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Podcast

IFH 764: Where Writer’s Go Wrong with ACTION Screenplays with Robert McKee

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Robert McKee, A Fulbright Scholar, is the most sought after screenwriting lecturer around the globe. He has dedicated the last 30 years to educating and mentoring screenwriters, novelists, playwrights, poets, documentary makers, producers, and directors internationally. Those who have learned from McKee have called him “the Aristotle of our time” because of his insight into the substance, structure, style, and principles of the grand art of story.

Peter Jackson (writer/director of The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, The Hobbit) has lauded him as “The Guru of Gurus.” For the writers of Pixar (creators of Toy Story 1, 2, & 3, Finding Nemo), McKee’s Story Seminar is a rite of passage. Emmy Award-Winner Brian Cox also portrayed McKee in the Oscar-nominated film Adaptation.

McKee’s former students include over 60 Academy Award Winners, 200 Academy Award Nominees, 200 Emmy Award Winners, 1000 Emmy Award Nominees, 100 WGA (Writers Guild of America) Award Winners, 250 WGA Award Nominees, and 50 DGA (Directors Guild of America) Award Winners, 100 DGA Award Nominees.

A winner and nominee of BAFTA for his popular Channel Four series Reel Secrets, McKee also wrote and hosted 12 episodes of BBC’s Filmworks series. He was profiled by Bob Simon of 60 Minutes for CBS news.

McKee’s articles on Story have also appeared in hundreds of newspapers and magazines around the world including Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker Magazine, Swiss Business Magazine, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, CBS Morning News, BBC, Channel 4 in UK, RAI (Italy), CBN Weekly News & Morning Glory (China), MBC TV, KBS & Arirang TV, Korea Times (South Korea), Kiev Weekly, Kultura Moscow, all major TV, Radio and/or newspapers of Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Germany, France, India, Israel, Mexico, New Zealand, Portugal, Russia, Turkey, Singapore, South Africa, Sweden, and Switzerland and given seminars in all of the above countries.

Since 1984, more than 100,000 students have taken McKee’s courses at various cities around the world: Los Angeles, New York, London, Paris, Sydney, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco, Helsinki, Oslo, Munich, Tel Aviv, Auckland, Singapore, Madrid, Beijing, Shanghai, Barcelona, Lisbon, Malaga, Hamburg, Berlin, Johannesburg, Rome, Stockholm, São Paulo, Santiago, Buenos Aires, Bogota, Beijing, Brussels, Rio de Janeiro, Moscow, Seoul, Istanbul, Hyderabad, Mexico City and many cities regularly.

McKee continues to be a project consultant to major film and television production companies such as 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, & MTV. In addition, Pixar, ABC, BBC, Disney, Miramax, PBS, Nickelodeon, Paramount, GLOBOSAT, MNET and other international TV and Film companies regularly send their entire creative and writing staffs to his lectures.

His new book is Action: The Art of Excitement for Screen, Page, and Game.

ACTION explores the ways that a modern-day writer can successfully tell an action story that not only stands apart, but wins the war on clichés. Teaming up with the former co-host of The Story Toolkit, Bassim El-Wakil, legendary story lecturer Robert McKee guides writers to award-winning originality by deconstructing the action genre, illuminating the challenges, and, more importantly, demonstrating how to master the demands of plot with surprising beats of innovation and ingenuity.

Topics include:

  • Understanding the Four Core Elements of Action
  • Creating the Action Cast
  • Hook, Hold, Pay Off: Design in Action
  • The Action McGuffin
  • Action Set Pieces
  • The Sixteen Action Subgenres

A must-add to the McKee storytelling library, ACTION illustrates the principles of narrative drive with precision and clarity by referencing the most popular action movies of our time including: Die Hard, The Star Wars Saga, Dark Knight, The Matrix, and Avengers: Endgame.

Enjoy my conversation with Robert McKee.

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IFH 763: How to Outline Your Screenplay Like a Pro with Naomi Beaty

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Naomi Beaty is a screenwriting teacher, screenplay consultant, and former development exec with 10+ years in the entertainment industry.

