Category: The TV Biz

LB: Today’s Cool Port Townsend Area News

by Larry Brody

This is cool because the “prolific screenwriter” below is the writing partner of Karen McCullah, who was one of the first writing students I had back in Santa Fe in the early ’90s, and all the films cited in the article were co-written by the two of them.  Small world, yeah?

Prolific screenwriter returns to Chimacum
‘Kiwi’ Smith tells of influence of mother, teacher
by Diane Urbani de la Paz

When prolific Hollywood screenwriter Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith tells her own story, she does it with a cast of characters straight from real life.

Two women have starring roles: Sue Phillips, her English and creative writing teacher at Chimacum High School, and her mother, Katie Smith of Port Ludlow. read article

How to Get Your TV Show Idea on the Air #8

by Larry Brody

The eighth (or maybe not because I could have miscounted) in a series of videos about what is for all practical purposes the most important thing to know in showbiz: How to sell your idea, your script, and yourself.

This is serious business indeed, but the process also is filled with fun and, yes, love.  So please sit back and click to learn, enjoy, and maybe even find your TV show Destiny by knowing more about WHAT EXECUTIVES WANT TO SEE IN A TV SERIES PITCH.

MORE TO COME

TV’s IP Wars – Just getting started?

To paraphrase an old saying, “The more things try to stay the same, the more they change.” Ben Travers of IndieWire.Com makes a powerful and worrisome point.

How Reboots, Spinoffs, and Blockbuster Franchises Could Shape the Future
by Ben Travers

For more than four decades, “Star Wars” has created a dazzling universe filled with iconic characters and stunning imagery — yet each story starts with a simple scroll. The onscreen exposition stretches out into the stars, and for a moment, it feels endless, as though you’ll simply keep reading for two hours rather than embarking on an interstellar adventure. read article

Lois Vossen Empowers Filmmakers to Face the Future

Fascinating. This article and the video it links to fill this TVWriter™ minion with hope.

via indiewire.com

Tales of corporate malfeasance, humanitarian efforts to help victims of natural disasters, the international struggle for an independent press, public land use that threatens to exacerbate income equality, conditions at Chinese factories, the unclear future of healthcare in Afghanistan, the history of “Sesame Street”: All these topics are prominent in the documentary world in recent months. And they were all subjects of films shown on “Independent Lens.” read article

LB: L.A. Life for the Creative

by Larry Brody

Forget all the high prices and crowded freeways and all that other bad P.R. The truth is that if you’re a new writer coming to Hollywoodland to make it in the major leagues, there’s no place more welcoming and supportive of your efforts.

Really. Everybody knows it. I mean, nationally syndicated cartoons don’t publish anything that isn’t a take on common knowledge, right?

read article