Turn up the contrast (or why we like crazy astronauts)

I often hear people say how much they love a film because it is “dark.” They wax poetic about dark films because they feel that they are more true-to-life than one that is lighter (or “sappy,” as they might say).I feel as if I have asked them what they see in an inkblot. Over many years I have noticed that these people tend to be gloomier people all around. They believe anything good or happy is

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Theme Beats Logic

“Don’t give me logic, give me emotion.”— Billy Wilder’s instructions to his writing partner, I.A.L. DiamondLet’s start to explore this idea of theme versus logic by looking at the film Raising Arizona. Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunter play a couple desperate to have a child. They eventually resort to stealing an infant from a couple with quintuplets.When the hapless couple brings the baby home,

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The ultimate sophistication

"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication." -- Leonardo da VinciDa Vinci’s quote on the sophistication of simplicity has been all but forgotten by creative people today. Screenwriting students, more than anything else, don’t want their work to appear too simplistic, too “obvious.” The idea of communicating clearly with one’s audience is now equated with talking down to them.Good art, we think,

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The Secret of Magic

Years ago a good friend of mine was an apprentice film editor at the same time as he was learning carpentry from his father. One day the film editor says to my friend, “When you read about carpentry think about editing.”My friend and I talked about this for some time trying to figure out what he meant. We were both in our late teens at the time and couldn’t make sense of it. Now that I’m older I

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A Genius - Part 2 (or Chaplin's Blog)

I have said it before: The people who made films "in the old days" were better at their craft than those who make them now. I have urged people to seek out old interviews with these storytellers to see just how much they had to say about their craft. If you do this, you will see farther because you will be standing in the shoulders of giants. Now here is one of those giants: Charlie Chaplin. If

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A Genius -- Part 1

"I like Keaton's [films]. But Chaplin is the best of 'em all." -- Howard HawksCharlie Chaplin was a genius. I know, I'm not the first one to say this, but people tend to take him for granted. We think of his little tramp character as too cutsie -- we are too sophisticated nowadays to laugh at something so corny. He doesn't look funny to us with his Hitler mustache, bowler hat and baggy pants. But

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FLIP-FLOPS

When I say flip-flops I don’t mean shoes. Flip-flops is the name that I give characters who are opposites, but exchange character traits.Oscar and Felix of Neil Simon’s play The Odd Couple, are probably the most famous flip-flops. One is clean and prissy while the other is sloppy and gruff. Their marriages have broken up and they are thrown together as roommates. They are extreme opposites,

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Get Rich Quick! Become a Hollywood Screenwriter!

“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” -- Thomas EdisonI was once asked to show a short film of mine and speak about filmmaking at a community college. At the time my film (a short film called “White Face”) had been running on HBO. After a few standard questions like, “What was the budget?” and “How long did it take to make?” came a question

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Please Don’t Kill The Animals

In the last couple of years, several animated films have used animals as major characters. Now I am told by my friends in that business that the studios are looking to buck this trend. They feel that the audience is growing tired of watching animals. I find this baffling. Animal stories did not emerge in the world with the advent of computer-generated animation, and will be with us long after we

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The New Holy Grail

People tell me about how good the stories are in games nowadays, but I have never seen this to be true. The games are exciting and the graphics are great, but they do not tell stories. (I can hear some of your knees jerking from here, but hear me out.)Because video games have many of the elements of a story -- characters, settings and exciting events for instance -- it is easy to be fooled into

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