s what to ask.

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Last night I went out for beers with my picketing team from the Van Ness gate. I hadn’t spoken with any of them since the end of the strike, so it was nice to catch up, and see them in clothes not specifically chosen for walking in the cold.

Remarkably, it was the first conversation I’d [...]

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A short film, like a short story, can’t waste any time. Here’s what to include, and what to leave out.

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How to format when characters have mysterious beginnings and change identities.

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Matt Venne emailed me this morning to point out something I would have otherwise missed: The Nines just got a Saturn Award nomination for its DVD.

It’s a cliché to say, “It’s an honor just to be nominated,” but really, it is. And surprising, too. The Nines isn’t an obvious choice at all.

The Saturn Awards are [...]

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Don’t be lazy and stupid by relying on existing scenes to visualize your own.

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After reading this Italian blog review of The Nines, I’m convinced that the translation technology behind Babelfish is actually Icelandic singer Björk.

I confess. They are remained struck by lightning from the film The Nines, of which for other I do not have news regarding the distribution in Italy. To the foreign country it is already [...]

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Once upon a time, I had a MySpace page, to which I happily added anyone as a friend. But right around hitting the 1,000 friend mark, I realized my patience for the site’s embedded idiocy — the 1998-style formatting, cheesy graphics, junior high demographics — was finite. I left it sitting fallow,1 even while recognizing [...]

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I generally caution that rewriting is the enemy of finishing, but sometimes it’s necessary.

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The vote passed, with 92.5% of members calling to end the strike. Tomorrow, it’s back to the word factory.

Voting today was my last chance to see some of the WGA staffers I’ve gotten to know during the strike. Some were hired on just to manage specific areas (like picketing), and will be laid off in [...]

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At the Grammy Awards last night, my friend Jen pointed to presenter Miley Ray Cyrus and said, “You know she was in Big Fish, right?”

I insisted that was impossible, and immediately tried to pull up IMDb on my iPhone in order to prove her wrong. But the network inside Staples Center was massively overwhelmed, [...]

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The vote to lift the restraining order, thus ending the strike, occurs tomorrow from 2-6 p.m. at the WGA Theatre in Beverly Hills, and in New York at the Crown Plaza Hotel, 4-7 p.m.

Obviously, you have to be a voting WGA member in order to cast a ballot. I’m looking forward to it as a [...]

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Last night’s meeting at the Shrine was packed. It started late, because of parking challenges. Most of my picket line crew was out sick. And as I took a seat next to a fellow USC’er, I had a brief moment of panic: I spotted a woman with an LED pin which kept scrolling, “IT’S NOT [...]

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Early this morning, the WGA published the terms of the tentative deal reached with the AMPTP, in anticipation of the membership meetings happening later today in New York and Los Angeles. By breakfast, there was already considerable discussion online, with writers and interested parties dissecting the merits and deficiencies in the deal and how it [...]

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Our final day of shooting consisted mostly of chasing actors with cameras, my brief homage to Point Break. We also had our first and only company move — just two blocks, to a tiny medical clinic in Eagle Rock. One by one, we wrapped our actors, until we were left with just one regular and [...]

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Saw a link to this in the comments section at IMDb.

1 drink – every time someone drinks 1 drink – every time someone says “Nine� 1 drink – every time you see the number nine or can make the number nine from something on screen 1 drink – every time you see a pug dog or a [...]

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Update: My cold is getting worse, so I’m going to sit out picketing this afternoon in hopes of rallying for another WGA commitment tonight.

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I’ll be picketing at NBC this afternoon, 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. I’m fighting a cold, so if I don’t shake your hand, please take no offense.

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With all eyes on yesterday’s primaries, the announcement of the big, bi-coastal WGA membership meeting this Saturday was easy to overlook. But it’s certainly a welcome development. It’s widely expected that the WGA boards will discuss the status of the agreement with the AMPTP, and outline the steps needed to get back to work.

I anticipate [...]

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Instead of picketing, I spent today in production on the short-film-slash-web-pilot, details of which I’m keeping infuriatingly mum so that there’s some tiny bit of surprise when I can start showing it to people.

Today went really, really well. We’re shooting two cameras — the HVX-200’s I was all a-twitter over before they came out — [...]

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Picketing at Paramount has new hours, with three overlapping shifts: 7-10 a.m., 9-12 noon, 11-2 p.m. Members can see all the schedules here.

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As I write this on Sunday afternoon, I have no confirmation whether a deal has been reached to end the strike. Rumor and reality have been scrambled and beaten throughout this ordeal, so now seems a particularly bad time to be counting unhatched chickens. (To strain an egg metaphor.)

For any writer — WGA or otherwise [...]

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“Every now and then it’s nice to encounter a movie that just cracks open your skull and has rough intercourse with your brain.” — Jason Adams on The Nines, via JoBlo.

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We had a big turnout for the Van Ness gate this morning — all of the regulars plus a few visitors. We debated whether that was an auspice or a coincidence. Either way, there were a lot of doughnuts.

The old Russian guy who stands across the street watching us for hours decided he wanted to [...]

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I’ll be back at my usual gate and time (5:45 a.m. at Paramount’s Van Ness gate) on Thursday, but writers interested in multi-camera comedies might want to check out Warners Gate 2, for the next Teaching Thursday.

From the organizers:

Writers of various genres join us each Thursday, making themselves available to discuss story, structure and everything [...]

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In North America, The Nines is now available on DVD. So I thought I’d explain what’s on the disc and why, and the process behind it.

The cover art

The original one-sheet for the movie featured Ryan Reynolds tying the green string around his wrist. Even as we were preparing for the theatrical release, we [...]

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I’ve never tried Amazon’s Unbox service, which works with PCs and TiVos. But as I was checking the stats this morning, I noticed a few readers had clicked through and purchased the Unbox version of The Nines.

I’m assuming the $14.99 gets you just the movie, without any of the special features or alternate languages/subtitles. But [...]

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Stuff tends to stack up in the August household.

We have systems in place to optimize magazine readership and recycling,1 but printed objects of which I am the sole reader — comic books, scripts, serio-comic novels purchased on an Amazon spree — have a tradition of piling up on the corners of desks and counters.

I offer [...]

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Circumstances have left me a single dad this week, so it’s unlikely I’ll make it out to the picket line for more than a brief visit. (Toddlers enjoy signs and lines, but not for three hours at a stretch.)

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t go. Go, and report back what you see.

Monday’s picketing is all centered [...]

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IMDbPro’s MOVIEmeter charts how often people are looking for a specific film. This week, The Nines climbed from 1539 to 11 on the charts. Since we’re not the only DVD coming out this week, I have to assume that means a lot of people saw the torrent and wondered what the hell the movie [...]

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In the U.S., ABC will be “network television premiering” Charlie and the Chocolate Factory on Saturday, Feb. 9th. Theatrical movies aren’t showing up on free television much anymore, but Charlie should work well. It falls into TV act breaks fairly naturally.

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How awkward is this: I got a 93%. It’s full of spoilers, so if you haven’t seen the movie, you might want to bookmark this for later.

The Nines quiz

Based on the syntax, I think it’s made by a non-native speaker. And I’m still not clear what the final (and missed) question is referring to: the [...]

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Despite the cold and rain, we had a sizable turnout at the Van Ness gate this morning, with four newcomers joining the stalwart crew. The Seattle folks brought coffee (purchased locally; they didn’t bring it with them), while feature scribes Amy and Liz enthusiastically pitched the plotline of Miracle Mile, an LA disaster movie they [...]

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Aspiring screenwriter and reader-of-the-blog Terry came out to walk the picket line this morning. A recent Notre Dame grad, he’s doing SAT1 tutoring as a day job. My friend Amy does the same thing in New York, and it strikes me as a nearly ideal way for a writer to put ramen in the cupboard. [...]

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This morning was a day of firsts on the picket line. For starters, it was my first day of rain picketing. A clear plastic garbage bag protects the sign, so beyond needing to occasionally wipe off my glasses, it wasn’t a big difference. It was warmer than most mornings, so I’ll gladly take some rain.

Today [...]

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Tomorrow is a U.S. holiday (Martin Luther King, Jr. Day), so there’s no picketing. Tuesday is a big event at Paramount. Details forthcoming.

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Last night I saw Cloverfield at the Chinese. And loved it. Since the first trailer, I’ve been plugging my ears and shouting “la la la la” whenever someone tried to tell me something about the movie, and I’m glad I did. A blank slate is a movie-goer’s best friend.

I have the opposite situation for two [...]

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The story behind former assistant Rawson Thurber’s second feature.

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I had to cancel my Arizona trip, so I’ll be doing van loading tonight, from 5-8 p.m. (Note that you have to be WGA to sign up, since it’s at the headquarters.)

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There’s been a lot of feedback and reaction on this site and others about my c’est la vie attitude towards The Nines showing up on BitTorrent. Some felt I was tacitly endorsing piracy (no), while others wondered if I’d feel the same if I had financed the movie, rather than writing and directing it. So [...]

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I was out sick this morning (on the mend, thank you), and will be headed to a conference in Arizona tomorrow. So I’ll have no news from the picket line for the rest of the week. I predict it will be dark and cold, with some good conversation that I’ll sadly miss.

The general consensus [...]

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I woke up with a cold, so I won’t be at Paramount this morning.

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Since well before our Sundance debut last year, I’ve been curious-slash-paranoid about when The Nines would start showing up on the BitTorrent trackers, the online repository of pirated movies and a few legitimate wares.

It was inevitable that the movie would get bootlegged at some point. The timing was the delicate issue. If it showed up [...]

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Back at my home gate at Paramount this morning, discussion ranged from the DGA deal (which is supposedly done) to Samantha Goodman’s observation that she has a lot more respect for somebody who shivs a guy, rather than using a gun.

Angry Cadillac Woman looked angry, but came nowhere near my legs. Alexa brought homemade muffins. [...]

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This is how disoriented I was this morning at 4:15 a.m.: I nearly left the house without glasses or contacts, simply assuming that my foggy vision was due to sleepiness rather than mildly astygmatic myopia. Fortunately, I remembered that I wear glasses before I got behind the wheel, and was able to enjoy the easiest [...]

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Before the new year, this site was becoming largely a daily recap of the picket line — the strike was making this blog bloggier. With that in mind, I decided this week to bundle my strike and picket news in one end-of-week super-post.

This was a mistake, for several reasons.

For starters, I underestimated the degree to [...]

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I’ll be continuing my early shift at Paramount (5:45 a.m. to 9 a.m.) today and tomorrow.

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So it’s not just me. This Fortune blog article attributes this year’s 2% drop in DVD sales to consumer paralysis over which of the new formats to buy:

Market research showed it wasn’t just NetFlix (NFLX) or Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes hurting traditional DVD sales, either. Consumers who bought HDTVs were so afraid of backing the wrong [...]

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With Warners picking Blu-ray, and Paramount rumored to have an escape clause letting it follow right behind, I finally bought my first Blu-ray disc: Big Fish. And a PS3 to play it on.1

Movies I’ve written are available on both formats, so I didn’t really care who won in the HD DVD vs. Blu-ray battle. I [...]

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I’ve pretty much given up on my campaign to mock and/or eliminate Parade Magazine. It’s an embarrassing publication that no self-respecting American newspaper should include, but it’s not worth the time to regularly dissect its inanity. Particularly when it can embarrass itself so well.

This morning’s Parade Magazine (January 6th, 2008) cover article is on Benazir [...]

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After a nice vacation, it’s back to the picket lines on Monday. I’ll be returning to my home studio, Paramount, working the 5:45 a.m. to 9 a.m. shift. That’s fifteen minutes later than it used to be, so you can’t say that the WGA isn’t mixing it up for the New Year.

For reasons too [...]

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Taking issue with a mischaracterization in the paper of record.

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How to treat characters we’ll meet later but don’t hear from right away.

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How some scripts get an awards push.

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Yesterday was the last official day of picketing before the new year. I was happy to see a large contingent turning out at 5:30 a.m. for my home gate at Paramount. Blog reader Andrew brought along his girlfriend Olivia. Since she’s not even a future WGA member, I felt an obligation to promise her that [...]

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The point-counterpoint debate going on over at LA Times.com makes for good reading, with Craig Mazin and Matt Edelman discussing the strike.

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The main gate at Paramount was more packed than I’ve seen it all strike, and featured some familiar names and faces, both at the podium and in the crowd. Speakers included Howard Rodman, Robin Swicord, Bill Condon, and Harlan Ellison, who filled in for a muted Josh Olson. I wasn’t brave enough to introduce myself [...]

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Yesterday, I braved Actual Sunlight to speak at the Indie Gate gathering at Paramount. It was a great turnout, with a collection of writers expressing a range of opinions, from moderate (me) to far less than moderate (Harlan Ellison).

I’ll have a full recap of the day up later, but I wanted to post what I [...]

