Movies I like

"I know a woman who looks like a bullfrog but that don't mean she's the damn thing's mother." -- Moses Pray (Paper Moon)Anyone who speaks to me for more than five minutes knows that I think that this time we are living in is the worst time in the history of American film. In fact, I did write about it in two other posts. So if you’d like more details you should look at those.I will say that I

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Two Questions That Drive Me Crazy

First some backstory: When I was a kid there were no VCRs. Only rich people had them; they were still rare for the rest of us. I desperately wanted to see my favorite television shows over and over again, but there was no way to do it. So I used a cassette recorder to record the shows’ audio. I would listen to them in bed when I was supposed to be asleep. This was during the ages of ten, eleven

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The Perfect Solution

I would like to take back the word “perfectionist.” Let’s start by assuming that perfection is something we can actually attain. For instance, some people say that people there is no such thing as a perfect circle, but, for all practical purposes, there is. Let’s call this perfect. Near perfect is perfect.Why am I defining perfection? Because I have seen many screenwriters and others use

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Our Very Own Library of Alexandria

The Library of Alexandria was the largest library in the ancient world. The aim of this ancient Egyptian library was to collect the world’s knowledge. It was said that when foreign ships came into port that their books, and all written material was confiscated, copied, and returned to its owners.The library was tragically destroyed in a fire. Scholars still lament the loss of this vast repository

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Bad Shark, Good Movie

Back in the days before CGI, my roommate was a special effects makeup artist. At that time I had a few friends in this field. There was an ongoing argument that I would have with my creature-making friends about Yoda and E.T., back when both of these characters were make of rubber. They were really just suffocated puppets. My roommate’s view was that both E.T. and Yoda were poorly sculpted. It

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The Best Writing Advice I Ever Got

One thousand years ago, when I was a teenager, I went a sci-fi convention in Seattle. This was probably 1978 or ’79. In those days these kinds of conventions were only attended by hardcore geeks (called nerds in those days) who were on the fringe on society. Big movie stars did not go to these events. The biggest star at this convention was the actor who played Boomer on the original Battlestar

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Water Shortage

Several years ago I wrote a script that had as one of its elements an army of ghosts. Everyone who read the screenplay swore it would sell for big money, and that it was the best screenplay I had written up to that point. I was really proud of this script myself; I felt that I had nailed this story and its treatment.

But when I showed the screenplay to my agent at the time, he looked as if he

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