Well, for one brief, shining moment anyway:
Yeppers, it’s DOCTOR WHO’s Doctor and NOT INSPECTOR SPACETIME’s Not Inspector Spacetime, making each other’s acquaintance at last.
Tag: screenwriting
Love & Money Dept – TV Pilot Production Deals for 1/29/13
Latest News About Writers Who Are Doing Better Than We Are – Because Their Pilots are Being Made
- Robert Peacock (THE SOUL MAN) has gotten a 20 episode order from Nickelodeon for THE HAUNTED HATHAWAYS, a BRADY BUNCH meets a bunch of ghosts show for which he wrote the pilot. (Time to hit up your agents and get staffed, kids.)
- Jon Bokenkamp (PERFECT STRANGER) is moving into production of his pilot THE BLACKLIST, a crime drama for NBC about the world’s most wanted man, who turns himself in to help the Feds…but there are certain conditions. (Uh-oh, we can’t think of anything snarky to say about this one. Does that mean it might actually, you know, work?)
- Ryan Condal’s THE SIXTH GUN, an adaptation of the graphic novel of the same name, is going to pilot at NBC. Think “THE LORD OF THE RINGS’, um, rings only in the old west. (Hey, Carlton Cuse will be showrunner. If he brings his A-game this could be at least as good as THE BLACKLIST.)
- Brian Gallivan (ARE YOU THERE, CHELSEA?) has a pilot deal for THE McCARTHYS, a CBS comedy about sports-crazed Bostonians. (Ooh, sports. Guess they’ve written off the geek audience. Oh, wait, CBS…of course they have.)
- Lee Eisenberg & Gene Stupinsky’s comedy PULLING, about 3 30-something women being zanily contrary is going to pilot at ABC.
LB: ABOUT ABIGAIL Needs You
Once upon a time, way back in those dim, early days of the 21st Century, I had an Online Workshop student named Joselito Seldera. An excellent student, a fine writer, and a pretty damn good guy, Joselito was the Grand Prize Winner of the 2003 SPEC SCRIPTACULAR contest with a tasty little WWII drama that miraculously also managed to be an eye-overflowing love story.
How good a writer is Joselito? Let me put it this way: A few years ago, he was my first choice as the writer of a film for a Chinese production company I consult with. Joselito had to pass, however. He was in L.A., working hard at learning The Business from the ground up.
And now he’s going to tell you what he’s learned…and what he’s doing with it:
The Seven Deadly Sins of Screenwriting
Didja ever notice how since Rupert Murdoch took it over, The Wall Street Journal seems like a truly ironic parody of itself?
Except that, you know, it’s real.
And if you overlook the attitudes of the WSJ’s writers you still can find some good stuff. For example:
Billy Wilder’s Writing Tips
Snatched from WritingClasses.Com, which in turn seems to have dug them out of Cameron Crowe’s book Conversations with Wilder.
We kinda like WritingClasses’ version better because it’s, you know, shorter:
- The audience is fickle.
- Grab ‘em by the throat and never let ‘em go.
- Develop a clean line of action for your leading character.
- Know where you’re going.
- The more subtle and elegant you are in hiding your plot points, the better you are as a writer.
- If you have a problem with the third act, the real problem is in the first act.
- A tip from Lubitsch: Let the audience add up two plus two. They’ll love you forever.
- In doing voice-overs, be careful not to describe what the audience already sees. Add to what they’re seeing.
- The event that occurs at the second act curtain triggers the end of the movie.
- The third act must build, build, build in tempo and action until the last event, and then—that’s it. Don’t hang around.