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Reminder: I’ll be at Paramount’s main gate for a gathering of indie film writers from 11-2 today.

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Digging through the files this afternoon, I came across this document I’d written for The Nines three years ago, which outlines a lot of my production philosophies at the time. To complete my process-geekery, I thought I’d annotate it to show what we did versus what we planned.

You can download it here (.pdf). Note: Attentive [...]

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On Friday night, I went in to WGA headquarters to help load up vans for the coming week.

Part of my motivation was banking hours; loading vans is a four-hour shift, and actually counts as two normal shifts. But my larger goal was to learn more about the infrastructure behind the strike.

Ever since picketing began [...]

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I’ll be back at Paramount’s Van Ness gate Tuesday morning, beginning at 5:30 a.m.

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The rules for slipping in unknowable lines in your screenplay.

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I won’t be picketing Monday. I went in Friday night to load vans instead.

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Picketing at Paramount was unremarkable, but further reinforced my theory that any session is greatly improved by two in-depth conversations. Yesterday, that was with Aaron Peters, with whom I discussed Tom Green, Andy Dick and other MTV personalities, and Tracy, who came all the way from Houston to check out the picket line. That’s dedication, [...]

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Tuesday at Paramount was notable primarily for the presence of Angry Guy, a picketer who is always looking for a fight. The Van Ness gate is pretty busy,1 and lacking any traffic signals. So it’s not hard to make life difficult for motorists pulling onto the lot, and Angry Guy did his best to make [...]

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I’ll write up more after lunch, but this morning’s screenblogger thing went well.

From left, that’s me, Jane Espenson, Josh Friedman and Craig Mazin.

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Reminder: I’ll be at Warner Bros. tomorrow (gates 2/3) from 8-11 a.m.

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Nine second answers to nine burning questions. Ready…go!

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I’ve enjoyed meeting and picketing with my readership, but it got me wondering: What would happen if a major portion of the screenblogosphere all got together in one place? Let’s find out.

This Wednesday, Craig Mazin, Jane Espenson, Josh Friedman and I will all be picketing the 8-11 a.m. shift at Warner Bros., gate [...]

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The strike gives you time to write fantasy mash-up scripts, if only in your head.

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I’ll be back at Paramount’s Van Ness gate Monday at 5:30 a.m. I suspect I’ll be moving to other studios on other days.

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A writer can get away with quite a few things on stage that are tough to pull off in movies.

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I’m moving a few things around at the site, so there may be some broken links and other navigational hiccups for the next day or two.

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I nearly went over to Burbank to join colleagues at the Gay Gate (NBC), but decided to stay local at Paramount. Irene, a fixture on the 5:30 a.m. shift, pointed out that the key to passing three hours is to have at least two in-depth conversations. As a group, we never reached consensus on [...]

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The days were largely interchangeable, beginning in darkness at 5:30 a.m. at Paramount’s Van Ness gate. Many drivers — both Teamsters and regular motorists — stopped to ask how negotiations were going. Since there’s a press blackout, we have no official information. But two days of talking in rooms beats two days of not talking, [...]

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I knew that the Tin Man poster looked familiar.

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The new flu shot is painless. It’s like the needle is made of whispers and daydreams.

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Although IMDb says otherwise, I’m not writing Tim Burton’s recently announced Frankenweenie feature.

Here’s the long-ish version: I had a meeting with Disney Animation about a year ago, in which they pitched the idea of doing a feature version of Tim’s Frankenweenie short film. They even had production art for it. Then, separately, I had a [...]

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I spent the morning doing phone interviews for The Nines, which gets its theatrical release in the U.K. this Friday. We’re playing at three locations in London…

West India Quay Cineworld Cineworld Chelsea Cineworld Shaftesbury Avenue at The Trocadero

…plus other screens throughout the country. It’s a bit frustrating that in this age of Google, it’s so difficult to [...]

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Early morning at Paramount was chilly but unremarkable, with a mix of familiar faces and new folks. The negotiations (which just re-opened today) were of course a major topic of conversation, but I also learned a lot about the inner workings of Ugly Betty and the wild-west state of videogame writing.

The New York Times pulled [...]

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If any readers care to visit, I’ll be starting a three-hour shift on the picket line at Paramount tomorrow morning at 5:30 am.

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Douglas McGrath has a great piece in Newsweek about the strike. Yes, I know that linking it here is preaching to the choir, but it makes a handy forward to anyone who still needs an explanation about How We Got Here and What’s at Stake.

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Just a reminder: I won’t be at the event on Hollywood Blvd. today. I’m looking forward to readers’ comments and links.

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I spent four hours at WGA headquarters this afternoon, working with a crew of about 20 on new picket signs for the rally on Tuesday. (1 p.m. at the intersection Hollywood and Ivar. A perfect outing with visiting family members. More info here.)

I was on duct tape duty, wrapping sticks before the signs get stapled.1 [...]

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Last night, a bunch striking feature writers gathered for drinks and conversation at EAT on Sunset, just feet from where I picketed way back on day one. Although I didn’t realize it, I was apparently a host for the event. So I’m glad I didn’t listen to my exhaustion and bail on it.

It was [...]

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I missed my daily report due to pure physical exhaustion. I was in bed by 8:15 last night. And the report really begins with Day Nine-point-five, in which I eat dinner.

We have a weekly babysitter on Tuesday nights, which allows my much-better-half and me to eat dinner without constant requests from a polite but cheese-obsessed [...]

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But really, quite a bit like it.

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As a writer who legally changed his difficult-to-pronounce German name, I gotta say yes.

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USC Film School getting a whole new set up. The spoiled bastards.

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Change of venue: I’ll be joining John Gatins’ crew at Universal tomorrow from 9 – 1. Readers always welcome.

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If there’s an idea that really is phenomenal at the heart of the short, you’re better off writing it as a script again.

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[Note: I was originally calling this "day seven," but it's really the ninth day of the strike. It's the seventh day of picketing.]

A better day than six. Warmer, for one, and with more of Paramount’s picketers assigned to the Van Ness gate, the mood was improved. I don’t know what the ideal picketer-per-linear-foot ratio [...]

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[Note: I was originally calling this "day six," but it's really the eighth day of the strike. It's the sixth day of picketing.]

I’ve had early call times for production, so showing up at Paramount at 6 a.m. was no particular hardship. It was dark and cold, but with two layers of fleece and my non-Thermos-brand [...]

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Why you don’t get residuals for old spreadsheets but you do for screenplays.

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I’m on the early shift this week, with strike duty from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. at Paramount. (The Van Ness gate, most likely.)

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Yesterday was the big rally at Fox Plaza, drawing 4,000 protesters to Century City for speeches in front of the Die Hard building.

Zack de la Rocha and Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine kicked it off with a set, followed by remarks from…

Jesse Jackson WGA president Patric Verrone WGA negotiating committee chairman RobJohn Bowman WGA executive director [...]

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Handling perspective in your action lines.

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In the shower yesterday, I was scrubbing my arm and silently wondering, “How did I get so dirty?” Then it hit me — that wasn’t dirt.

I was getting tan.

I’ve been on the afternoon shift all week. While the mornings in Los Angeles have been cool and overcast, the afternoons have been sunny. Very sunny. [...]

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Three blog readers took me up on my offer and joined the picket line at Paramount. In chatting with them about their hopes, fears and immediate plans, I formulated some on-the-fly advice about what I’d do if I were a recent college graduate hoping for a career in Hollywood.

It’s not a great time to move [...]

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Last week, I wrote how much I admired the Pencils Down ad, in which TV’s top showrunners said they would be doing no writing on their shows during a strike. I said that I’d be delighted to sign a similar ad for feature screenwriters. I’m happy to say the WGA took me up on the [...]

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I’m headed from Paramount over to Prospect Studios to help out there. (That’s where Grey’s Anatomy shoots.)

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Video courtesy of THE OFFICE writers.

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I had a hunch the strike would put Josh Friedman back at the keyboard.

AMPTP: Wow, Ms. Prostitute. That was some great sex we just had. PROSTITUTE: Thanks, AMPTP John. That’ll be three hundred dollars. AMPTP: You’re kidding. I’m not paying you. PROSTITUTE: What? AMPTP: I paid you three hundred dollars for sex last week. I consider this promotional.

Read [...]

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Better than the first. Easier, certainly, since there wasn’t the panic of the unknown. I stayed at Paramount, half the time at the main gate, half the time at the smaller Gower gate. It was a very chanty day, but I was in the mood. One of the more popular ones from Gower [...]

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Yesterday, I took my first tour of duty as a picketeer, joining a crew of fellow writers (and allied SAG members) at the front gates of Paramount. Later in the afternoon, I was redeployed at Sunset Gower Studios, where they shoot Heroes. 1

Since most readers will probably (hopefully) never go on strike, I thought I’d [...]

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I’ve been assigned Paramount Studios for picketing, so look for me there Monday afternoon.

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Why the WGA was forced to strike.

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November 1st is the date the WGA contract runs out. It’s also the first day of National Novel Writing Month. Coincidence?

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The WGA strike kills a spin-off, and my episode with it.

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Ever since I called “Hack!” on characters crawling through air vents, readers have delighted in sending me stories of real-life duct-sliders. Here’s the latest installment, courtesy of Derek Haas.

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For the last week, you may have noticed little pictures in the comments section. They are called avatars, and they’re hosted by a service called Gravatar.

If you’d like one, you can register and upload an image.1 It’s free and painless. Conveniently, the same picture will show up any blog that uses the Gravatar system, which [...]

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A few weeks ago, my friend Howard Rodman was asked to give a talk at the 2007 Rencontres Cinématographiques de Dijon, speaking on a panel entitled “Copyright and Droit d’Auteur in the Digital Age.”

Being a reader of the blog, Howard asked if he might incorporate a few of the observations from my Challenge of Writing [...]

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Often, the best answer is the simplest: something physical and achievable.

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Confronted with a bad script, step back and ask the right questions.

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Using dialogue to bridge a cut. (Warning: some readers are haters)

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I’m in New York for the second time in a week. This trip is for a director meeting on the studio’s dime.

While no one will confuse me for a native, I’ve become a lot more comfortable with the city in the past few years. When people give me cross-streets, I generally have some idea what [...]

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Capitalize on people’s affection for your script to find something that pays money.

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What are the pitfalls for a foreigner trying to break into Hollywood?

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I’m in New York for a U.S. Doctors for Africa benefit, during which I’ll be introducing the founders of FOMO, the Malawian orphan group I worked with this summer.

Coordinating our small part of the event has been an interesting example of the flat-worldness of 2007. I’m American; the charity is British; the filmmakers who [...]

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“A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in.â€? — Greek proverb (via Jamie Lee Curtis)

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“My Glorious Defeat,” the article I wrote for Men’s Health, is now up at MSN.com. (No, I don’t get residuals.)

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Video link.

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How I got the gig to write and direct an episode of the (now defunct) HEROES spin-off.

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Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton is fantastic. Move it to the top of your must-see list.

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Last week, I blogged about my upcoming speech at Drake University (my alma mater), which was entitled “The Challenge of Writing in a Digital Age.” I posted my basic thesis statements, and invited comments. As expected, the hive mind was very helpful in reshaping (and renaming) many of my thoughts, so I’m very grateful to [...]

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I promised that as soon as The Nines had reached its widest U.S. opening, I’d be putting the script up in the Downloads section. That time has come.

You can find a .pdf of the screenplay here.

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We have a bunch of overseas dates coming up for The Nines (starting with the U.K. on November 30th), but in terms of North America, we’re basically done. There are some one-off screenings on the books, but nothing resembling a true expansion.

We ended up playing in Los Angeles, New York and Austin.

Am I bummed? Yes. [...]

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The folks at Sundance asked what advice I’d offer people whose films are chosen for the 2008 festival. In case they don’t use my quote, I thought I’d share:

Remember that the reason you’re in the festival is because you made a terrific movie. Once the lights come up after the first screening, there’s no [...]

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Some families, like the WGA, just have a lot of Big Drama, and once you accept that, it’s much less uncomfortable.

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Although we’re still in theaters, we’re busy at work on the DVD for The Nines, which should hit store shelves sometime after the New Year.1 There are going to be quite a few special features on the disc, but it’s the Easter Eggs that have me blogging today.

My question for the DVD gurus out there: [...]

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The U.K. release date for The Nines is apparently November 30th. More info when I have it.

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The opening title sequence for The Kingdom is spectacular, presenting a heroic amount of backstory.

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A call to contribute to a lecture on authorship in the digital age.

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Solidarity equals leverage in negotiations.

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Advice for hasty filmmakers.

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The Alamo Drafthouse is what you wish every movie theater could be: laid-back, but on its game, and run by people who genuinely give a shit about movies. Plus beer! My thanks to them for hosting The Nines last night. (And every night onward, as long as people keep coming to see it.)

