Those of you who follow via RSS will have to click through to see what I’m talking about, but I just added this swell plug-in to the right sidebar, tracking the leading providers of feedback to this site. After all, you don’t want to hear to just the opinion of ScreenwriterGuy and ScreenwriterGuy alone as [...]
OK, a bit of a bait-and-switch with the headline. This is a post about where IDEAS come from. Hey, if you’re a writer, ideas ARE babies. Earlier this week a friend asked about the process in my head when I create humor. I wasn’t sure how to answer. I spend very little time thinking about [...]
I’m not a poser. I’m not one of those wannabes who just says he’s a writer but who never actually writes, that much should be clear. However, to be fair, I can be a king of procrastination. In the struggle to find balance in “research” versus pen-to-page, my scales tip a bit too heavily to [...]
There were two main arguments with which I convinced myself that, lack of Douglas fir trees or no, I needed to move to L.A. The first was simply that I couldn’t expect to become a television writer anywhere else. The second, admittedly smaller, was that the number of industry events here had to be at [...]
Death may be the one aspect of life that shows up LESS on television than in reality (excluding, of course, those shows that start every episode with one, where it is featured far MORE than statistically plausible.) Death can be a taboo subject, perhaps harkening to more superstitious times when to name was to invite [...]
I finally gave in and bought a Bluetooth headset. You know the kind that people wear while walking through stores, either annoyingly talking to what seems like themselves, or else annoyingly leaving it in their ear while not in use, a pretentious status symbol without the status? I’m one of them now. In my defense, [...]
I’m back from the Bahamas. I gotta say, L.A. actually feels a little chilly. Perspective is a funny thing. Typing reminds me that one of the fingers on my right hand hurts slightly. I bent it back catching myself on a table, when I lost my balance standing on a chair to watch a Caribbean [...]
When I was in college, I trained myself to sleep on airplanes. It’s easy, really. You just do an all-nighter before your flight. Now I have a Pavlovian response to flying, such that as soon as I lean back on that unyielding headrest with the circulated air pumping in my face, I’m out. It doesn’t [...]
Perhaps the best job description for “producer” I’ve ever heard was exemplified for me in a college improv group. Upon discovering that another group was using our rehearsal space, the director said to his colleague, “You’re the producer. Produce us a room.” It’s difficult to describe what a producer does, especially since the specific responsibilities [...]
You know how we frequently go see a movie not because of its genre, or who made it or what it’s about, but because of who’s in it? I’ve been thinking about which performers have earned my trust, such that their involvement alone is enough for me to believe I will see a great movie. [...]
This is the first year I haven’t done my own taxes. Given a stack of receipts from various writerly and less writerly expenses, the fact that I donated away most of my stuff when I moved to L.A., and a pile of 1090s from nine different employers over the course of the year, I figured [...]
I admit that my years in sketch comedy left me a little burnt out. I am not the dynamo I once when it comes to producing, directing, acting, editing, publicizing, sound designing, ticket-taking, and doing whatever else it takes to get my writing made. I had refocused my energy on TV writing, a light having [...]
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