“This is the saddest story I have ever heard.” So begins Ford Maddox Ford’s masterpiece, The Good Soldier. Every screenwriter has at least one sob story. This is mine. Back in the early 70s, before I got my first screenplay credit, I wrote a spec script, “Almost Grown,” about a high school kid, Burdick (no […]
Has anyone in real life ever uttered any of these sentences? “And your point is?” “And you’re saying that because?” “That went well.” “Why am I not surprised?” “This is the part where you [leave, confess, whatever].” “Tell me something I don’t know.” “So that happened.” “What part of [whatever] don’t you understand?” (A tiny […]
“I love subtlety, so long as it’s obvious.” Billy Wilder said that and it’s true. The virtues of obscurity are minimal. The earlier in a movie we know about the characters, and where the whole thing is going, the better. If there’s a big surprise in the story, figure out when you want the audience […]
1. There is always one character too many. Changing a character’s gender or ethnicity can often unlock a story. More often, eliminating a character is the answer, and better to do it now and save everybody else a lot of work. Every movie contains its own review. “This is terrible.” “I don’t […]
“None of the editors I deal with would like this book.” Before Lynn Nesbit became one of the most powerful literary agents in N.Y., with clients like Nora Ephron, Toni Morrison, Oliver Sacks, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion, she was my agent. She represented my first hardcover novel, “Counterparts”—and then flatly refused to represent my […]
Some notes on projects I’ve gotten over the years: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Good. In the late 60s, E.L. Doctorow, then an editor at Dial Press, gave me a $1000 advance to write a novel on any subject I chose. He’d read an earlier, unpublished novel of mine and thought I […]
I’ve sold three projects off of pitches. One, “The Sender,” actually made it to the screen. A second pitch, “Louie Louie,” about a guy who duplicates himself using a 3-D printer he’s invented, got bought for the movies and eventually died as an ABC pilot. A TV pilot pitch, “Area 51,” also went to […]