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We had 57 official entries. That’s a lot, and it’s about the most I could handle without my eyeballs exploding.1 I’m happy to report that many of the entries were quite good, and it was genuinely a pleasure to watch them. Most of them.

I feel like I should pad this opening bit with [...]

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Wow, that’s a lot of entries. I’ll be announcing the winners tomorrow morning.

Erik Beeson, who so generously helped with the hosting and torrenting, sent along stats:

total torrent file downloads for both torrents combined: 808 (includes search engine crawlers) dv torrent: 162 completed downloads mpeg4 torrent: 79 completed downloads mpeg4.zip: 242 (the direct download) total completed (torrents+direct): 483

Thanks [...]

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The trailer competition is nearing its end, and entries are starting to stream in. Some are quite good.

If I have one general observation, it’s that many of the trailers are trying to be respectful to the (supposed) tone of the movie. That’s fine, but it’s hard to distinguish yourself when aiming for the same [...]

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If you’re in the Austin area, be sure to check out The Nines when it begins its run at the Alamo Drafthouse this Friday. Ryan and I will be on hand for a Q&A after the 7 p.m. screening on opening day.

Since Austin is sort of ground zero for film geekdom, we’re both figuring [...]

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What should the tone of the trailer be?

Whatever you prefer. It can be funny, scary, dramatic or simply weird.

How long should the trailer be?

Most trailers are between one and three minutes, but if you feel like cutting a 30-second spot, or a half hour masterpiece, go for it. I reserve the right to [...]

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Call in sick, ignore your loved ones, and put on a pot of coffee: the trailer competition for The Nines begins today.

The delay in staging the competition has probably led to some over-thinking: What about people who haven’t seen the movie? What about film school students? What about people who are [...]

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Tomorrow, full details of the long-gestating trailer competition will be announced here (and at the lookforthenines site). You’ll have two versions of footage to choose from: DV and MPEG-4. The DV is big and beautiful. The MPEG-4 is small and nimble — and not as bad as you’d think.

To get ready, Erik Beeson [...]

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The importance of mobile phones in Africa is the subject of a good story in the new BusinessWeek. In Malawi, I got four bars in villages without electricity, roads, or running water. Mobile phones are pricey, but without them, it would be hard for the 10 orphan centers of FOMO to coordinate efforts. The next [...]

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Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim. – George Santayana

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Oh to be 16 and anxious…

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Why are TV dramas so good these days? Because they’ve borrowed the look, style and ambition of features. They’re mini-movies that are better than movies. It’s time to steal back.

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“No banging your head on the display case, please. It contains a very rare Mary Worth in which she has advised a friend to commit suicide.” – Comic Book Guy, The Simpsons

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A tough question. Here are some signs that you should quit or stick with it.

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MTV, please, have a seat. We wanted to have this meeting because we love you, and we can’t sit back and watch you destroy yourself. Last night’s Video Music Awards program was an embarrassment. Sure, the headlines are about Britney, but if you took her away all you’d have was a bunch of bored [...]

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Sage advice from a fresh transplant who took the plunge.

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We are a species that needs and wants to understand who we are. Sheep lice do not seem to share this longing, which is one reason why they write so little. — Anne Lamott

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While in Venice, I had dinner with several journalists, buyers, and Gabriele Veneziano, who is the father of our international sales rep.

Veneziano, a physicist, is one of the pioneers of string theory — which is ironic, considering some of the related issues in The Nines. In fact, there used to be a scene [...]

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We did well on our opening weekend, racking up a per-screen average of $14,586, the highest of any movie in the country. That, along with some really good reviews, is allowing us to expand to new theaters for week two.

For Los Angeles:

Laemmle’s Sunset 5 in West Hollywood Landmark’s NuWilshire in Santa Monica Laemmle’s One Colorado in [...]

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I’m back from the Venice Film Festival, where The Nines had its international premiere.

The movie screened three times, but the main public debut was 2:30 p.m. on Monday. At lunch that day, both the sales agent and the publicist separately pulled me aside to say, “So, John, you should know that if the audience [...]

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I’m off to Venice for Critics’ Week, so Matt is running things in my absence. I’ll leave comments open for this thread, if you have thoughts or questions about The Nines (or other topics of interest). There’s also a proper discussion forum running over at lookforthenines.com.

Ciao e grazie.

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Since Sundance, we’ve had a lot of questions (and compliments) about the music in The Nines. We didn’t end up making a conventional soundtrack deal, mostly because the film distribution situation was complicated enough. But you can find most of the music online. Alex Wurman has a lot of the score available for [...]

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Briefly, because there’s a lot going on and I haven’t started packing for Venice.

1. Sellout at the Nuart

The 7:30 p.m. Q&A tonight with me and Melissa (and others) apparently sold out yesterday afternoon. But there’s also a 10 p.m. show that I’ll be introducing. I haven’t gotten an update about the NY screening at [...]

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If you’re going to see The Nines this long weekend, you’ll be in a movie theater. You’ll have the benefit of a giant screen, good sound, and fellow patrons with which to partake (and debate) the film. There’s nothing like watching a movie with a crowd: it’s participatory and immediate.

One of my [...]

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I feel like I’ve done so much publicity on it that everyone probably sick of me talking about it, but here’s the direct appeal:

My movie THE NINES opens this Friday, August 31st, in Los Angeles and New York.

Please come see it. And if you can’t, keep reading to find out how to get it [...]

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Not if it will get you read and your expectations are adjusted.

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The super-deluxe HD version of the trailer is now up at Apple. Me like.

Check it out.

It’s not showing up on AppleTV yet, for whatever reason. I don’t know what subset makes it through, but I presume it’s coming at some point.

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Just so you know, the radio silence around the trailer competition is not for lack of interest or intent. Stuff got very crazy, very quickly, and we had a hard enough time getting the real trailer finished up. (Plus there was other stuff going on.)

We have all the clips ready to go, but we’re [...]

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Today was press day for The Nines, which meant six solid hours of talking about the movie. And it was fine. I conducted all of my interviews sitting next to Melissa McCarthy, so it was a good excuse to exercise our pact of mutual appreciation.1

The event was held at The Four Seasons. [...]

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I’m happy to announce our first expansion outside of New York and Los Angeles: Austin. The Nines will be starting at the Alamo Drafthouse (South Lamar) on September 28th. There’s a Q&A in the works for that weekend with me and Ryan — most likely on the 28th — so be sure to [...]

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First person account of the glorious drudgery of starting at the bottom in Hollywood.

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Honestly, I feel like I’m cheating on all of you when I guest-blog for EW.com. But I did it again.

And then there are the non-Nines variables: babysitting grandparents, geriatric pugs, and the Tim Burton retrospective I want to attend. Plus eight more lessons of Pimsleur Italian, so I can politely explain why I’m throwing [...]

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I have a long essay in this month’s Men’s Health, the one with Jamie Foxx on the cover. It’s not specifically about The Nines, but that’s the main reason I agreed to do it. To buy a single-page ad in the magazine would be more than our entire marketing budget. But for a [...]

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The key ingredient is mutual benefit. Both sides have a lot to gain from making it work.

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How specific to get in your sluglines.

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Steps a publisher can take to offer up properties to moviemakers.

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Ryan and I did an interview for The Advocate about the movie, the business, and our trip to Malawi. It should be on stands now (or soon), with Ryan on the cover.

Yes, the headline reads, “Hollywood’s hottest young star runs off with his gay director.” They conveniently left off, “…to help paint an [...]

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Wow. That was quick. Tickets are now available for the exclusive LA premiere of The Nines at the Nuart.

It’s three weeks away, but when you’re playing on one screen in a city of four million people, there’s a fair chance some of those screenings are going to sell out. So if you’re keen on [...]

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At last. There’s a long blog post to be written about how this all came to be, but I’ll save it for a future edition.

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As promised-slash-threatened, here’s a not-brief write-up of some of the technical aspects of making The Nines.

The movie is made up of three distinct sections, each of which was shot in a different format. That was always part of the plan. The movie is really like three short films back-to-back, and each of them [...]

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Matt sent me an LA Times article this morning which confirms that Google has been busy adding Street View to Los Angeles.

My earlier suspicion that I’d been van-captured has proven true. So far, my mug doesn’t show up in any of the shots, but that’s likely because they seem to have only commercial streets [...]

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Update on New York City’s struggle with what to charge productions.

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It’s up. IGN has an exclusive first look. Stop reading and…

Click Here

Then come back and tell us what you thought. Or better yet, check out the Forum at lookforthenines.com.

Update

There’s a YouTube version as well. Not as big or sharp, but handier.

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Apologies and congratulations to the filmmakers, I had to bolt.

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I have another post up at EW.com, this time about being photographed for the New York Times, and the parental decisions therein. You can check it out here.

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If it’s you and a buddy with a tiny camera, should you really have to register with a governmental agency? I say no.

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MPAA carries water for The Simpsons movie.

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Looking through my YouTube account, I realized that I’d actually posted (and blogged about) our location scouting footage more than a year ago, shortly after we’d wrapped shooting.

I thought I’d go back and grab screencaps from the movie to show you what some of these places looked like as shot. (The following are in [...]

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For a short time, I was running a bit where I would re-answer questions sent to Walter Scott’s Personality Parade®, one of the most odiously irrelevant and self-congratulatory bits of cultural fluff in the lint screen we call popular culture. While I was inspired to write it out of true anger at its existence, [...]

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Because I’m just not busy enough, I’ve started guest-blogging on EW.com’s PopWatch blog, detailing some of the madness related to launching The Nines. You can read the first of these entries today.

One observation so far: I’m snarkier on other people’s blogs than my own.

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In preparation for the trailer competition, I wanted to see how footage from the movie would hold up when subjected to the Flash compression of YouTube and the other video-sharing sites. So I uploaded three clips in various formats to experiment.

The results? Two clips look surprisingly great. The third looks like ass.

The difference [...]

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Who gets paid what, when and how. Broken down.

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Daniel Wallace, the dashing and talented writer who wrote Big Fish (the novel), has a brand new book in stores for your purchasing pleasure: Mr. Sebastian and the Negro Magician. I read it a bazillion years ago — books take a surprisingly long time to go from manuscript to shelf — so I’ll let [...]

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From the comment thread on the Air vents are for air post:

I am an Air Conditioning Duct and I find this entire conversation incredibly ignorant and offensive.

On the rare occasions that I do see my Community represented on screen, it is invariably unrealistic and below industry standard. All the Air Conditioning Ducts of my acquaintance [...]

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A reader alluded to it in the comments of an earlier post, but today we can officially announce that The Nines was chosen to play the Venice Film Festival as part of Critics’ Week.

(At least, I assume we can announce it. We were sworn to double-super secrecy, which is presumably now over, since it [...]

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A few weeks ago, while answering the Grey’s Anatomy question which generated so much talkback, I found myself searching for a specific term I knew had to exist: the human tendency to consider only the samples presented, ignoring other relevant items.

It felt like a fallacy, but it didn’t quite match up to any of the [...]

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Why I can’t say definitively that I’m not in Transformers.

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I brought my videocamera with me to Malawi, only to discover upon unpacking it that the main sensor was shot: it could record sound, but not video. In retrospect, this was a fortuitous failure.

Looking at things through a lens–or on a tiny flip-out monitor–creates a layer of distance, of safety. On a subconscious level, it [...]

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I have all my photos from my visit to Mulanje, Malawi up on Flickr for the world to see. You can check them out here.

You may want to use the “View as slideshow” link. If you do, you’ll notice a floating lower-case “i” over the center of the main photo. (You may need to [...]

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I was walking my dog this morning when I noticed an orange van with strange equipment on its roof: an array of cameras pointing in all directions. As it passed, I read “TeleAtlas: We’re mapping your world!” on the side.

The company is partners with Google, so I have a hunch I may be showing [...]

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I’m back from Africa — physically, at least.

Mentally, I’m still floating somewhere over Dakar. The potent combination of jetlag and unprocessed emotion is making it very difficult to commit to that last leap over the Atlantic. I was only gone two weeks, but it felt like months. Like an alternate timeline, with [...]

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Split screens aren’t always spelled out in scripts, but you can get the idea across.

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How to write when it suddenly seems to become a trivial pursuit.

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How to outline and structure a non-linear story.

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You don’t have to know everything about your story and characters before you begin. Discovery is the best part of the writing process.

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Over the next two weeks, you’ll notice a bit of deja vu at this site: old articles suddenly popping up on the front page, with new dates and old comments. It’s not a technical glitch. I’m putting the site into reruns while I’m out of the country and off the grid.

I’m going to Africa — [...]

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What exactly do you discuss at Sundance? They’re entering with completed scripts, which I assume are perfect to them at the beginning, so where to next? And if you participate in the Screenwriting Lab are you automatically given a Directors Lab spot, if that is what you so choose to do with your completed work?

– [...]

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I’m up at Sundance for the summer filmmakers’ lab, where I’ve worked as an advisor for the past seven years.

