TIP FOR WRITERS

Keep moving forward despite your moods.

MOVIES

Best five movies I saw in October:

Secretariat
The Social Network
Lust/Caution
An Education
It's Complicated

THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN

During the interminable bus, taxi, and tube rides--and much of the 11-hour flight back to LA, finished reading one of the best books I've read in ages: Simon Winchester's THE PROFESSOR AND THE MADMAN, "A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary." Highly recommend it for its elegant writing, intriguing subject matter, and literary arcane.

TIP FOR NOVELISTS

Never sit down to write without knowing what you’re going to write before you sit down.

More Tales From The Script

For all who are considering the screenwriting career, I highly recommend “Tales from the Script,” featuring interviews with favorite screenwriters Dennis Palumbo, Paul Schrader, Ron Shelton, Shane Black, Ron Shusett, Frank Darabont, William Goldman, Larry Cohen, Stephen Susco, John Carpenter, Guinevere Turner…. “Amadeus” took 46 drafts! There’s no end to better. Respect for the process. John Carpenter: “Stop bitching—stop whining—and move on.” “A career is broken only if the artist allows it to be broken.” All agree that, “Right now it’s the strangest it’s ever been”—and it’s even stranger now in the “Post-content era.” I would call this well done doc a “reality pill” for sure.

Definition of a Producer

I was watching “Tales from the Script” (highly recommended for anyone who even dares to think of being a screenwriter) and heard from a writer whose name escapes me: “A producer is someone who lies long enough and well enough that the lie becomes the truth.”

I’ve always said the difference between a con man and a visionary in Hollywood is success. Using the word “lie,” of course, puts it in a negative framework. Belief and vision and faith are the positive terms for practical visualization, where you not only see the picture but you do and say everything you can to make others see the picture until, one day, the picture is.

The producer is the one who dares to walk the tightrope between dream and reality, like the rope between the Two Towers. What makes a great producer is that he never gives up, even when the writer does, even when the studio does, even when everyone else does.

5 Things Every Writer Needs to Do in Today’s Changing Story Market:

1) Don’t ask how it’s done. Figure out how to do it.

2) Figure out exactly who your market is.

3) Figure out how to approach that market.

4) Consider becoming your own publisher now rather than after five years of rejection.

5) Never give up.