Who Are You People?

I don’t have much in the way of screenwriting advice. It’s like telling someone how to make love. It’s more useful (and more fun) to figure it out on your own. But I do have one tip that I feel qualified to give: Never throw anything away. Keep every idea you come up with, every [...]

Right before I left for Los Angeles, I took a quick trip to Europe with my folks. I brought a bottle of bordeaux back from Paris. It was to be my celebratory wine, only to be opened when I had my Big Break in the film business — however long that took. Moving to Los [...]

“Backstory” is a term used to describe everything that has happened to characters before the movie begins. When Indiana Jones walks into Marion Ravenwood’s bar, she slugs him because he broke her heart years before. We don’t know the details of that heartbreak, because we never got to see it. It’s part of Indy’s backstory. [...]

In the excellent film, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Richard Dreyfuss’ character, Roy Neary, has visions implanted in his mind by alien visitors. These visions drive him toward Devil’s Tower, where he is intercepted and interrogated by members of a mysterious scientific team portrayed by Francois Truffaut and Bob Balaban — Why has he [...]