For those unfamiliar with the labs, it’s a workshop in which newer filmmakers (generally writer-directors) meet with established screenwriters in one-on-one sessions to sort out issues in their scripts. There’s a winter lab, which occurs [...]

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Hearty congrats to Dana Fox, who shows up in Variety’s Ten Screenwriters to Watch feature this morning. Dana was my assistant between Rawson and Chad, and has worked steadily since. Her latest script, What Happens in Vegas, goes into production soon.

In the picture which accompanies the article, you can see her with the [...]

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An episode of Grey’s Anatomy might have the same title as your spec. That’s not even close to being plagiarism.

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I’ve previously written about my little World of Warcraft problem, which cost me a summer. My latest, greatest productivity killer is called Tower Defense.

It’s not one game really, but rather a genre of videogames in which the objective is to place and upgrade a series of automated kill-bots (towers) in order to obliterate wave after [...]

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Several sites have reported that Disney has picked July 10, 2009 as the release date for Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. My guess is that this got written on a whiteboard at some strategic planning meeting, in answer to the question, “Hey, if we made that Prince of Persia movie, when would [...]

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How to avoid being talked out of your dreams.

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When the shoot begins, the real world comes to play.

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In Final Draft, what do you use the “General” element for? The manual describes its function negatively, saying only that it’s for whatever doesn’t fit into the other elements. Personally, I haven’t found a use for it yet and was wondering what the pros use it for.

– Richard Budd

As far as I know, [...]

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Link to an interview on creativity.

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Titles matter.

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Thanks to many readers, I think there’s a pretty clear game plan emerging for how to do The Nines Trailer Challenge. Several people have offered specific help, both advice and hosting. Bless you. Your email addresses have been duly noted for future follow-up.

Here are the questions I asked, and the answers I [...]

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Video links explaining how film and television writers should approach promoting themselves and their work through the media.

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Every intern has a script. So tread lightly.

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In a collaboration, how to identify contributions and distinguish contributors.

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A few things around the site to mention and discuss:

Chinese in the feeds

This was my bad. I misconfigured a plug-in, and it started to grab some random Chinese Twitter feed. I’m going to be traveling a lot in July, well outside of traditional internet access, so I’ll be needing to use an alternative method [...]

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In a bold choice that shocked, well, me, The Morning News gave this very site one of its 2007 Editors’ Awards for Online Excellence, which is pretty cool considering it’s a damn screenwriting blog.

The other award-winners are more deserving quite interesting, and worth a click-through. I’m particularly enamored by Mindy Kaling’s awesome Things I’ve [...]

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A read-out from the first WGAw Screenwriters’ Dinner.

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One advantage of having a brilliant and devoted readership like mine is that I can occasionally reverse the Q&A process and appeal for your insight. Here’s the situation…

At Sundance, I talked about my plan-slash-pipe-dream of releasing the underlying footage of The Nines simultaneously to its DVD release. Essentially, you could load it into [...]

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Reader Josh C wrote in with one solution to a problem that’s been frustrating me for months. When you want to save a script as a .pdf, Final Draft won’t always include the title page. It’s frustratingly inconsistent. The obvious workaround is to save the title page as a separate file, which is [...]

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If you’re looking to put your story out into the world, paper beats film, hands down.

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Obey the muse, whatever the timing, or risk her departure.

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In case you’re wandering La Croisette, wondering where all the interlocking three-part dramas with unexpected science-fiction elements are, you might want to check out The Nines, which has three market screenings scheduled this week:

Wednesday, May 16th at 12:00pm – Palais K (Market) Friday, May 18th at 8:00pm – Palais K (Market) [...]

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How I earned $86.50 a second.

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There’s no shortcut around becoming a “screenwriter” to becoming a “script doctor.”

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One benefit of leaving the comment threads open is that sometimes a long-dead post gets a surge of new activity. Over the past month, I’ve noticed a few new comments on a 2004 post featuring this photo…

…which is, according to Snopes, probably real in the sense that it’s not Photoshopped — though it’s probably [...]

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The big villain in Spider-Man 3 was a plague of coincidence. Here’s how they could have avoided it.

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Your (excellent) suspenseful thriller spec will find a receptive readership no matter what your ethnicity.

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Easy steps to tracking down rights.

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I had a hunch there would be a lot of entries to the second Scene Challenge, but by the hammer of Thor, I never expected 162.

It’s taken hours to go through them, winnowing it down from a list of 25 to ten to the winner. There were so many solid entries that I found [...]

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Scene Challenge! Give me your best dry-cleaner intro.

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A correction for Jane’s awesome website.

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I got tagged with the Five Things Meme, in which I’m supposed to share five pieces of information most readers probably don’t know about me. Fair enough.

I’m an Eagle scout. I can tie all my knots, splint a broken bone, and build a fire without matches. Growing up in Colorado, I also [...]

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Yesterday’s post was the first mention of New Assistant Matt, which naturally begs provokes the question: What happened to Chad?

Well, by the headline, you can probably guess he sold a spec. Written by Chad and his wife Dara Resnik Creasey, B.F.F. is a high school romantic comedy, roughly Hughesian in nature. Rogue [...]

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One of the most difficult and important lessons to learn. Here’s some great examples and helpful guidance.

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Ever since Sundance, when I announced that GreeneStreet scooped up international rights to The Nines, I’ve been faced with many questions. I knew the answer to the big one but couldn’t say. The answer to all the others depended on the first. So I’ve been sitting patiently, feigning detached acceptance, when I [...]

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In a bit of misguided tweaking, I completely screwed up the RSS feeds for the site. It was a few weeks before I realized the damage I’d done. (I was redirecting through FeedBurner, but only certain formats, leaving other feeds lying dormant. Bad.)

I think everything is fixed now. I’m back to the [...]

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My post on Captain Marvel/Shazam! generated a lot of comments, both on this site and AICN, primarily because of a single observation…

If I were writing a dissertation on the evolution of the Captain Marvel character, [hardcover anthologies] would be invaluable. But I’m not. So every time I read one of these, I’m struck with the [...]

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Ever since I announced that I’m writing Shazam!/Captain Marvel, I’ve gotten some great questions and comments from longtime fans of the character, many with detailed pleas to include a specific cherished piece of the mythology.

But when I tell people face-to-face that I’m writing a Captain Marvel movie, I often notice a specific micro-reaction. Their eyes [...]

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I’m happy to finally be able to announce the next thing I’m writing after Shazam!/Captain Marvel — an adaptation of one of the best-selling children’s books ever: Goodnight Moon, by Margaret Wise Brown.

Anyone who’s ever had a baby has probably read this book, so it’s no surprise that Hollywood’s been trying to adapt it [...]

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It takes both a letter and an omit.

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Ground your notion of Hollywood. While it seems glamorous and lucrative, if you’re coming to the film industry looking to get rich, you’re wasting your time.

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Some rules to using TV for exposition in screenplays.

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When writers direct and a screenwriters’ co-op, discussed.

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According to the internet, Jake Gyllenhaal is playing Captain Marvel. I’ll be sure to let the studio, producers, and director know.

Sigh.

It’s frustrating how in the digital age, random speculation turns to fact in about .003 seconds. And once it starts, it’s like a tire fire: any attempt to extinguish it merely creates a [...]

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It would be nice if the general public had some sense that movies are actually written, and that the actors aren’t making up their dialogue.

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And now, the answer to speculation about why I was busy reading up on DC Comics mythology. As announced today in The Hollywood Reporter, I’m writing Captain Marvel. And I’m very, very stoked.

The movie is set up at New Line, with Pete Segal attached to direct. For those who aren’t rabid fans [...]

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I now fully regret my earlier ambivalence about MySpace. As it turns out, the site is only lame when you have 600 or 700 friends. Having crossed the magic threshold of 1,000 MySpace pals, I truly understand what all the fuss is about.

The difference is MySpace Advanced, and you can only access it [...]

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I’ve seen a lot of articles about the Digg Effect and what a site can expect after having a bunch of new visitors arrive to check out an article, as happened with my recent post on Warcraft.

The general prediction is that readership drops to normal levels pretty quickly, and that’s borne out by the stats.

Page [...]

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Measured by the number of entries, the first-ever John August Scene Challenge was a surprising success. In terms of quality, well, there was a disappointing sameness that I’m going to blame on the limited nature of the assignment.

Many entries were just a slightly-better version of the existing scene. While a lot of rewriting [...]

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Scene Challenge! The first (and dirtiest) ever!

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It’s been a busy week, and the next few days promise to be equally action-packed. So I thought I’d do a quick recap before two weeks go by without any real updates.

Boulder

I gave a lecture on screenwriting at the Boulder International Film Festival. It’s always weird going back to your home town, and even [...]

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Those who’ve seen my movie, The Nines, can infer that I had a bit of a World of Warcraft problem back in the day. “The day” being a period of about four months in which most of my waking hours were spent either playing the game or wanting to. The luxury and danger [...]

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The iPod and mobile phone media will demand their own unique ways of telling a story.

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At the Berlin Film Festival this morning, GreeneStreet Films International announced that they’d picked up the movie for all markets outside North America. It’s news I’ve been sitting on since basically the day after the Sundance premiere. The company really dug the movie and were very aggressive about getting it, so I’m happy [...]

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You really don’t need fancy paper for hand-writing drafts.

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Most times, dialogue reads fine without any special indicators, so save them for when they’re truly needed.

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Knowing the market isn’t the same thing as taste, and everyone’s taste is different.

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Seven steps to writing meaningful, entertaining dialogue while handling exposition.

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Kudos to the writers of HEROES for letting the audience connect the dots.

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Several readers have expressed bewilderment at this site’s weekly Parade feature, asking, “What is the point, exactly?”

That’s a question worthy of koan-like contemplation: can utter pointlessness have a point?

International readers in particular have no frame of reference for Parade, so let me offer the briefest of introductions. Parade comes free in the Sunday paper. [...]

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A few readers have written in asking about the announcement by Dino De Laurentiis that he intends to make a new Barbarella. Specifically, will he be using my script?

As far as I can tell, no. The rights to my script are incredibly murky–it was a shared project between Warner Bros. and Fox 2000, [...]

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Alex Wurman, the composer for The Nines (as well as many other great scores, including March of the Penguins and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind) has posted five tracks from the movie on his website.

Of them, “Cold Turkey” is probably the most interesting without a visual to go with it. The “Knowing Theme” is [...]

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Should the independently financed Star Wars prequels count?

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I was unprepared for the volume of mail I got wondering what had happened to the weekly Parade feature. Sorry. I was busy premiering a movie. But that’s really no excuse. Walter Scott manages to write a weekly column despite not actually existing.

Today’s questions originally ran in the January 28th, 2007 [...]

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Josh Horowitz from MTV News wrote in to point out that The Flash business wasn’t the only thing they ran from our Sundance interview. In fact, the full version, now up on MTV Overdrive, succeeds in making both Ryan and me sound coherent, which is no small feat.

Here’s what you can’t see in the [...]

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Throughout the week, I’ve been trying to convey the Sundance experience with the Twitter feed, but there’s only so much one can communicate in a sentence or two. So I thought I’d fatten out a few entries to give a better sense of how Sundance really went.

Checking through the itineraries and packing lists. Do [...]

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In this morning’s Oscar nominations, I was delighted (but not surprised) to see Doug Crise and Stephen Mirrione nominated for Babel. Stephen Mirrione cut Go, and Doug Crise followed up his work on Babel with a little movie called The Nines.

Huge congrats to both of them.

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As promised, here’s your first look at The Nines, as scripted. The following represents roughly the first three pages of each section.

Part One: The Prisoner

A MAN’S HAND unwinds a short length of green string. We’re extremely close, with a shallow, blurry focus. It’s like the first moments after a dream — just fragments. Scissors [...]

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If you’re reading this site via the RSS feeds, you may not be aware that the “real” site features a continuously updated list of what I’m doing at Sundance. Call it microblogging. It’s powered by Twitter, and doesn’t show up in the main feed.

However, you can subscribe to the just the Twitters at this link.

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In addition to the screenings, I’ll be a panelist at two different events at the festival.

HD House

Cinematographer Nancy Schreiber and I will talk about the HD of it all, with clips from the movie. Monday, Jan. 22nd, at 7 p.m. Yarrow Theater 2 More info here.

BMI Composer Roundtable

Composer Alex Wurman and I will be talking about the music [...]

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Since some most readers won’t be able to catch the premiere in Park City, I’ve decided to give you the literary equivalent by posting the script online. Not the whole script, mind you, but enough of it so that you’ll get a sense of what you’re not seeing.

The script will be available on this [...]

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Your article, “Farrah Fawcett on Parade” states that the first hit in Google for the search “poitier singing porgy” gives the answer to whether or not Sidney did his own singing. But the first hit in Google is a weblog at “johnaugust.com” containing an article entitled “Farrah Fawcett on Parade” that…

Well, at that point, the [...]

