Peggy Bechko Reminds Us that It’s “Time to Write”

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by Peggy Bechko

Okay, the end of the year is coming. No doubt we’re all feeling a bit crunched for time. It’s just a seasonal thing.

Or is it?

Writers almost always are performing a juggling act, especially early on in their careers. You know, the day job. Unless you’re retired with lots of time to write or a millionaire with no money cares you probably have a day job right now or have perhaps recently had the good fortune and finally enough stability in your chosen field of writing to be able to put that behind you. read article

Gender Equality as Seen by the Woman Who “Started the Fight”

Maria Giese’s first movie was shown at Cannes in 1995. She hasn’t been paid to write or direct in good ole Hollywood since. In this amazing article, the woman who helped launch the ACLU’s Hollywood anti-gender discrimination campaign talks about how it all came about:

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by Maria Giese

Twenty years ago I was a director, part of the Hollywood gold rush culture, chasing my dream. I pursued that dream relentlessly. By 2011, I had failed — utterly. A few months ago, my picture appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, then in Fortune with the headline: “Meet the Woman Who Started the EEOC Investigation Into Sexism in Hollywood.” How did it come to this?

When I enrolled in the graduate directing program at UCLA’s School of Theater, Film and Television, thanks to Title IX, my class was 50 percent women and 50 percent men. Still, I should have seen trouble ahead: There was only one female directing professor, and men had directed almost 100 percent of the films we studied. read article

This Week’s Top TVWriter™ Posts 12/5/15-12/11/15

EDITOR’S NOTE: TVWriter™ just moved into Christmas Vacation mode, which means that we’re taking off weekends for the first time in years. But not entirely. Oh no, you don’t think for a minute that our BL, LB, would let us get away with posting nothing on Saturday or Sunday, do you? Nosirree!

So, for your delectation, one of our staple departments remains, um, staple, as in: read article

Mindy Newell: Are You Typing? Or Writing?

Here’s an extraordinary article by an extraordinary writer. And no, we aren’t talking about Ray Bradbury. We’re talking about Mindy Newell, who does, yeah, sorta mention the Ray Man:

Bradbury-Snoopyby Mindy Newell

“If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of The Elements of Style. The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.” • Dorothy Parker

“I think there are two types of writers, the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows. And I’m much more a gardener than an architect.” • George R. R. Martin read article

BLOODLINE: Rooting for the Bad Guy.

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by Lew Ritter

Normally, in movies or TV, you root for the hero to conquer the villain and win their objective. However, real life is rarely so clear cut.

One of my binging pleasures for the recent few months has been a NETFLIX series called BLOODLINE. It is a series written and produced by Todd Kessler and Daniel Zelman. They are the successful producers behind the successful multi-year cable series DAMAGES starring Glen Close as a power hungry mega – lawyer.

Similar to DAMAGES, BLOODLINE is a densely plotted serialized drama. It revolved around the celebration of Fiftieth anniversary of the Rayburns hotel in the lush Florida Keys. The entire Rayburn clan has gathered to honor the Mother and Father played by Sissy Spacek and Sam Shepard. read article