"Gymnastics tells you no. All day long. It mocks you over and over again. Telling you you're an idiot. That you're crazy. If you like running fullspeed towards a stationary object, vault's for you. If you like pealing pieces of skin the size of quarters of your hands... bars is for you. Because the only thing more fun then rips, is when your rips get rips. It's super sexy. And floor, are you serious, I mean who doesn't want to parade around in a leotard getting wedgies and doing dorky choreog... Read Full Story

Every time I sit in the dark in a movie theater, that moment just before a movie begins, I have an expectation, a hope, a longing...I want to be taken into another world.I want to be swept up into the lives of the people I will meet on screen.I want to be engaged by what I see and hear...Dazzled by what I see and hear...Moved by what I see and hear.Surely, you've been there. You know what I'm talking about. You know that almost incandescent experience when you find yourself magically transp... Read Full Story

Today is Day 12 of the "14 Days of Screenplays, Version 3.0" challenge and the featured screenplay is for the movie Crash (2004). You can download the script from myPDFscripts.com here.Background: The movie was nominated for 6 Academy Awards, winning 3 including Best Writing, Original Screenplay, screenplay/story by Paul Haggis & screenplay by Robert Moresco. It also won the WGA Award for Best Original Screenplay. It currently has an 8.0 rating on IMDB.com and is ranked #200 out of th... Read Full Story

I just caught the ending of Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) on TCM. Here it is:Note that between 0:20-0:36, Audrey Hepburn's character, Holly Golightly, runs through the rain on the sidewalks of NYC. And that made me wonder how many movies have that same type of scene. There's When Harry Met Sally (1989) between 2:35-3:48 of this clip:There's Manhattan (1979) between 7:18-8:46 of this clip:Of course, those are scenes where the running is inspired by a character's sudden realization that they... Read Full Story

The Wall Street Journal had a great article a few weeks back: "How to Write a Great Novel", reflections by novelists on how they approach writing. Since the article is subscription only, I'm featuring one writer per day here, highlighting their process with a key excerpt from the article.Today's writer is Russell Banks whose novels include "Continental Drift" and "The Sweet Hereafter."Russell Banks, a novelist who lives in upstate New York, writes nonfiction essays and reviews on his computer... Read Full Story

GITS reader Aleks emailed me about the 14 Day challenge noting that I had not included any scripts written by a woman. And that rather surprised me because I had made a point of doing precisely that with Version 1.0 (Thelma & Louise written by Callie Khourie) and Version 2.0 (When Harry Met Sally written by Nora Ephron, and Big co-written by Anne Spielberg). But in my attempts to read through peoples' suggestions and pull together a balanced slate, evidently my male chauvinist pig gene... Read Full Story

Since our 14 Day script yesterday was Psycho, and we featured an interview with the the movie's director Alfred Hitchcock, I thought we should feature the screenwriter as well. So here is a written interview conducted with Stefano in 2003. A fascinating excerpt about his initial involvement with Hitchcock on Psycho:It was after this that Hitch called, and I was told, "Hitchcock's office is sending you a book. Read it and you'll meet with him on Tuesday morning.'' So I read the book and I th... Read Full Story

"My idea was sound. Only an idiot could have won this war, and he did."-- Prime Minister Count Rupert Mountjoy (Peter Sellers), The Mouse That Roared (1959), screenplay by Roger MacDougall and Stanley Mann, based on a novel by Leonard Wibberley Read Full Story

I included this analysis as an update to the original post, but put it here just to be sure folks see it.This script is distinctive in that it's arguable there are several Protagonists and even several different types of Protagonists. Generally a Protagonist is determined by one or more of the following aspects:* The main character in the story.* The character whose goal defines the end point of the Plotline.* The character who goes through the most dramatic transformation.Let's go through t... Read Full Story

Posted as an update in the original post, but I'm re-posting here for those who might otherwise miss it.I'd never read the script for Aliens, so it was interesting going through the story on the page and slogging through the mush which is my brain cells nowadays to dredge up memories from having seen the movie over 2 decades ago. As usual, GITS readers lasered in on some of the story's key themes that also struck me. In this case, I want to spotlight two points. The first from cfan:And, to... Read Full Story