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Sundance frowns upon selling festival tickets on Ebay. But looking through the ads, I’m heartened to find that most sellers are technically selling “Sundance guides.” And when you buy the guide, you get one free ticket!

The best disclaimer, however, was this one:

Note: These tickets are free with the purchase of the paper [...]

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*Unless you have to moderate them.

Over at Look For The Nines, the official-for-now site for The Nines, I set up a forum to handle discussion about the movie. I had deep ambivalence about doing this.

Forums pre-date blogs, instant messaging, and even email as we understand it. Stretching back to their BBS roots, forums [...]

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All you need to know about formatting a screenplay, right here (for sale anyway). Second opinions included.

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Every week, I re-answer questions sent to Walter Scott’s Personality Parade®. Today’s column comes from January 7, 2007.

I was shocked by recent photos of Farrah Fawcett. Is she near death?—Carey Roberts, Cleveland, Ohio

Walter Scott cannot predict when or even if Farrah Fawcett will die, because he is not a doctor, and does not actually [...]

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Examples of the differences between the sketch and the full scene.

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No, that’s not my advice to aspiring screenwriters.

The Nines sold out its first three screenings at Sundance, including the 1300-seat premiere. As of this morning, the only tickets available are for the final screening on Sunday, January 28th at the Rose Wagner.

Keep in mind, everything sells out at Sundance. That Ukrainian documentary about [...]

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Update on “How to write a scene” post. Does the character drive the story or the storyteller?

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As we get closer to Sundance, I promise not to besiege you with blurbs about The Movie–that’s what the other site is for. But here’s one. From MTV’s “Ten Most Anticipated” list:

6. “The Nines” Ryan Reynolds and Hope Davis star in this “Magnolia”-like drama, praised by some Hollywood insiders as the best script [...]

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The steps I take and questions I ask myself in order to write a scene.

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The 2007 Oscar screeners.

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In a controversial new feature, I answer questions submitted to Walter Scott’s Personality Parade®. Today’s column comes from December 24, 2006.

After PARADE’s cover story on Carrie Underwood, she won Female Vocalist of the Year and Best Breakthrough Artist at the Country Music Association awards. Has anyone ever won both before?—Allen Cook, Seattle, Wash.

Not only [...]

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Josh Friedman stepped away from his duties at Skynet to shake the dust of his blog.1 Catch him before he goes offline again.

Yes, I meant, “shake the dust offhis blog.” But, in its way, his blog has lain fallow long enough that one could argue it’s become dust itself. (Yes, it’s a stretch.) But [...]

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Another assistant makes his way.

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It’s ironic that your “bitchy queen� piece features your own idiocy on parade. Doesn’t Mr. Hollywood Big Shot realize that Walter Scott is a mouthpiece for hundreds of publicists? His job is to mix the press release morsel in with a bit of trivia to make it seem like gossip, and therefore, interesting. Then [...]

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The decision about which writers’ names are listed in the credits, and what the conjunctions mean between them.

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A new feature in which I answer questions sent to Walter Scott’s Personality Parade®. Today’s column comes from December 17, 2006.

Any truth to rumors that Barbra Streisand will play Mama Rose in a film version of the musical Gypsy?—Mary Jansen, Orlando, Fla.

And this will change your life exactly how, Mary? Let’s say she [...]

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One of my self-assigned projects for the holiday break was to rebuild the site — not so much how it looked, but the coding underneath. Inspired by the SimpleBits re-do, and armed with my copy of Andy Clarke’s Transcending CSS, I envisioned sparkling new CSS, built on a clear semantic framework. No longer would [...]

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2007 Screeners update.

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The catalog for this year’s Sundance Film Festival came this week, which was my first chance to see what everyone else’s first impression of The Nines would be. The festival organizers write the descriptions for the films, so you’re sort of at their mercy. Fortunately, John Cooper wrote up a very nice blurb [...]

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Coming across the accidental debris of celebrities — or better yet, quasi-celebrities — is strangely fascinating.

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A surprising number of readers have been buying stuff through the Store,1 leading me to wonder, “What other tangible products do I have opinions about?”

It turns out, the tangible items I handle most these days are board books for my 17-month old daughter. She has her favorites; I have mine. I’ve taken the [...]

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I’m not going to suggest that devoted readers fly thousands of miles to see The Nines at Sundance. But I’m not going to not suggest it.

I’ve long been of the mindset that there’s no reason to go to Sundance unless you have a movie there. I haven’t been since Go debuted there in 1999. [...]

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Your money would be better spent elsewhere. Such as Vegas.

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When other people have the same ideas and act on them, it helps me clear my slate.

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When to sell and when to hold.

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This from Daniel Wallace, the author of Big Fish:

Big Fish is taking over a small town in Alabama (link). And in this spirit when, just the other day, someone caught another one of those big catfish you hear about. They took it to the hospital and put it under a catscan. I am [...]

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For the past few weeks, I’ve been working on the production notes for The Nines. The document will end up being about 20 pages, detailing the backstory of how the movie got made, from inspiration through editing, along with everyone’s bios. It’s part of the press kit for the film, helping the journalists [...]

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No studio push for an Academy Award for your film? David Lynch inspires to get creative.

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A blog reader helps steer another reader towards his dream job.

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An author rails against his Hollywood adaptation.

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How to deal with the waiting cycle. The good/bad news: no screenwriter, at any level, is immune.

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The good folks at Sundance just sent out the screening times and locations for The Nines. Their website doesn’t show the schedule yet, but I presume it will be up soon.

Sun. Jan 21, 9:30 pm Eccles, Park City

Mon. Jan 22, 8:30 am Prospector, Park City

Tue. Jan 23, 9:00 pm Sundance Village

Sun. Jan 28, 3:30 pm Rose Wagner, Salt [...]

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Get over it. No one wants to steal your crappy idea.

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I’ve had the Store sitting in the sidebar for a few months now, with Amazon links for DVDs of movies I’ve written. To my surprise, people do actually buy some of these — I made a whopping $16.43 in referrals last quarter. That almost covers, oh, half of the hosting fees for this [...]

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I was wondering if you could explain the difference/reason for competitive and non-competitive categories at Sundance and why you chose the latter?

– Steve Lakeland, FL

It’s the Festival’s call. They decide whether or not they want to show the movie, then which category they’re going to put it in. They don’t explain their logic, but [...]

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After months of vague hints, I can finally reveal information about The Movie I wrote and directed this summer.

It’s called The Nines.1 It stars Ryan Reynolds, Hope Davis and Melissa McCarthy. It’s a drama. Funny in places, suspenseful in places, but basically a drama. It will be premiering at the Sundance Film Festival.

This last point was the [...]

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New (to me) term for a useful device in serial fiction.

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About a year ago, I took a Final Cut Pro class at UCLA Extension. It was a mixed success. I already knew too much for a beginner class, but wasn’t proficient enough for a more advanced session. So I ended up having a lot of extra time to fiddle around with the [...]

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Thanks to many contributions from reader-writers, jaWiki now has more than 200 entries.

One of the most interesting wiki-webs concerns [[relative knowledge]] — that is, what the audience knows as opposed to the characters. It’s an issue that often comes up, particularly in thrillers. Having words (and diagrams) to describe it makes the possibilities [...]

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Often, the only power a screenwriter has is to walk away, and the decision whether to do it is almost never straightforward.

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The cavalcade of follow ups continues today with this guy, who got conflicting advice and chose to ignore all of it. And somehow still ended up okay. If anything, it’s encouraging to see that my guidance isn’t necessarily that crucial. Most people who are going to make it would make it without [...]

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Today’s follow up comes from a reader who asked a question on my imdb column, which somehow never got copied over to this website.

Yes, for the record, I’m aware that this “Follow Up” feature has become self-congratulatory. If it’s any consolation, I hate myself. (Not really.)

The original Q and A went like this:

That [...]

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The first of the follow up emails came in last night. I fully anticipate that several will be, basically, “Yeah, I took your advice but nothing much happened.” This one, however, was particularly encouraging, especially considering my glib-in-retrospect reply.

Here’s the original question and answer:

I’m submitting a script to a screenplay competition and to an agent [...]

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The Motaba virus sounds bad, but the cure — heavy doses of Dustin Hoffman — is arguably worse.

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I’ve had this site up and running for about four years,1 and in that time have answered approximately 300 questions from readers who wrote in, either to johnaugust.com or my column on imdb.

What I haven’t done is followed up with any of those questioners to see what they actually did with the information I offered.

In [...]

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LC (whose email handle ThrobbingSocks is much more provocative) tipped me off to this Film Threat article by Allan Heifetz which explains some of the more significant pet peeves of professional (and unprofessional) script readers.

Newbies also love to break the fourth wall. These fools must think they have super strength. “Hulk smash fourth wall! Aaargh! [...]

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Final Draft, the screenwriting application I use most despite profound reservations, has upgraded to 7.1.3. I haven’t gotten it to crash, so that’s something.

My assistant Chad had never used the Tools>Reformat command, which despite its clunky interface is a huge timesaver when importing text from other places.1 Basically, it steps through your script [...]

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Last week, I opened up jaWiki, which to my relief and surprise hasn’t ass-ploded into a jagged minefield of broken links and PHP fragments.

The total number of articles has grown from 91 at launch to 121, largely driven by reader contributions.

Notable new entries include:

[[non-diegetic]] [[macguffin]] [[red herring]] [[hubris]] [[advances and shortcomings of knowledge]]

That last one [...]

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Why not just call them rich?

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No. But getting a movie made is worth a lot more than any award.

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When I redesigned the site in February, the major goal was to allow better access to the archive information. Unlike most blogs, the bulk of the content on johnaugust.com is equally relevant today or four years from today — unlike celebrity marriages, the answers to screenwriting questions pretty much hold solid.

Although I think it’s [...]

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If this sounds like you, stop reading and start dialing. You need a better attorney, stat.

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This afternoon, I opened up a recently-created Final Draft script in TextMate, to see how easily I could pull out the text. As one would expect, there was a lot of incomprehensible goobledygook. But there was also a surprising amount of detritus left over from previous projects — notably Big Fish.

It’s a little troubling [...]

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I spent a few days in Chicago to see the workshop of my friends’ new musical, Asphalt Beach. And then I wrote a play.

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I arrived in Chicago yesterday for a few days’ work on the next thing I’m writing.

In the cab leaving the airport, I saw a giant jet landing. Something about our relative speeds and angles created the illusion that the plane wasn’t moving forward at all. Rather, it was gracefully floating straight down.

It was [...]

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You rarely see clinical depression in movies and TV, despite being much more common in real life than, say, retrograde amnesia.

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The disorienting effects of movie magic.

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In all likelihood, it’s not — you just think it is.

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Let’s say you’re at work and you overhear some great dialogue. Should you worry about co-workers suing when they hear it in your movie?

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Two flights, three panels and five beers later, I can say I had a good time at the Austin Film Festival. It was certainly the best time I’ve had in Austin, largely because I got off my ass and went to the parties and screenings. (Although some of the credit for that has to [...]

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Treat your reader like an audience member. Give them the same information on the page that they would get on the screen.

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Today’s Variety reports that the makers of Final Draft have bought Script magazine and some related assets from Forum Publishing.

The deal probably makes sense for Final Draft. Rather than buy a big ad every month, why not just buy the whole magazine? Plus, Final Draft probably has a huge mailing list from its [...]

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I saw and loved John Cameron Mitchell’s SHORTBUS over the weekend. I’ll spare a few hundred words of praise and say I pretty much agree with Moriarty’s review — though I’d hope my readers are a little less eww-gross-boys-kissing! than the average AICN commenter.

Mr. Mitchell and I used to eat lunch at the same [...]

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And both the film and I were better for it.

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One of the great qualities of the internet is that it allows unfettered discussion and disagreement. Unlike traditional media, which is largely one-way, a blog like this one benefits from constant reader feedback. That’s why I’ve chosen to leave comments open for the majority of my posts, putting up with the inevitable comment [...]

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Scripty is often the last defense against our scripts being mangled.

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Access leads to learning which is everything.

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In case any readers want to see how much less articulate I am in person, I’ll be speaking on three panels at the upcoming Austin Film Festival. Here are the descriptions the organizers sent out:

The Art of the Pitch SFA Hotel, Assembly Room Oct. 19th, 2:45 p.m. – 4 p.m.

Pitching yourself is as important as [...]

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Macworld has a review of Mariner Software’s Montage, which is pretty much right on the money. They give it two out of five mice, admiring its interface while pointing out that it doesn’t do nearly as much as it should: page locking, scene numbering and many other standard features are still on the drawing [...]

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When writers do and don’t get paid residuals.

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Fuck Wal-Mart, seriously.

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Ten years ago, I got my first paid screenwriting job, adapting Thomas Rockwell’s How to Eat Fried Worms into a script for Ron Howard and Universal. I went through four paid drafts over more than a year, and loved it.