Naomi is based in Los Angeles, CA. She has worked on American productions and on projects in Taiwan and Australia, including the feature film “Ghost Boy”, based on the novel by award winning Australian author Felicity Pulman, produced by Morning Starr Productions.

Earlier, Naomi worked on the other side of the desk at Madonna and Guy Oseary’s Maverick Films, where she helped develop projects including “Twilight” and “Percy Jackson”.

She just released her new book “The Screenplay Outline Workbook”.

The Screenplay Outline Workbook is designed to give you a clear and manageable set of tools, steps, and exercises so you can turn your ideas and inspiration into an outline and write your best screenplay – whether it’s your first or your tenth.

With this workbook as your guide, you can start with just an inkling of an idea – or nothing at all, even! – and end up with a solid story premise, compelling characters, and an outline that provides a blueprint for writing an emotionally satisfying screenplay.

Inside you’ll find enough instruction and theory so that you know what you need to know, but not so much that it overwhelms you before you even get started. Room to work through your story ideas and collect your notes and flashes of brilliance. A place to organize what you discover about your story as you develop it so that you can easily reference it when needed.

Use the workbook to design a new story from scratch, or jump straight to the topic you need to get your work-in-progress unstuck. With 30+ tools, exercises, and prompts honed through years of teaching workshops and working one-on-one with writers, this workbook will help you:

  • Generate new story ideas
  • Choose a strong idea as the first step in writing a great screenplay
  • Build a sturdy foundation for your screenplay by finding the essential elements of the story
  • Discover the organic three act structure and major plot points that create the framework for the story and screenplay
  • Design compelling characters that help push the protagonist along a meaningful character arc
  • Try one or more suggested outlining methods for mapping out your story

…and so much more!

The workbook lays out a process that’s flexible enough that you can use it for every screenplay you write, yet designed to specifically address the issues readers commonly find in aspiring screenwriters’ screenplays.

With each exercise, you’ll explore ideas and make choices to build your story, piece by piece. You’ll craft an outline that does all the heavy lifting, and be confident in the story you’re telling – which frees you to get creative with characters and dialogue, and discovering the kind of magical, cinematic moments that made us all fall in love with movies in the first place.

If you’ve tried to write a screenplay before but found yourself stuck somewhere in Act 2, having an outline that serves as a map of your screenplay can make all the difference. Consider this workbook the wise but gentle guide that will meet you where you are and lead you to your destination so you can finally make real progress turning the movie in your head into a fully developed story that you’re ready to set down onto the screenplay page.

When you’re done you’ll have more than an outline — you’ll have a rock-solid foundation for your screenplay.

Please enjoy my conversation with Naomi Beaty.

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IFH 762: Billion-Dollar Comedy Screenwriting with Herschel Weingrod

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This successful American screenwriter of comedies, many of which are remakes or adaptations of novels (i.e., “Brewster’s Millions” 1985, “Pure Luck” 1991), had worked in collaboration with Timothy Harris. The Wisconsin-born Herschel A. Weingrod and his British-born partner have generally met with commercial approval for their efforts like “Twins” (1988) and “Kindergarten Cop” (1990), both of which benefited from headliner Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“Falling Down” (1993), which they co-produced, also became a box-office success, but their only real critical success to date has been “Trading Places” (1983), which paired Dan Aykroyd and Eddie Murphy.

He has written and co-written a number of Hollywood blockbusters including Space Jam with fellow writer Timothy Harris.

Enjoy my conversation with Herschel Weingrod.

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IFH 761: Reality Check: What Really Happens After You Win an Oscar® for Screenwriting with Tom Schulman

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Tom Schulman graduated from Vanderbilt University with a B.A. in Philosophy. He studied at USC Graduate School of Cinema, with Jack Garfein at the Actors and Directors Lab, Los Angeles, and with director Joan Darling. He directed the Actors’ Studio first west coast production, Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker.

