Creature Companion at the Onion City Film Festival March 21

CREATURE COMPANION, produced by myself and Dan Silverstein, and directed and produced by Melika Bass, will screen in the Opening Night Program (march 21, reception at 730, program at 830) of the Onion City Experimental Film and Video Festival. In the HISTORIES AND FUTURES program: new films by Deborah Stratman / Barbara Hammer + Colleen Smith + Nazlı Dinçel. 

Start with a Cliché and Write like a Child

Screenwriter Ben Hecht said, "Anybody with a good memory for clichés and unafraid to write like a child can bat out a superb movie in a few days."

I disagree that screenwriting is easy. But starting with clichés is not a bad place to begin. Start with the cliché, then twist it, throw it out, do the reverse, combine two cliché's in an unexpected way. For example, the interrogation scene in The Matrix is a cliché UNTIL we and the character realize we have no idea where we are and what this is.

Write like a child - meaning write with abandonment, without self-censoring. Write for the joy of it, for the fun of it, because you're amusing yourself. THEN you'll fix it, mold it, turn it into more "adult" fare. But when you  start yes, write like a child. 

So screenwriting is hard, not easy, but the approach of beginning with clichés and beginning as a child would begin is spot on. 

Proud of my student, best selling author J. Ryan Stradal

and nice that I taught him something :) And what he taught me: Original thinkers who are out of the box find their way to the form/content that makes sense to them.

Thanks, Dialogue Magazine, for the Nice Blurb and Pic

Approaching Writing like Jackson Pollock Approached Painting

It’s Jackson pollock’s birthday. What’s the parallel in writing of taking the canvas off an easel and putting it on the floor and dripping paint on it from above. Still think about this always. How do we approach writing in a new way that no one has thought of. . .