Thomas Schlamme signed on to direct it. At the time, he was a mid-level [...]

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Is your agent asking for money up front? Run away.

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Do you need signed legal permission to use a friend’s name in a script?

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If you don’t like it, don’t do it.

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The vast majority of memoirs are written by vain, delusional nutjobs, so there’s no reason you shouldn’t be entitled to your six-figure advance.

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Alex Wurman is busy writing the music for The Movie, which in this digital age means a lot of files shuttling back and forth. Rather than tapes, we have QuickTimes for each reel, with timecode burned in for reference. When Alex wants us to listen to a cue, he sends an mp3 with [...]

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A shout out to a good show and their low budget ways.

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I was working on a scene today in which an adult admitted to a grade-schooler that in the real world, you’ll never need to use long division. It’s just something they force on kids to keep them from getting cocky after multiplication.

I nixed the joke because it felt kinda Full House. But [...]

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I recently upgraded to a Mac Pro, which I justified to myself thusly:

I’m doing effects for The Movie, and Motion runs much faster on it. (In truth, I only did one effect in the final cut.) My G5 was actually slower than my laptop. As a writer, I needed a quieter computer. I deserve to [...]

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Today was the first and only day of aerial photography for The Movie. We rented a helicopter, a Wescam mount, a pilot, an operator, a camera and burned two thousand feet of film. Minute for minute, it was the most expensive part of the entire production.

How was it, you ask?

Pretty effin’ cool.

I’d been [...]

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You’ve never met an undead blood-sucker, and neither have I. Yet we can both agree on quite a few characteristics of these non-existent beings.

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Here’s the thing: When you arrive at the gate two minutes before the plane is supposed take off, you give up your right to complain. I don’t care what it says on your ticket. You take any available open seat.

That’s the deal. Maybe it’s not printed in all of the legalese, [...]

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In Hollywood parlance, “additional photography” is the polite term for what used to be called reshoots. It’s a rare case where the new word is better. Most of the time, you’re not reshooting anything. You’re getting new things you didn’t know you needed the first time around.

Woody Allen is famous for [...]

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In George Orwell’s Animal Farm, the newly-empowered critters proclaim “four legs good, two legs bad,” only to later betray their entire belief system with the new wisdom that “four legs good, two legs better.”

I can relate. After extolling the virtues of wearing one contact lens (i.e. monovision), I took the bold step of putting [...]

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Test screening is important but potentially dangerous in the internet age.

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You know how you can go months without seeing someone, then suddenly, they’re everywhere? This morning as I was getting into my little Prius, screenwriter/neighbor/inconstant blogger Josh Friedman rolled up in the Death Star Escalade to discuss our respective children’s nap schedules in anticipation of a playdate.

Yeah, I said playdate. This is how [...]

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This week’s work on the The Movie is largely about music. Our composer, Alex Wurman, has already composed one piece that plays on-camera, but most of the music at this point is temp — stuff grabbed from other soundtracks that roughly approximates what we’re going for.

There’s one piece of temp music that works really [...]

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Your characters won’t always be speaking English. Here’s how to handle that.

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The Tabloids would do well by following the example of DC comics.

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I feel exhausted just thinking about it.

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About halfway through shooting The Movie, the propmaster asked, “Hey, where are your glasses?” I had taken them off to check my email, and left them sitting on the dining room table. It’s part of his job to recognize continuity issues, so it’s natural he noticed something was off.

But it was only his [...]

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Have it your way first, then compromise if need be.

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Daryl G. Nickens, who edited Doing It for Money, passed away over the weekend. So the interview scheduled for this afternoon — which was supposed to be Daryl, Chris Brancato and myself — has been pushed back to some unspecified date. I’ll let you know when I know.

Daryl worked mostly in television, with [...]

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Barring some sort of Actual News Event, I’ll be one of the guests on Airtalk this Tuesday, July 11th at 11:30 a.m. (At least, that’s the time for Los Angeles listeners.)

Host Judy Muller will be talking with Chris Brancato and me about the book Doing It for Money: The Agony and Ecstasy of Writing and [...]

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Clearing (and not worrying about) brands, artwork and monikers for your movie.

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My plea for a DVD player with loose morals and low standards was answered by many thoughtful readers. I ended up picking the Philips DVP-642 ($49 at Amazon), which not only zips through questionably-recorded dailies, but even Peixe Grande e Suas Histórias Maravilhosas, the Portuguese version of Big Fish.

Thanks again.

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One of the first tasks in getting The Movie on its feet was picking locations. We spent about three weeks scouting — almost as long as we shot.

I didn’t think I’d written a very location-driven movie, but it ended up being a bit of a monster. Part of that was budget — if [...]

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Here’s the thing: I don’t need anything fancy. I don’t use-slash-need many advanced features, like super slo-mo or bookmarking. I just want a DVD player to play whatever disc I put in it, no matter where it’s from, without complaining.

I don’t want a princess. I want a whore.

I’m not even talking [...]

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Let’s face it: there are no bad superpowers. But given the choice of only one, I’d pick flight.

Yes, plain old boring flight, common to so many superheroes that it hardly ranks as special. However, when you look at the so-called alternatives, you find that there’s really no competing with the classic.

Super-strength Great, fine, [...]

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There’s little time or room on set for the writer in me once the director in me takes over, but he’s good to have around.

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My extended absence from johnaugust.com can now be explained: I’ve just finished shooting a movie, an honest-to-God feature film. A tiny film, to be certain, more likely to be seen at festivals than fourteen-plexes, but a movie nonetheless.

Officially, it’s my directing debut, but it hasn’t really felt like it.

As screenwriters go, I’ve always [...]

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There is definitely room in the film universe for a uber-geek movie, be it a thriller, a drama, a comedy or whatever.

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Eventually, you learn that you can’t depend on strangers for validation.

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Since I haven’t posted for more than a week, several readers have written in to make sure I hadn’t gotten trapped in an air vent, or shanked by a pencil-wielding grammar prescriptivist.

I assure you I’m fine. Great, actually. I’m just busy as hell on a new project that will keep me away from [...]

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Short answer: You don’t.

Slightly longer answer: The question is meaningless.

I recently co-hosted a series of panel discussions for the USC School of Cinema-Television aimed at helping current students and recent graduates think about the first years out in the real world. “How do I break in” was the unspoken question in almost every [...]

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Awkward dances with public recognition.

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The annoying disparity between google ads and the content they glom on to.

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Ladies and gentlemen, screenwriters, it’s time to stop putting character in air vents.

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This is one of the worst things about being a screenwriter: you ultimately have very little control over the movie that gets made. Here’s how to deal.

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Movies are about what characters do and say, not who they were before the story started.

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I’ve had a MySpace profile for a long time, but never really did anything with it.

At the time I registered, I remember thinking that MySpace felt like a lame Friendster knock-off. But as we all know, MySpace is now the Google of social networking, a billion dollar eye-magnet. The difference is, I like [...]

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The new version of WordPress has Akismet spam filtering, which does a remarkably good job weeding out spam comments. Occasionally, it flags something that is so tantalizing that it really should be shared with the world:

Dear sirs. It is my pleasure to inform you that I have written a sexual screenwriting ,(It is about a [...]

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My first experience with being translated.

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True, grammar can’t be filmed. But scripts are read by people, not cameras. And people deserve the best writing you can muster.

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Mysteries of the staffing process revealed.

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Kevin Arbouet tagged me to answer 10 questions about mistakes and bad practices.

Taken the wrong way, the whole exercise could be kind of negative and bleak. But one (hopefully) learns from one’s errors, so it’s in that spirit that I further the meme.

1) WHAT’S THE WORST THING YOU’VE EVER WRITTEN?

With hindsight being 20/20, probably [...]

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Videogame-makers need to stop trying to ape Hollywood blockbusters, and instead focus on creating playable stories. A link to an article detailing the differences between the storytelling needs and styles.

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Most screenplays are about 120 pages, and most movies are around two hours. But the conversion rate between paper and celluloid is rarely one-to-one.

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This “knowing when it’s done” sense only develops with experience.

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If you’re gonna heckle, back it up or look stupid.

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Link to a great legal resource for filmmakers concerned with portraying reality.

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Following a link from digg, I just finished reading a lengthy explanation of the Matrix trilogy, written by an engineer, who attempts to deconstruct the films on a purely logical level. That is, he looks at what The Architect and The Oracle are trying to do, and how Neo fits into the plan, without [...]

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Jordan Mechner forwarded me this Ubisoft-created look back at the Prince of Persia series. It’s in sucky .wmv format, but does a nice job showing the evolution of the franchise from its humble PC roots.

Anticipating your inevitable questions:

No, I don’t know when the movie will come out. No, we haven’t cast anyone. Yes, the movie is [...]

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Being a Mac user, I’m spoiled with Safari and Firefox, and happily assume that the rest of the world has it so good.

A kind reader wrote in to let me know that the sidebar isn’t showing up on Internet Explorer 6 or 7 for Windows. This means readers stuck with IE (at work, for [...]

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When I spoke to classes at Trinity University last week, a frequent question was, “What are you going to write next?”

It was a well-timed question, because I wasn’t entirely sure. There were two projects on the radar screen, both of them rewrites. I had a week to decide whether to do either.

The first [...]

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A lecture to Trinity University on authorship and authority in the internet age.

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Generally, italics and a parenthetical.

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Corrections to notes on my Q&A at the WGA.

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Almost certainly once, before she signs on for the job. After that, it’s hard to say. And that’s not all bad.

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Question: Would The Hollywood Reporter sneak into Sony Pictures late at night, grab the director’s rough cut of a new movie, then publish a review of it the next morning?

No. They’d lose all credibility and respect of the filmmakers and studio folks who constitute their readership. There would be outrage.

Instead, The Hollywood [...]

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As I might have mentioned, I got nominated for a Grammy Award (along with Danny Elfman) in the Best Song TV/Movie/Visual Media category for “Wonka’s Welcome Song” from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

The nomination came as a surprise, in that (a) I didn’t realize the Grammys were coming up, (b) I didn’t know the song [...]

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In my previous post about the redesign, I glossed over what was actually was a fair amount of thought and logic behind what I did (and re-did). Based on the comments, some of that thinking might not be clear.

Why not just stick them on their own page? If you want archives, click on archives, [...]

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Readers who visit the web site, as opposed to getting it through the feeds, will notice a few changes, both cosmetic and architectural.

We’ll start with the obvious stuff. The blue header is a little bluer, the footer is fatter, and there are fewer entries per page.

There’s now an archive listing on every page of [...]

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PajamaGram sells robes and pajamas — mostly for women, but they have some “cute” couples pajamas that are worth flipping to the back to see. Such as these his-and-hers crossword pajamas.

I ask you: Could anything be better than doing the Sunday crossword puzzle while wearing crossword pajamas?

I’ve now gotten three catalogs from this [...]

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Needing the right word and finally finding it.

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Steven Soderbergh’s new movie, Bubble, opens in theaters today. I’ve hardly read anything about the movie itself, because all the publicity is about the unique (some say troubling) distribution strategy: reducing the traditionally months-long window between the theatrical release and the DVD release to mere days.

Of course, DVDs have always come out a few [...]

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One strange aspect of writing a blog is recognizing that one’s online narrative doesn’t always match up very well with reality. There is a lag between when events happen and when you write about them.

Take for example Josh Friedman’s recent and scary brush with kidney cancer. As his real-life neighbor, I knew he [...]

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The job of a writer and the job of a director are fundamentally different, which is why so few people are great at both.

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As the screenwriter, there are hundreds of variables I can’t control. So I consider it a minor miracle any time a movie gets made.

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Can’t make it to Sundance? Here’s what you’re missing (or not).

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I got tagged to write up my answers to Fun Joel’s scribosphere meme thing. So here goes.

ONE (1) earliest film-related memory:

I went to see The Muppet Movie with my Mom. It was just the two of us, so my Dad and brother were gone somewhere. It might have been an Indian Guides [...]

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I recently did an e-mail interview with the good folks at the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum, only to realize that a significant percentage of my readership base (aspiring screenwriters, confused Christians, web-surfing office drones) lives outside of our 30th state, and therefore might not receive the newsletter.

So with WSF’s kind permission, I’m reprinting it here.

Could you [...]

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If you’re reading this site through the feeds, an FYI: the plain-old RSS feed (the 0.92 version) isn’t working right for some reason. You’d be better off with the 2.0 version or the Atom feed, both of which seem to work fine.

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My question has to do with the recent trend in adapting books and old movies.

Is it that screenwriters have run out of good scripts, or that producers are too scared to produce anything that hasn’t already been in the public eye?

What is left for the writers who have original stories to tell?

– Ryan Scott Fitzgerald via [...]

