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Avatar, Hurt Locker Lead Oscar Race
Post from Writers Write
Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 12:00 am
Read more: Writing
The Oscar nominations were announced this morning by Anne Hathaway. Here are the nominees for Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Original Screenplay:
Adapted screenplay:
District 9 (Sony Pictures Releasing), Written by Neill Blomkamp and Terri Tatchell
An Education (Sony Pictures Classics), Screenplay by Nick Hornby
In the Loop (IFC Films), Screenplay by Jesse Armstrong, Simon Blackwell, Armando Iannucci, Tony [...]
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Screenwriters Age Discrimination Lawsuit Settled for $70 Million
Post from Writers Write
Monday, January 25, 2010, 9:00 pm
Read more: Writing
A settlement has finally been reached
in the age discrimination class action lawsuit filed years ago by 165 writers against a number of networks, production studios and talent agencies. The settlement is worth $70 million. The Hollywood Reporter reports:
It remains to be seen how much money will flow to the 165 plaintiffs who participated in the class-action suit, and attorneys for both parties involved in the 10-year battle say they are not allowed to talk about Friday’s settlement, which is subject to final approval by California Superior Court for the County of Los Angeles.
Sources close to the situation calculate that those who joined the class action early are eligible for amounts ranging from $70,000-$140,000, and in some cases more. Those who joined later could get about 40% less, and a minimum amount has been set at $250.
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Of the $70 million, $43 million will be used to pay the class members and taxes on their awards, to fund required reserves and to “activities beneficial to the settlement class members.” Two-thirds of the settlement will be paid by insurance companies.
Age discrimination in Hollywood is not limited to actresses who are considered over the hill at 30. Writers and other behind the scenes employees have reported numerous instances of age discrimination.
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Up In The Air Wins Best Screenplay at Golden Globes
Post from Writers Write
Tuesday, January 19, 2010, 12:00 am
Read more: Writing
The film Up In The Air won Best Screenplay – Motion Picture at the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards. Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner won Golden Globes for their screenplay Up in the Air. Writer/director Jason Reitman said “people like how I write women.” He also says he could never write women ithout his wife who is the “fuel to his creative fire.” Reitman also thanked George Clooney and his mom and dad. Take a look:
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Screenwriter Dan O’Bannon Dead at 63
Post from Writers Write
Thursday, January 14, 2010, 3:00 am
Read more: Writing
Dan O’Bannon, who wrote the screenplay for Alien, Total Recall and The Return of the Living Dead, has died from Crohn’s disease. He was 63. The New York Times reports:
The Writers Guild of America confirmed his death. The cause was Crohn’s disease, a chronic gastrointestinal disorder that Mr. O’Bannon endured for 30 years, his wife, Diane, told The Los Angeles Times.
Mr. O’Bannon had an early start as a screenwriter when he and the director John Carpenter, students at the time at the University of Southern California film school, wrote the low-budget film Dark Star, which was released as a feature in 1974.
After working as a computer animator for the director George Lucas on Star Wars and trying, unsuccessfully, to develop a film based on the Frank Herbert novel Dune, Mr. O’Bannon created the story of Alien with the screenwriter Ronald Shusett and wrote the screenplay on his own.
The film, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Sigourney Weaver, is about a spaceship with a vicious monster loose onboard. (The creature begins as a parasite that explodes from a crew member’s chest.) It became a box office hit, a classic of science fiction and horror, and the progenitor of a lucrative Hollywood franchise, with its several sequels.
“I love gore films and I grew up with ’50s monster movies,” Mr. O’Bannon told the journal Cinefantastique in 1979, speaking of the film’s origins. “The idea for the monster in Alien originally came from a stomach ache I had.”
Our condolences to his friends and family.
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Everything and Nothing
Post from Lee Goldberg
Saturday, December 26, 2009, 3:03 am
Read more: Writing
Two things got me thinking today about the challenges of adapting a book to the screen — my friend John Rogers’ blog posts on the subject and the movie UP IN THE AIR, which I loved. I’ve written a few…
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Golden Globe Nominations For Best Screenplay
Post from Writers Write
Wednesday, December 16, 2009, 9:00 pm
Read more: Writing
The Golden Globe nominations were announced yesterday. Here are the nominees for Best Screenplay:
District 9
Written by Neill Blomkamp, Terri Tatchell
The Hurt Locker
Written by Mark Boal
Inglourious Basterds
Written by Quentin Tarantino
It’s Complicated
Written by Nancy Meyers
Up In The Air
Written by Jason Reitman, Sheldon Turner
You can see the full list of nominations here.
