Tag: People’s Pilot Contest

Peggy Bechko: Evolution of Beginnings – Writers Keeping Up With Readers

evolution

by Peggy Bechko

I’ve talked about beginnings of novels before but recently I’ve seen a few articles on a different angle and had someone ask me how beginnings have changed over the eons of writing. Had another someone, reading an Ebook, comment he didn’t have time to read works like War and Peace because its length depended mainly on long introductions and pages and pages of description that goes on at length about a tilt of a head or small gesture.

It got me to thinking, and reading, and thinking some more.

Here’s the thing. Each way of writing is correct for the era it’s written in. The old classics are mostly filled with long descriptions, some with flowery prose, and the like. It was a different time. And it lingered that way for quite a while. The writer would feed the reader a whole backstory right in the beginning to set the stage. They’d provide lots of description to give a feel for place and time. read article

LB: “Mad As Hell” is a great book about a great film written by an even greater writer

mad as hellBuy this book.

I really mean it. I’ve read it but can’t quantify it. No “Good,” “Not So Good,” cute snarking can cut it when it comes to reviewing this “behind-the-scenes story of the making of the movie Network, which transformed the way we think about television and the way television thinks about us.”

Of course, I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out the ultimate irony of the Amazon listing of a book titled Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies. read article

Angelo J. Bell: SERIOUS ROGERS goes to New York

by Angelo J. Bell

My neo-noir action thriller, “Resurrection of Serious Rogers” heads to NYC to be screened at the BREAKTHROUGH FESTIVAL an independent film festival organized by the filmmaker Sujewa Ekanayake of Sri Lanka.

rsr-blocks3 read article

Lifehacker.Com is Looking for New Writers

lifehackerkeyboard

But don’t take our word for it. Get thyself straight over HERE and read what the site’s editors have to say.

Whew. That was one tough post to write…okay, so it wasn’t. But finding it wasn’t exactly a stroll through the woods. And convincing ourselves to actually post this instead of keeping it to our greedy, ambitious little selves…well, that took us to the limit of our endurance and generosity. read article

JOHN OSTRANDER: SEQUELS AND PREQUELS AND REMAKES, OH MY!

sequels

by John Ostrander

Fox Movies has announced the possibility of re-making the musicalWest Side Story because Steven Spielberg has evidently expressed an interest in doing so. A part of me, a large part of me, wonders if that’s a good idea. The original won ten Oscars and is considered a movie classic. So – why? Why do a remake? It might be different but will it be better? How likely is that?

It puts me in mind of Gus Van Sant’s shot by shot re-make of Psycho. Why did he bother other than as an artistic exercise? Why did the studio okay it? One of the justifications I heard is the younger generation won’t go to the original because it’s in black and white. Seriously? They can’t be that shallow.

At one point there was talk of doing a re-make of Casablanca as a film. That was fortuitously abandoned. There was a TV prequel to it in 1983 that lasted about a season. There was also a TV remake of Going My Way which starred Gene Kelly in the Bing Crosby role and Leo G. Carroll in the Barry Fitzgerald part. This one actually had a large impact on me; I was in the 8th grade at that point and it made me want to be a priest. My “vocation” lasted only a little longer than the series. But the TV series was my first experience with the material and so the TV series was always my “real” Going My Way. read article