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I’ve heard a rumor that in the “industry” it’s an inside joke to have some sort of nudity or sex on page 17. Specifically 17. First, is that actually funny? And second, is it a shoe-in in terms of a scriptreader reading further?

– Zeb via imdb

I’ve never heard this, but I love it.

True, it’s not “actually” [...]

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I’ve received a couple million dollars to write and direct my own picture. I am in doubt as to whether or not I have the talent to pull it off.

I hear writers always talking about horrible writers and great writers. Does that actually exist? If so, what is it that makes great writers great and [...]

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Craig Mazin and Alex Epstein both recently tackled a topic that was on my to-blog list. Yes, I keep a list of things I intend to blog. And yes, I tend to just write whatever strikes me at the moment anyway. But since Alex and Craig got to it first, I might [...]

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Link to an interview on the blog and the state of digital arts in 2005.

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Reading David Pogues’s interview with Todd Wagner, whose company is releasing movies on DVD the same day they are released in theaters, I was struck by a bit of humility that’s rare among system-buckers:

You know, I could sit here and say, “Oh, this is how it’ll play out. We’ll do this and this and this.” [...]

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A couple of weeks ago Pastor moon spoke on the Genealogy of Jesus from Matthew. There’s another one in Luke, in this one Joseph’s father is given a very different name from the Matthew text. Can you give an explanation as to why this is so?

– Liam

Um, Liam. Are we quite clear [...]

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Writing the right show sample during each season’s important.

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Dear John,

I am a big fan, since GO. We finally got a DVD of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and showed it at my 8/9 year old daughter’s birthday sleepover. Great movie, great time. When the time comes for your baby to have a sleepover don’t fret it. It was fully successful and not bad [...]

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This morning I opened my email to find a note from my friend James LaRosa, congratulating me on my Grammy nomination. I had no idea what he was talking about.

But I went to the Grammy site, and lo and behold, there’s my name. Apparently the announcements were this morning in New York.

The nomination [...]

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In a scene where there is absolutely no way of telling whether it is day or night — say, when a character is inside a meat locker in the bowels of an underground nuclear bunker and has nothing but a Zippo to see by — should one write…

INT. MEAT LOCKER – DAY or, INT. MEAT LOCKER

This is [...]

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Several readers, presumably Canadian readers, have written in to complain that they do not say “a boot” for “about,” and that I have my head up my ass.

So let me clarify.

“A boot” is a comedic exaggeration, the same way Europeans trying to sound American end up channeling John Wayne or De Niro.

Very few Canadians confuse [...]

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All I want to do is write! I write on the bus to and from work, I stayed home last night (Friday night) to write. I hate it and I love it and if I couldn’t write I would probably be in a mental institute. So what’s the problem?

It’s really difficult [...]

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Notes for auditioning actors.

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Over in the right-hand column, you’ll see a link for the Store. The link has been there for a couple of weeks now, but I neglected to mention it — originally because I didn’t want to seem gross and commercial, and later because I forgot. But if you’re reading this site strictly through [...]

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Good to know before you walk onto a set.

e  42

Today is Thanksgiving in the U.S., a refreshingly under-commercialized holiday set aside to acknowledge the many things in life for which we’re grateful. I’m home in Colorado with my family, doing the traditional activities: stuffing a turkey, setting a table, and wondering how many minor celebrities they can squeeze into one Macy’s Thanksgiving Day [...]

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I recently learned Final Cut Pro, Apple’s editing system, which is complicated but incredibly intuitive. That got me anxious to experiment with the other pro film tools. The full Final Cut Pro Studio package is fairly inexpensive, especially with an educational discount.

Unfortunately, Apple’s Shake 4 compositing software costs $2700 or more, which would [...]

e  24

Right now, we’re starting casting for Ops, the Fox pilot we’ll hopefully shoot after the holidays. Since most readers out there have never been through network casting — or any casting — I thought I’d talk you through the process. Or at least, the start of the process.

The first thing we had to [...]

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is out on DVD today (at least, in North America). There are three versions available: a widescreen version, a full screen version, and a two-disc set with bonus features.

Obviously, don’t get the full screen version.

It’s frustrating that they even sell one, much less call it “full screen.” In order [...]

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I know you were brought in late on Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and from what I gather, weren’t responsible for much of the story, but I’m curious about your thoughts on one particular story element.

Is the ending a happy one for Victor?

The way it plays, it seems as though it is intended to be a happy ending for him when [...]

e  16

My blogging-to-actual-work ratio has tipped decidedly to the things-I-get-paid-for side over the last few weeks, as a number of projects have commanded a lot more of my time. So I thought it only fair to explain what’s pulled me out of my beloved bent-brad bunker.

Here’s an update on my previous post, about my current [...]

e  49

Are you a Literalist Shower Fragmenter Filmist? Discover your writerly personality.

e  10

I’m pretty sure I saw you at The Groundlings on Saturday night. My girlfriend’s on a new TV show, Fox’s “The War At Home” and I attended the event with some of her costars.

I wanted to introduce myself and ask you a quick question, but then realized that a) I didn’t want to be [...]

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Apologies to any readers who found that their comments over the last few days fell into a black hole. The culprit was a new comment-spam filter which proved to be 100% effective.

It blocked everything. Sigh.

Everything should be fixed now. You’ll also notice that any new comments from John now show up with a [...]

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My last normal job — the 9-to-5 kind — was as an assistant at Oliver Stone’s production company. At the time, he was in post-production on Natural Born Killers, and developing future projects, one of which was a remake of Planet of the Apes.

Any version of Apes must tackle the basic question of, “How [...]

e  19

Over the weekend, I went to see Good Night, and Good Luck at The Arclight. I liked it a lot, not only for its strong performances, but also its complete disregard for anything approaching traditional narrative structure.

The screenplay, by George Clooney and Grant Heslov, is full of good dialogue — much of it apparently [...]

e  40

So there’s no confusion: I’m a digital guy.

I’ll take a CD over vinyl, cameraphone over Polaroid. When it comes to life, and filmmaking, I’m largely pro-technology, anti-Luddite. In fact, I have very little patience for aesthetes who blather on and on about the infinite advantages of the analog world, be it $10,000 turntables [...]

e  28

On Sunday morning, I woke up, fed my daughter, and read the Los Angeles Times. There was a good article about Joss Whedon’s Serenity, which managed to shoot in Los Angeles at a reasonable budget, largely because of smart planning.

Yet another reason to admire Joss Whedon.

I headed out the office to blog about this [...]

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I’ve upgraded the installation, which has broken certain sections. I’m working on getting most of it up this afternoon.

It’s a long, and kind of interesting story about what happened, which I’ll post once things are working a little more smoothly.

e  28

Thoughts on public speaking.

e  6

Entering production, introduce yourself to the AD (if possible) and stay on top of the schedule.

e  9

Depends on your sensibility.

e  49

Debunking the so called “crisis” at the box office.

e  46

A political quiz helps understand characters whose beliefs are different from my own.

e  40

Detailed account of the lifestyle of a professional reader.

e  26

Now that there are several screenwriter-oriented blogs, I thought I’d take a moment to examine the six-degrees of separation quality among them.

Or perhaps I just want to revel in the fact that I’m the Kevin Bacon of screenbloggers.

★ I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing

This is how I met Josh Friedman: When I bought [...]

e  13

Shall I compare thee to a Summer’s day or something?

e  20

More from inside the meeting room.

e  47

In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, why is Charlie so passive in the movie?

As the main character I would think he would do something during the big adventure in the factory but he does nothing. He faces no challenges. He is not tested in any way. He doesn’t even have the opportunity to make [...]

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Yes. Sometimes.

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This past May, the New York Times had a very nice profile piece on me in the Arts and Leisure section, written by Bob Baker. I liked it. Many people called to say they’d seen it. And that was that.

It was only as I was sifting through the referrer logs on Friday [...]

e  10

Not the time to play it cool. Don’t waste a day and risk her forgetting who you are.

e  51

The process of adding and dropping friends and colleagues isn’t unique to this business. It sucks for them. It sucks for you. Accept that and move on.

e  22

Yesterday, I saw The Constant Gardener.

My quick review: I respected the filmmaking, but I can’t say I loved the movie. Throughout the entire film, I was so far ahead of the Ralph Fiennes character that I found myself thinking more about African theatre, diplomatic passports and shallow-focus lenses than what exactly had happened to [...]

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As a fairly-frequent commenter on other people’s blogs, I know how frustrating it can be when I’ve spent a few minutes working on the perfect riposte, only to have it disappear somewhere in the void. So I thought I’d explain a little bit about how comments on johnaugust.com work, and why they sometimes don’t [...]

e  109

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger Arnold,

I want to get married.

Not to you, since you already have a wonderful wife and family — and I’m not the home-wrecking sort, unlike other celebrities I could name. No, I want to marry my partner of five years. That’s why I’m writing. I need your help.

Right now, we [...]

e  15

Advice for your film school applications.

e  4

The fifty or so friends and family on my Christmas card list this past year got signed copies of Daniel Wallace’s O Great Rosenfeld!, which tells the story of a hapless prehistoric tribe.

Daniel describes it as a kid’s book for adults. Being a crass Hollywood type, I say it’s Quest for Fire meets The [...]

e  23

In an article published today, one of the other John Augusts argues persuasively that the states should be abolished.

Before you take up arms against him, you should know that he’s Australian, and he’s talking about “states” like New South Wales and Queensland. Which sound like made-up Risk territories, if you ask me.

It’s important that [...]

e  19

Important questions to ask the clients of prospective agents.

e  105

I ventured over to the Paramount lot yesterday for a meeting. None of the studios have ample parking, but Paramount’s main parking lot is comically over-crowded. Their solution is a crew of pseudo-valets who don’t actually park your car, but rather jockey other cars around when you inevitably find yourself stuck behind three [...]

e  18

After a month of baby duty, it’s back to work. This seems the perfect time to take stock of all the projects I have out there, and figure out exactly what their status is.

★ ACTIVE ★

Prince of Persia Jordan Mechner, who created the videogame, wrote the movie adaptation, which he and I are [...]

e  4

Good news for those readers frustrated by the all-too-frequent outages at this site: we’re moving to a new server, which will hopefully not flake out as often. If it does, I’ll change service providers. Again. Sigh.

There may be a little turbulence this week as the new server settles in. Caveat browser.

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This sign in the Beverly Center parking garage is, I think, an example of found poetry.

I find the decision to switch from subjunctive to indicative mood in the second line bold and foward-thinking; the elevator will become inoperative, in the same way that all men will grow old and feeble.

In lines three and four, [...]

e  18

Decide what you want to accomplish, then figure out which scenes would need to change. Only fix one piece at a time.

e  29

O.C. means “off camera.” But O.S. does the job just as well.

e  17

Matthew McGrory, who played Karl the Giant in Big Fish, died Tuesday in Los Angeles. He was 32.

While his character in the film was about eleven feet tall, in real life, Matthew was “only” a bit over seven feet. While he was big, you didn’t really sense he was a giant until you [...]

e  19

Now undeniably in my mid-30’s, I’ve come to accept that there are certain trends that I’m just not going to bother giving a shit about. Just as my Mom will never really understand the internet, there are now cultural innovations that are completely lost on me. Call it Generational Giving-Up.

For example, custom ringtones. [...]

e  12

When why and how to incorporate.

e  21

PDFs are almost always the right choice.

e  34

Mostly the main character is all three. But the terms apply to separate functions in the story.

e  66

This past weekend, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory opened to strong reviews and a hefty $56.2 million at the box office. I’m happy, of course, but that good news was eclipsed by even better news: the birth of my daughter on Monday.

Her long-awaited arrival explains my lack of posting this past week, and the [...]

e  15

Something that’s always bothered me about Go. When Ronna is in Todd’s apartment she says “Todd, I would never fuck you like that.” And he says, “How would -you- fuck -me-?”

Like, how would a nothing like you ever screw over a big drug dealer like me? But he just explained how she could fuck [...]

e  13

Don’t strive for likeability. It’s a fool’s errand. Rather, aim for believability.

e  16

There’s a new trailer up for Corpse Bride, which tells a lot more of the story than the teaser trailer did.

I have mixed feelings about the new trailer. Visually, it all looks great. This one shows a lot more of what makes the animation so distinctive. For instance, pay attention to Corpse [...]

e  16

Reader Francois just pointed out a large selection of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory clips hosted at IESB. I’m sort of surprised Warner Bros. made so many available, but they all look authentic and authorized. (CUT TO: Me furiously deleting any reference to their existence after WB says they’re not allowed.)