Tom wrote Dead Poets Society for which he received an Academy Award for best original screenplay. He also wrote What About Bob?, Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, Medicine Man, and Holy Man. He wrote and directed Eight Heads in a Duffel Bag He was an executive producer on Indecent Proposal and Me, Myself and Irene. He was the writer/producer of Welcome to Mooseport. He co-wrote and co-produced with Rafael Yglesias and J.J. Abrams, The Anatomy of Hope, a pilot for HBO. He recently wrote, with Callie Khouri, Trae Crowder, and T Bone Burnett, a pilot for Amazon.

He recently wrote and directed Double Down South, an indie feature that will be released in April. Tom served on the board of directors and then as vice president of the Writers Guild of America, West. Tom was the president of the Writers Guild Foundation and serves on its board. He serves on the advisory board of the Science and Entertainment Exchange.

Please enjoy my conversation with Tom Schulman.

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IFH 760: How to Write Dialog that Pops Off the Page with Linda Seger

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Today on the show we have returning champion the legendary Linda Seger. Linda and I discuss her new book You Talkin’ to Me?: How to Write Great Dialogue. We do a deep dive into how to write great dialog. Here’s a bit about the book.

Unlike the chitchat of everyday life, dialogue in stories must express character, advance the story, suggest a theme, and include a few memorable lines that audiences will be quoting for decades to come. The best stories have dialogue that sparkles, but it’s easy for inexperienced writers to fall into common pitfalls like creating dialogue that’s wooden or too on the nose.

Other writers end up with exposition awkwardly inserted into conversations, actors tripping over unnatural phrases or characters who all speak exactly the same way. In You Talkin’ to Me? Linda Seger and John Winston Rainey are here to help with all your dialogue problems. In each chapter, they explore dialogue from a different angle and discuss examples of great dialogue from films and novels. To cap it all off, each chapter ends with examples of poor dialogue, which are annotated by Linda and then rewritten by John, so readers don’t just learn how to recognize when it’s done well―they also learn how to make the dialogue better. Whether you’re writing fiction or nonfiction, for the screen or for the page, this book will get your characters talking.

Ron Howard says he never starts a film without her book. Having authored nine books on scriptwriting, including the best selling Making A Good Script Great, Linda is one of the most prolific writers in her field. 

Enjoy my conversation with Linda Seger.

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IFH 759: Top 10 Screenwriting Scams to Avoid

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On today’s show, I’m going to discuss screenwriting scams that ALL screenwriters should be aware of and avoid at all costs. It never surprises me how predatory people can be with screenwriters and filmmakers in this business.

I did an episode exposing ways screenwriters can get screwed on writing assignments. Listen to that one here.

I do a deep dive into each of the following scams in the show.

  1. The Free Option – Optioning your screenplay for free
  2. Agent Reading Fees
  3. Script Consults That Ask for a Backend Cut
  4. Screenwriting Marketing Services
  5. Screenwriting Contests – Promises
  6. Screenwriting Contests – Milking Technique
  7. Ghost Writing Screenplays
  8. Any Deal That Gives Your Rights Away
  9. Representation Retainer Fee
  10. Screenwriting Contests Warning Signs

Stay safe out there guys. Sharks are everywhere. Enjoy!

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IFH 758: The Philosophy of Screenwriting in Hollywood with Pen Densham

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Today on the show we Pen Densham. Pen is a successful award-winning screenwriter, producer, and director, with an extensive track record in film and television. He is responsible for writing and producing some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters, such as Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves, Backdraft, Blown Awayalong with some of its longest-running television series including The Outer Limits.

Starting with his first job in show business, riding atop a live alligator for a theatrical short film made by his parents, Pen decided to leave his English school system at age 15 and has since spent his lifetime in the business of entertainment, selling films and television series, as well as hiring, mentoring and collaborating with A-list writers along the way. His latest film is Harriet, which he is the executive producer of.

