A man is traveling by train from Minsk to Pinsk. On the train he meets a mind-reader. “You are thinking of getting off the train at the next stop,” the mind-reader tells him, “and going back to Minsk.” “No,” says the man, “but it’s a good idea.” When I was getting ready to pitch “The […]
Conventional wisdom: the 70s were a Golden Age for American film; inspired by the Godards, Truffauts, Antonionis and Fellinis who came of age in the 60s, ignited by Vietnam and Watergate, the Easy Riders and Raging Bulls—Scorsese, Ashby, De Palma, Altman, Spielberg, et al—brought new sophistication and bite to American cinema. Nothing like it before, […]
Remakes come in four basic categories: BETTER THE FIRST TIME. “Sabrina,” “King Solomon’s Mines,” “Great Expectations,” “Unfaithfully Yours,” “The Heartbreak Kid,” “A Kiss Before Dying,” “Diabolique,” “The Nutty Professor,” “The Manchurian Candidate,” “Arthur,” “To Be Or Not To Be,” “Out of the Past,” etc. This category is by far the largest and the fastest-growing. THE […]
“I love subtlety, so long as it’s obvious.” Billy Wilder said that and it’s true. The virtues of obscurity are minimal. The earlier in a movie we know about the characters, and where the whole thing is going, the better. If there’s a big surprise in the story, figure out when you want the audience […]
1. There is always one character too many. Changing a character’s gender or ethnicity can often unlock a story. More often, eliminating a character is the answer, and better to do it now and save everybody else a lot of work. Every movie contains its own review. “This is terrible.” “I don’t […]
“None of the editors I deal with would like this book.” Before Lynn Nesbit became one of the most powerful literary agents in N.Y., with clients like Nora Ephron, Toni Morrison, Oliver Sacks, Tom Wolfe, and Joan Didion, she was my agent. She represented my first hardcover novel, “Counterparts”—and then flatly refused to represent my […]
Some notes on projects I’ve gotten over the years: The good, the bad, and the ugly. Good. In the late 60s, E.L. Doctorow, then an editor at Dial Press, gave me a $1000 advance to write a novel on any subject I chose. He’d read an earlier, unpublished novel of mine and thought I […]
I’ve sold three projects off of pitches. One, “The Sender,” actually made it to the screen. A second pitch, “Louie Louie,” about a guy who duplicates himself using a 3-D printer he’s invented, got bought for the movies and eventually died as an ABC pilot. A TV pilot pitch, “Area 51,” also went to […]
BEST MOVIES OF THE 21st CENTURY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaeVPdsVkyA Richard Rushfield’s brilliant inside-Hollywood blog, The Ankler, asked readers to list their favorite movies of the 21st Century. My Top 25: SPRING BREAKERS YOU CAN COUNT ON ME TALK TO HER LOVE ACTUALLY MANCHESTER BY THE SEA FORCE MAJEURE KINGS AND QUEEN A SERIOUS MAN MICHAEL CLAYTON BURN […]