Presumably, these clips [...]

e  18

The summer issue of Written By magazine is out, and the cover story is about my involvement with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

First the good news. The story by Mark Olsen is terrific, everything I could have hoped for. Often with reporters, you hold back a bit, because you’re nervous about being misquoted [...]

e  24

In preparation for both the Charlie press junket and my impending fatherhood, I bought a new videocamera. I already had a Sony DV camera, but small as it is, I never end up bringing it along with me. It’s overkill for what I want, which is mostly posting little clips on the web [...]

e  15

This weekend, I travelled to The Bahamas for the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory press junket. For those who aren’t familiar with the term, a press junket is a two or three day period during which the stars and filmmakers of a movie meet with the press (both domestic and international) to answer questions about [...]

e  18

I have a question about your upcoming film, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. What made you decide to have each child bring only one guardian to Wonka’s factory, and how did you choose which one would go?

–Michael Daphne, Alabama

In Roald Dahl’s book, each of the four rotten kids (Veruca, Violet, Augustus and Mike) brings both of [...]

e  13

In reality TV, editors and producers often perform functions that would normally be the purview of writers; the question is, why aren’t they being compensated for it?

e  10

Check out some great ones to get inspired.

e  3

After meeting a friend-of-a-friend at a birthday party over the weekend, I ended up getting pressed into service for a story on NPR’s Day to Day.

Reporter Mike Pesca wanted to talk about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s challenges converting his action-movie persona into a consensus-building governor, and wanted to talk to a screenwriter about it. So I [...]

e  5

You don’t need as many parentheticals as you think.

e  28

It’s just as important to read bad writing as good.

e  12

This website is billed as “a ton of useful information about screenwriting,” but I have many interests that don’t fall within that framework, no matter how broadly I try to stretch it.

So as a way to service these off-topic interests, I’m happy to introduce Off-Topic.

Off-Topic is not about screenwriting. At least, not primarily. [...]

e  1

Predictability in structure does not necessarily doom the story to boredom or sameness.

e  23

Two spaces still looks best for screenplays.

e  12

Embracing the chaos and letting go.

e  3

If it feels like dialogue, it’s fine to use that formatting.

e  2

Suggestions for saving paper, your money and the environment.

e  11

Reader “Bri” was thoughtful enough to point out that Hot Topic has started selling less-expensive Charlie and the Chocolate Factory t-shirts. They’re perfect for your your rebellious kid sister who wants to express her individuality in a completely conformist way.

The “Life Had Never Been Sweeter” shirt comes from a line of dialogue (narration, actually) [...]

e  33

Approximately five percent of visitors to johnaugust.com arrive from Google or one of the other search engines. Thanks to server statistics, I can see exactly what search phrase brought them here.

Some people were clearly ego-surfing: searching for their names as they might appear in comments sections, for instance. But other people, well, I [...]

e  8

A sharp-eyed reader wrote in to point out that the flash site for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now open for business. You can find a lot more downloads, but still no “Cast and Crew” section yet. Ahem.

Also, the full trailer is now up at Apple, without any of that AOL baggage [...]

e  33

The single most asked question (How do I get an agent?) answered directly by the source and amended by me.

e  40

Having happened in the past doesn’t signify future action.

e  18

The full trailer for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is finally here in all its Quicktime glory. For now, it’s exclusively at Moviefone, but you can see it in theaters starting on Friday. It should be attached to Madagascar most places.

But why wait? You can see it here.

Hint: Click on the [...]

e  2

Two new terms for the glossary.

e  14

Some thoughts on the two major screenwriting platforms.

e  12

You can indicate where the titles go, but only if it serves a story purpose.

e  11

It’s not quite the Slashdot effect, but Sunday’s article in the NY Times did result in a spike in readership, as the chart shows:

Average traffic for a Sunday is about 2,800 sessions; yesterday, the total was 5,500. (A “session” is a way of measuring individual visitors to a site, while “hits” simply refers to [...]

e  33

If you’re coming to johnaugust.com after reading the story in this weekend’s Calendar Arts & Leisure section, welcome. Please feel free to poke around.

This site isn’t used to a crush of visitors, so if things load a little slowly, please be patient. And if everything grinds to a halt, please come back later [...]

e  14

A helpful reader named Ethan pointed out that the official site for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory has been updated with new graphics and photos.

Unfortunately, a quick mousing-around reveals that way too much of it is still “coming soon.” But at least there are now placeholders for some crucial omissions, such as filmmaker bios [...]

e  9

Yesterday, I went to the giant videogame confab E3 with my friend Jordan Mechner, who created Prince of Persia and is writing the movie version for Disney. We were there to see footage from the next Prince of Persia game — which looks damn good, what with the chariots and Babylonian rooftops and all. [...]

e  4

One of the suggestions from the survey was to highlight previous articles from the archives. I agreed, because (a) the readership has grown quite a bit recently, and (b) the archives are kind of daunting right now.

So, every once in a while, I’ll be pulling old articles up to the front — generally entries [...]

e  48

Rejoice and learn from the suckiness. Their low standards make your great script all the more unusual.

e  102

Some projects sell mostly on their title. Choose wisely.

e  79

I want to know that no one’s hurt, but even more, I want to know what the hell I saw.

e  12

My best-dressed friend Jen sent me a link to Kitson, which has started selling a line of exclusive, and expensive, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory-related merchandise.

I certainly don’t lay any claim to the idea of Golden Tickets or t-shirts, but I was a little giddy to see that three of the slogan shirts feature dialogue [...]

e  7

Yesterday, I went through the top survey suggestions related to the site’s content. Today’s topic is everything else, from usability to new features.

THE ARCHIVES

Feature the archived stories and threads a little more prominently. There is some great information in those old postings that many don’t know exist.

Good suggestion. I may dust off older entries [...]

e  32

In the recent survey, I got a lot of hard numbers to back up and/or refute my assumptions about who reads johnaugust.com. I also got a lot of good suggestions from Question 10, which read: “If I could do one thing to improve johnaugust.com, I would…”

Here’s a sampling of what people wrote, and how [...]

e  34

In an email a few weeks ago, my former assistant (and alarmingly successful writer/director) Rawson Thurber apologized for ending a sentence with a preposition. I insisted that he was well within his rights to dangle a preposition, split an infinitive, or break pretty much any rule he’d been taught about English — especially the [...]

e  13

Figuring out what to capitalize when indicating groups of people.

e  11

The step by step process of making a Hollywood movie.

e  7

Including the best explanation for how to keep a pitch engaging. Two words: “But then..!”

e  6

For the past four years, I’ve been one of the creative advisors to the twice-yearly Sundance Screenwriters Lab, a program which connects working screenwriters with emerging independent filmmakers. Because of work commitments, I’ve actually missed the past three labs, so I’m happy to be going back again this June.

The Sundance Institute recently announced the [...]

e  25

I’ve been thinking to write you this letter for a while. I saw the movie Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle on a movie channel recently. As a Mongolian, I’m deeply offended by your knowledge about my country.

In the beginning of the movie you show a scene that something is happening in Northern Mongolia and the [...]

e  14

Thanks to the 470 of you who were gracious enough to fill out the not-especially-scientific survey, I can now state with confidence that the typical reader of johnaugust.com is a North American college graduate in his 20’s who has a Y chromosome, but no WGA card.

Now, before anyone protests, I should point out that not [...]

e  3

If you can set something up without an agent, go for it. But don’t do it without a lawyer.

e  12

On Sunday, I had lunch with Mary Edrington, my former marketing professor from Drake. She was one of the best teachers I ever had, because she did the near-impossible: she made me care about boring numbers. Even though I was much more attuned to the creative side of marketing, I always appreciated [...]

e  9

DVD revenue is often bigger than theatrical. No wonder some studios hide their numbers.

e  10

I use a Technorati watchlist to keep track of mentions of me, this site, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. (Note: last three links are feeds.) Technorati follows blogs, so it’s a nice way to gauge what topics people find interesting enough to write about. For instance, teenage girls tend to point out [...]

e  12

Unlike some sites, where the number of comments on a given article can reach triple-digits, most of the threads at johnaugust.com stay pretty short. Still, sometimes you want to keep on top of an interesting discussion without re-visiting the site every hour. That’s where RSS can be your friend.

On every article, down by [...]

e  1

Links to the do’s and don’t-do’s of comedy writing.

e  9

How to deal when your situations and characters are based on real incidents and people.

e  17

Don’t be afraid of including imagery if it’s important for your story.

e  15

Not a screen-writing question, I’m afraid — more a “Geek Alert” one.

I’ve got a blog on blogger.com at the moment, and am thinking of moving to a different blogging tool. I’m a techie by background (computer science degree) now working in film visual effects (currently on Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), and would love to have much more flexibility [...]

e  Comments Off

For working writers, Craig Mazin says to pitch.

e  2

Not from these parts? Don’t try to sublimate your natural writing style to match some mythical American standard.

e  6

If you need us to know that it’s 1945, put it on the screen.

e  1

Ain’t It Cool News has the six new one-sheets for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Five of the posters feature the young Golden Ticket winners, while the final one has a new image of Willy Wonka, with the appropriate tagline, “semi-sweet and nuts.”

I hadn’t seen any of these one-sheets before this morning, but I [...]

e  20

When intercutting between two scenes, the key is keeping it readable.

e  4

Why do you answer some questions, and not others? (Such as, well, mine!) And why do you answer some questions moments after they appear, while other ones take weeks?

– Various Readers

My assistant Chad transcribes all the questions on three-by-five note cards, then shuffles them exactly three times. I take the stack and begin [...]

e  1

Sluglines are a powerful tool. Use them wisely.

e  9

I haven’t seen a physical version of it yet, but JoBlo.com has the artwork for the second Charlie and the Chocolate Factory poster. This one shows Freddie Highmore as Charlie, along with his four rotten tour-mates (Mike Teavee, Augustus Gloop, Violet Beauregarde and Veruca Salt).

Before you ask:

No, I don’t get any input on posters. [...]

e  2

This is my soliloquy, spoken directly to the audience, somehow unheard by the other characters onstage: I love to travel, but mostly, I love to get home.

Vacation trips always seem to last one day too long — except when they’re entirely too short. No matter how long the voyage, it’s usually at about [...]

e  15

A dispatch from China.

e  6

Dedicating to craft and characters while maintaining contact with actual human beings.

e  19

I outsourced this question to my former assistant, Rawson Thurber.

e  2

You don’t need a great printer, just one that can kick out 120 pages.

e  16

This is hugely off-topic, so feel free to skip to the next article, which will likely have something to do with screenwriting and/or filmmaking.

My assistant Chad and I use Apple’s iCal to keep track of appointments. It’s nowhere near as sophisticated as Exchange or a real professional calendar system, but for the most part, [...]

e  2

It’s easy to overlook, but on the main webpage for this summer’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, there’s an icon for Wonka Industries. One click takes you to the corporate site for the world’s most beloved chocolateer. A lot of stuff is still to-be-added, but click around and you’ll find some new images I [...]

e  29

Candid advice, straight from a decider.

e  20

I’ve heard tales of studio executives buying ideas they heard during a pitch panel, but I don’t know of any verifiable success stories.

e  16

You don’t want to make a career of it. But sometimes, rewriting a bad movie can be liberating, because you know that almost anything you do will improve it.

e  2

A useful guide to super-villainy.

e  13

Legal and moral issues arise when taking someone else’s story, even just pieces of it.

e  10

Why it’s important for screenwriters to stay active throughout production.

e  1

Nobody really wants to read them anyway.

e  1

The Archives link, which has been broken ever since switching hosts, is now un-broken — which is not to say fixed.

In its previous incarnation, the Archives section could be sorted by category and date, in a variation on the familar Sortable Nicer Archives kludge for WP. (Click here for an example.) However, the database [...]

e  2

A heads up for readers who occasionally get gibberish or worse when visiting johnaugust.com: it’s not just you. The front page occasionally takes forever to load, or fails completely. I’d be tearing my hair out, but I keep it very short (a “1″ on the clippers, thank you very much).

For once, I’m glad [...]

e  14

You can reveal a character any time you want.

e  9

It’s surprisingly difficult for any villain — even a powerful alien race — to actually destroy the planet.

e  5

Everyone knows how to Google, but there are some special functions that can really help when you need specific information on, say, atheist penguins. (Yes, that was my attempt at a Google Whack. No, it didn’t work.)

Google has a great cheat sheet with hints for finding just what you need. If you [...]

e  12

Is it reasonable that a writer who’s spent several months working on a given film may find her name is nowhere on the final product?

e  20

An early look at an early version of the alternative screenwriting platform.

e  12

After my recent post wondering why so many readers still use Internet Explorer, I’m happy to report the numbers have shifted in favor of Firefox.

Before January 25, 2004:

26% Internet Explorer 22% Firefox 5% Safari 3% Opera

For the week ending February 20, 2004:

23% Firefox 19% Internet Explorer 4% Safari 3% Opera

(Numbers don’t total 100% because bots [...]

e  9

In the share-the-love category: A growing number of writers have websites and/or blogs that you may want to check out for more information and opinions about the craft, the business and the unreality of screenwriting. Here are a few worth perusing:

Lee Goldberg has written extensively for television, and also has several novels to [...]