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Roger Avary Moving to County Jail for Tweeting
Post from Writers Write
Tuesday, December 1, 2009, 8:00 pm
Read more: Writing
Oscar-winning screenwriter Roger Avary has been yanked out of the work furlough program he was in and has been transferred to the Ventura County Jail where he will finish out the rest of his sentence for DUI. Avary was discovered to have been tweeting from jail about the terrible conditions and that is thought to be the reason he was transferred to county.
Under the work furlough program he slept in a barracks like hangar, but was allowed to leave to work during the day. Now he will be incarcerated full time.
Pulp Fiction” screenwriter Roger Avary won’t be tweeting again any time soon, a Ventura County sheriff’s official said Monday.
Avary probably will serve the rest of his yearlong sentence for a fatal drunken driving accident in the county jail instead of a lower-security work furlough program, said Sheriff’s Department spokesman Ross Bonfiglio.
He’s expected to be released next July.
Until last week, Avary had been permitted to leave the furlough program daily to work at a production office, where he sent out tweets about strip searches, lockdowns and talks with gangbangers, officials said.
But after The Times published reports about the short messages, Avary was transferred on Thanksgiving to county jail. The tweets played a role in the decision, Bonfiglio said, but he said probation officials also had “security issues.”
“He really messed up,” Bonfiglio said. “He could have done nine months out of a year sentence, and not even in lock-up, for killing someone. Now he is going to do the remainder of that time in county jail.”
Avary pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated in connection with a car accident in which he was driving and his passenger
Andreas Zini was killed and Avary’s wife Gretchen was seriously injured. Avary crashed into a telephone road on a rural road on the way home from dinner.
So what security issues were so bad that necessitated moving him to county? We think it was the tweets. Conditions in the county jail are going to be much worse than what Avary reported on at the work furlough camp, that’s for sure.
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Melissa Rosenberg Talks New Moon Screenplay
Post from Writers Write
Wednesday, November 18, 2009, 12:00 am
Read more: Writing
Screenwriter Melissa Rosenberg, who has adapted Stephenie Meyer’s bestselling novels Twilight, New Moon and Eclipse into screenplays,
talked to The L.A. Times about working with author Stephenie Meyer so closely to make sure the author’s vision was translated into film, while still having her own stamp on the script.
In the first book, with “Twilight,” I don’t [...]
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Comedy Writer David Lloyd Dead at 75
Post from Writers Write
Saturday, November 14, 2009, 12:00 am
Read more: Writing
Emmy winning comedy writer David Lloyd has died. He was 75. Lloyd wrote the classic “Chuckles Bites the Dust” episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
Lloyd died of prostate cancer Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, said his son, writer-producer Christopher Lloyd.
“I do think he was the preeminent writer of television comedy,” said Les Charles, co-creator of “Cheers,” for which Lloyd wrote numerous episodes.
“If you consider how long his career was and how much he wrote for such really popular shows, he’s got to have been responsible for a record number of laughs in this world,” Charles said.
His four-decade comedy career began with writing jokes for Jack Paar on “The Tonight Show” in 1962 and included writing for “The Bob Newhart Show,” “Phyllis,” “Rhoda,” “Lou Grant,” “Taxi,” “Frasier” and many other shows.
“He was a remarkable writer,” said Allan Burns, who created “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” with James L. Brooks and began working with Lloyd when he moved to Hollywood from New York in 1974 to write for the series.
“The word ‘wit’ doesn’t come up an awful lot when you’re talking about television comedy, but that’s what David was: a genuine wit,” said Burns. “And he was just remarkable in his ability to write wonderful stuff very quickly.
“I would sit at my desk and laugh out loud, which I don’t do often. His drafts always made me laugh out loud and with such unexpected, off-the-wall humor.”
Our condolences to his family and friends.
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The Mail I Get – Writing the Treatment
Post from Lee Goldberg
Sunday, November 8, 2009, 8:11 am
Read more: Writing
Bryon Stedman asked me this question in a comment to another post: I have a situation where a broadcast entity claims they want to hear my idea for a boxing series or made for TV movie. The characters belong to…
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The Mail I Get
Post from Lee Goldberg
Tuesday, November 3, 2009, 7:15 am
Read more: Writing
I’ve been getting variations of this email a lot lately, so I thought I’d share my answer to this one here: Lee, I was wondering about your time management. How long does it take for you to write your blog…
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The Writer is God
Post from Lee Goldberg
Thursday, October 29, 2009, 7:56 pm
Read more: Writing
The Guardian reports that the only way to raise the quality of UK television series is to adopt the showrunner/writing room system prevalent in the U.S. They write, in part: The only way to produce sophisticated, rich, long-running drama like…
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What is it… Really?