Pen’s latest project, Riding the Alligator: Strategies for a Career in Screenplay Writing and Not getting Eaten was written with one clear goal in mind: to write the kind of book he would have loved to have read when he was starting out as a writer-filmmaker. Pen is also an adjunct professor at the University of Southern California’s prestigious School of Cinematic Arts.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For while knowledge defines all we currently know and understand, imagination points to all we might yet discover and create.”– Albert Einstein

I had a ball speaking to Pen about his time in Hollywood, what it was like to screenwriter/producer monster hits and his screenwriting philosophy on how to make it in Hollywood.

Enjoy my eye-opening conversation with Pen Densham.

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IFH 757: What are the Essential Elements in ALL Successful Stories with Karl Iglesias

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Today on the show we have returning champion Karl Iglesias. His last episode is one of the most popular shows ever in the history of the podcast. I wanted to bring him back to dig deeper into his thoughts on writing for emotional impact and breakdown the essential elements of every good story.

Karl Iglesias has been a writer for over 20 years now with varying degrees of success — an option here, a couple of contest finalists and winners there, an indie development deal, many writing and script-doctoring assignments, a TV spot for a Coca-Cola campaign — and of course, his first published book, The 101 Habits of Highly Successful Screenwriters, which ignited my unplanned teaching and consulting career, and my second book, Writing for Emotional Impact. Since then, he has contributed to two other books on the craft, Now Write! Screenwriting and Cut to the Chase.

In between teaching and consulting, Karl keeps busy script doctoring for other writers, directors, and producers when the work comes his way, while developing his own scripts, having about ten projects in various stages of development.

Enjoy my conversation with Karl Iglesias.

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IFH 756: Confessions of a Hollywood Script Doctor with Peter Douglas Russell

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Today’s guest is screenwriter and Hollywood script doctor Peter Douglas Russell. I wanted to go deep into the back alleys of what Hollywood script doctors actually do in the business. Peter’s conversation was eye-opening, to say the least.

Peter Russell sold two television pilots in 2017. He enjoys working on projects both as a ghostwriter and as a consultant.  And he can both write and teach what he knows. So many successful screenwriters and producers have no idea how to teach what they do, and so many teachers can’t actually sell stories. But Peter does both.

Peter was UCLA’s Teacher of the Year in 2009. He invented (along with his then partner Cecilia Najar) a process called The Storymaker which you can use to quickly develop an original, complex, vivid story from a single idea — and the Storymaker is helping scores of his students shape wonderful stories.

Peter started as a story analyst in the 1990s and has read over 6,000+ screenplays for major film and television giants including Imagine Entertainment, Participant Productions, HBO, CBS, Walden Entertainment and dozens of others.

As he read these scripts, he started seeing deep, hidden patterns in the best stories. He wrote these down and started getting jobs FIXING writer’s stories. He got good at it — really good.

Peter was invited to teach at UCLA in 2004, and it became a passion, too.  He has now been invited to teach television pilot and film story creation at Pepperdine University’s Seaver College Screenwriting MFA program, at Story Expo in LA and New York, and many others. Meanwhile, Peter has turned The Storymaker into the most powerful tool for helping storytellers create original vivid stories. Simply and quickly.

Enjoy my conversation with Peter Douglas Russell.

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IFH 755: How to Write for CSI Vegas, NCSI & Law & Order SVU with Jennifer Dornbush

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Today on the show we have author Jennifer Dornbush who has written the book Forensic Speak: How to Write Realistic Crime Dramas. We sit down and discuss all things forensics. We even discuss the impact of the OJ Simpson case on the world of forensics. Here’s a bit about her amazing book.

Crime stories have always intrigued viewers and storytellers. Today, crime shows rule the airwaves and there is truly a procedural drama out there for every personality — and every writer. Born out of the author’s real-life experiences growing up around death investigation, Forensic Speak unlocks the secrets of forensic science for writers and fans alike. With a filmography of 100 film and TV examples and 80 additional resources, the book provides writers direct access to hundreds of ways to make their crime writing more authentic.

Enjoy my conversation with Jennifer Dornbush.

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