See yesterday’s column for part one! THE ACTUAL METHOD (TO WRITING AN UNDENIABLE SCREENPLAY) If you want to write an undeniable screenplay, step one is accepting that (almost certainly) nothing in your portfolio is anywhere close to that level. So this means, most of the time, you need to write a new script from scratch. You might be able to take an existing script and rewrite it—but be prepared to change it so drastically that it might as well be a new script. Oh, and while

I am a writer and filmmaker who has spent a lot of time and money to get to the cusp of barely breaking into this crazy business. I have learned a lot of things the hard way and would like to help others do it with less anguish and, ahem, money. This is not a sales pitch! I’m not selling a course or service. It is FREE advice, take it or leave it. There is no gimmick for being a professional screenwriter. There’s no program, course or structure map that you can reliably follo

I want to thank Jeff Bond who pointed out a Guardian piece by Paul Verhoeven, of all people, about the joys of watching Columbo. I completely agree! (UPDATE: Apparently this is not the RoboCop Paul Verhoeven, but a journalist with the same name. Use your middle initial, dude!) Not only that, but I discovered a 1978 performance by Falk, in character as Lt. Columbo, where he absolutely kills for 10 minutes at a roast of Frank Sinatra. Watch Dean Martin and Don Rickles in hyster

Did it ever feel like Jerry Goldsmith’s scores were so good, and sometimes the movies were so bad, that it was as if he was scoring a much better movie in his own imagination? In the old days...that’s sort of how all composers had to operate. No MIDI, no video playback. At best, they had a noisy flatbed editing machine to rewatch footage. For the most part, they worked off of timing sheets—like the above. This is from a page for The Illustrated Man, which I picked up in my tr

I only recently discovered a 2012 Guy Farley score to a 1960s-era caper comedy, The Hot Potato. I was listening to it cold (long story) and thought it was an actual piece of vintage 1960s film music. I had not heard of Guy Farley and thought, “Wow, this guy was really doing a John Barry act back then—why had I never heard of him?” (Is there not a more perfect 1960s English composer name than “Guy Farley”?) If you listen to the above—yeah, it’s The Ipcress File. (And The Knack

This is sort of funny. My wife and I have been watching Outlander. We affectionately call it “Hunky and Chickie.” Good show. There seems to be a lot of getting-captured-and-rescued. But we enjoy it, and we’ve even been able to turn off the subtitles (which helped with the Scottish accents). We reached the season three premiere where the above exchange happens. The sound is bad, but the dialogue is, “Go. Or stay. But please, do it because it’s what you really want to do.” Of c

This week Charlie and I talked to Ashley Scott Meyers, whose website is called SellingYourScreenplay.com. Guess what it’s about! He finally nailed what it is we’re doing with these talks: “You guys are like the Joe Rogan Show for screenwriting.”

The great author and historian David McCullough has died. He was a longtime West Tisbury resident, so when we read one of his books in high school—I forget which one, but it was amazing—it was cool to think it was a local author. We would see him in the community from time to time. I remember passing him not many years ago as he was coming out of the drugstore. He also appears in this documentary about the Nobska, our beloved, now scrapped steamship. I also see this morning t

Sorry, don’t have much for your folks today. Except that I did want to say how much I am savoring the final episodes of Better Call Saul. This is a magnificent show, and it feels extraordinary watching it wrap up with such subtlety and taste. Absolutely wonderful work!

I remember the Cold War, thinking that at any moment I’d go outside and see something like the above (a screen cap from The Day After). You kids don’t remember—but in the early Reagan years, it was pretty scary. And, in truth, it still is. There are still way too many nuclear warheads out there, and with Russia invading Ukraine—it’s a bad situation. But in recent years, I’ve felt fairly safe as far as nuclear war...but more and more certain that we were heading to the end of

Charlie Vignola and I are continuing our YouTube interview series—which I know I need to get set up as an audio-only podcast, forgive me. We talked to screenwriter and director Jonathan W. Stokes, whose scripts I have enjoyed for some time (he has had five on the annual Black List). He recently wrote and directed a very sharp hostage thriller called Wildcat, starring the fabulous Georgina Campbell. It does not seem to be on any major streaming services, so I rented it on Dire

Above: Mike Lang, photographed by Dan Goldwasser. I was so sorry to hear of the passing of Mike Lang (1941–2022), one of the all-time great keyboard players. Please see the Variety obituary by Jon Burlingame. I met Mike in the early days of FSM when we ran an interview with him. He was a brilliant, beloved musician and pianist, with a miles-long résumé of scores and recording projects, and a dear and sweet man who was also a huge film music aficionado. I would see him from ti

Above: A featured fish—it neither swims nor flies! Yes, there is a secret to loglines, and it is this: have your logline express a single, clear, intriguing concept—and not be a collection of “concept fragments” that suggest confusing, contradictory storylines. Writers are often surprised to learn how important the logline is within the film business. Their brilliant screenplays that took months are reduced to just a line or two—and that’s fair? Well, no. But it’s how it work

I just want everybody out there to know that I have been closely involved with film music for over 30 years. And it was not until this morning that I realized the lyrics of Ennio Morricone’s “Belinda May” from L’alibi (1968) are, in fact, “Belinda May.” That’s the kind of great mind you’re dealing with here.

We all read the bizarre news yesterday that Warner Bros. has decided to completely scrap a nearly finished Batgirl film that cost some $90 million to make. I didn’t even know they were making a new Batgirl movie. The last Batgirl I can remember looked like this: They also canceled an animated Scooby-Doo film called Scoob! Holiday Haunt. Ruh-oh. That seems like a lot of money to just throw away. And it is! But, as always, the real reason doesn’t quite make it out to nerd media

I predicted last week, in my write-up of Obi-Wan Kenobi, that Andor would be good. See the new trailer, above. My prediction was mostly based on the reputation of the showrunner, Tony Gilroy, one of my favorite screenwriters. His scripts are like literature. Here’s a random page from Michael Clayton: Gilroy is also the person who saved Rogue One when the rough cut was a disaster, writing and directing extensive reshoots—which led to his work on Andor. It doesn’t seem to be ve

There has been a sea change in the cultural perceptions of black women the last 80 years. The default impression went from this... To this... Whoopi Goldberg told the story of being a kid watching Star Trek, yelling to her mother, “Come quick, come quick! There’s a black lady on TV and she ain’t no maid!” This is, of course, a very large and complicated subject, and not one I’m qualified to discuss. But when Kamala Harris was inaugurated, as I was watching on TV, my twin girl