Post from Lee Goldberg
Wednesday, October 28, 2009, 5:49 am
Read more: Writing
TV writer & blogger Will Dixon has taken some points I raised on how mysteries are constructedand expanded on them as they apply to sf, horror and fantasy shows . He wrote, in part: when it comes to constructing the…
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Win an Emmy, Then Get Fired
Post from Writers Write
Friday, October 16, 2009, 9:44 pm
Read more: Writing
Kater Gordon, the writer’s assistant turned writer, won an Emmy for the last episode of last season’s Mad Men. She was like the show’s own Peggy Olson, the girl who rose through the ranks to win an
Emmy. So then why was she fired by Matt Weiner the show’s creator and the man who was forced to share an Emmy with her? Nikki Finke had some nonsense about how Matt liked to encourage young writers and that he felt she had gone as far as she could and it was time for new writers. Others told her Kater quit before she could be fired.
I’ve learned that writer’s assistant-turned-staff writer, Robin Veith, quit Mad Men before she could be let go by Matthew Weiner.
A source tells me: “It was at the very worst mutual. She needed to move on and see how she would do after leaving the nest. Matt is a genius, and he gave lots of people an opportunity, but never let’s anyone forget it. I’m sure he’d never tell anyone she quit, because that is a rejection of him. Anyway, they are friends and made a mutual decision.”
A show insider replies, “There are staffing changes every season. It is the nature of television shows to fine tune. Why is it news this season?” Because the show won two best drama Emmy’s in a row, and with success comes attention. Deal with it.
What a load of nonsense. No one fires a screenwriter who just penned an Emmy-winning episode unless there is something else going on. Of course, they shared the writing credit so there’s no way to know how much of that episode she really wrote. But it’s still most peculiar.
We hope she finds a new show quickly, because she clearly has the talent.
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The Lee Goldberg Show
Post from Lee Goldberg
Tuesday, October 13, 2009, 12:28 am
Read more: Writing
If you missed my live, interactive webcast last week, now you can catch the archive version. I’ve posted the first half of the show, where I talked about MONK with my special guest David Breckman (writer-producer-director of MONK), in three…
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The Mail I Get
Post from Lee Goldberg
Monday, October 12, 2009, 6:00 pm
Read more: Writing
I get two or three emails a day like this from strangers: Forgive the intrusion. I want to connect with you and request your expertise as to the best way to pitch a series treatment to the cable and over…
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Murderous Musings
Post from Lee Goldberg
Saturday, October 3, 2009, 4:51 am
Read more: Writing
Author Jean Henry Mead interviewed me for the Murderous Musings blog and got me to blather on and on about myself and my books, something I hardly ever get a chance to do with my blog, my twitter page, my…
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Stephenie Meyers’ The Host to Be a Feature Film
Post from Writers Write
Thursday, September 24, 2009, 12:00 am
Read more: Writing
Twilight isn’t the only Stephenie Meyer novel that will live on in the movies. Stephenie’s sf book, The Host, is also headed to the silver screen.
Producers Nick Wechsler, Steve and Paula Mae Schwartz have used their own money to acquire screen rights to “The Host,” the first adult novel written by Stephenie Meyer, author of the “Twilight” series.
Andrew Niccol will write the script and direct.
Meyer’s novel is a love story set in the near future on Earth, which has been assimilated by an alien species of benevolent parasites that call themselves “Souls.” One such soul, the Wanderer, is fused with a dying human named Melanie Stryder, in an attempt to locate the last pocket of surviving humans on Earth.
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In addition to writing four volumes of the “Twilight” series, Meyer has been heavily involved in the screen transfers, and she spurned several overtures for “The Host.” The producers continued lobbying the author and her UTA reps with a significant offer, a strong vision for the project and a collaborative spirit. Meyer eventually said yes.
In fact, Niccol first came under consideration after Wechsler and the Schwartzes asked Meyer what her favorite science fiction films are. “Gattaca” and “The Truman Show” were in her top five; Niccol wrote and directed “Gattaca” and scripted the Peter Weir-directed “The Truman Show.”
The Host is going to be tricky to film. The two people living in the same body have a lot of conversations, for one thing. But we loved Gattaca, so we’re sure the producers have lots of ideas.
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My Job is to Write
Post from Lee Goldberg
Tuesday, September 15, 2009, 11:28 pm
Read more: Writing
Writer-producer Diane Ademu-John pointed me to this excellent blog post by author John Scalzi on dealing with strangers who want screenwriters and novelists to read their work, listen to their pitches, etc. He says, in part: Dear currently unpublished/newbie writers…
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Farscaping with Carleton
Post from Lee Goldberg
Monday, September 14, 2009, 2:35 am
Read more: Writing
There’s a great interview with my buddy Carleton Eastlake over at The Write Blog, talking about his experiences writing & producing shows like BURNING ZONE, SEAQUEST, FARSCAPE, and OUTER LIMITS. He says, in part: I think good science fiction and…
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