Features
How Changeling Changed Everything for J. Michael Straczynski
After decades of television work, his collaboration with director Clint Eastwood on a shocking true story from the 1920s has put the writer in the awards spotlight.
BY JASON DAVIS
It’s Always ‘Funny’ in Philadelphia
Into the writer’s room with the stars and creators of FX’s outrageous cult comedy. Plus, the “cold open” from episode 412, “The Worst Bar in Philadelphia.’
BY SHELLEY GABERT
Fed Up With Solitude? Join the Crowd
Joining a writing group can help you say goodbye to isolation and refine your work while seeing it performed. Here’s our guide to five groups that represent the tip of the iceberg.
BY STACEY COLLINS
Distilled Drama: Writing Web Serials
The creators of Afterworld forge a new storytelling model and a new series for the online medium Plus: the entire script for episode one of Gemini Division, their new web series starring Rosario Dawson.
BY JOHN MICHAEL SULLIVAN
The Making of Miracle: a Q&A
Jazz musician and novelist James McBride talks about adapting his own novel, “Miracle at St. Anna,” into a Spike Lee Joint and how he became an “overnight success” at 50.
BY DAVID MICHAEL WHARTON
PEOPLE & NEWS
The Buzz
Website seeks true-life stories, and Expo-contest-winning script gets made. Plus: Alan Ball opens a vein about his return to HBO with True Blood.
POV
Television is done differently across the pond – and some U.K. writers are thankful.
Breaking In
She can be a harsh mistress, but the City of Angels rewarded filmmaker Alex Holdridge with a Midnight Kiss.
Why I Write
For Gina Prince-Bythewood, there’s no sweeter feeling than watching actors play scenes she wrote for movies like The Secret Life of Bees.
Lost Scenes: On the Waterfront
This eight-time Oscar winner started out quite differently from the film we all know, with superfluous scenes and nuances that once lost made it a finer film indeed.
The Visual Pitch
The ABCs of marketing spec scripts online.
Product Review
We put Movie Outline 3.0 through its computer paces
Book Review
“Rewrite” by Paul Chitlik
Last Words
Dumb and angry combust in this scene from the new Coen Brothers comedy Burn After Reading.
COLUMNS
Agent’s Hot Sheet
One Superheroic Summer
What the year of the superhero could mean for the biz and for writers.
BY JIM CIRILE
Our Craft
The Emotionally Satisfying Ending
A good ending can linger with an audience long after leaving the theater.
BY KARL IGLESIAS
The XX Factor
Strength in Numbers
It took an ensemble of stars and a do-or-die spirit, but Diane English’s The Women is finally here.
BY AMY DAWES
Guest Column
D.I. Y. Diary, Part 1
Veteran TV writer lan Gurvitz financed his feature film L.A. Blues himself. Here’s his blow-by-blow account.
BY IAN GURVITZ
NOW PLAYING
Ghost Town
David Koepp and John Kamps go to town with a brilliant and charming romantic comedy that masquerades as a ghost story. Plus, Ghost Town leading man Ricky Gervais descrbes how he works with writing partner Stephen Merchant.
BY DANNY MUNSO
W.
The screenwriter of Wall Street and Rudy: The Rudy Giuliani Story tackles an epic, decades-long biography about … our current president.
BY PETER CLINES
Rachel Getting Married
How Jenny Lumet (daughter of director Sidney Lumet) dreamt up her first film—a brilliant family drama about the tension between two sisters.
BY DANNY MUNSO
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
Cult writer-director Kevin Smith’s new film is fairly self-explanatory … as long as you re focusing on the right word.
BY PETER CLINES
Lakeview Terrace
Screenwriters David Loughery and Howard Korder craft a neighbor-from-hell thriller with more on its mind than just scares and set pieces.
BY DAVID MICHAEL WHARTON
Blindness
How screenwriter Don McKellar saw the light in adapting Jose Saramago’s Nobel-Prize-winning work.
BY LEAH CAMERON
Eagle Eye
The screenwriters of this innocent-on-the-run thriller talk about its roots in Hitchcock classics and modern-day paranoia.
BY PETER CLINES
Brothers Bloom
Rian Johnson, the offbeat writer-director of the high-school noir Brick. is back with a romanticized look at the conman genre.
BY JEFF GOLDSMITH
City of Ember
Caroline Thompson tackles an underground civilization on the brink of a power outage—and finds hope in the process.
BY PETER DEBRUGE
Fanboys
While Star Wars fans celebrate their victory in keeping Fanboys intact, co-writers Ernest Cline and Adam F. Goldberg tell us the real story.
BY ERIC ELFMAN
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