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Ten things I wish someone had told me about moving to Los Angeles.

screenwriterguy — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 15:30:23 +0000

Yesterday I posted about whether it makes sense to move to L.A. Ready to pack your bags? Keep in mind it’s easy to have the wrong preconception of what life in L.A. is like, given that every movie you’ve ever seen set here announces its location with the same three establishing shots: the Hollywood sign, a girl in a bikini, and a palm tree.

So, for those almost ready to make the leap, here’s the practical perspective from someone who has now lived here five years, one day.

#10. Really, really, really investigate that potential apartment. I’m not making this up: a potential roommate asked me to pretend to be in a relationship with her so that she could keep her rent-controlled apartment. As I drove across the Washington-Oregon border, she revealed that I might have to pretend to be married to her. As I crossed the Grapevine, she remembered to mention that I would have to ACTUALLY marry her. Fortunately, she found another husband before I could sign a lease, so the temptation was removed. (Hey, you just don’t find a Santa Monica two-bedroom at that price.) Then I spoke to a kind elderly woman on the phone about renting her back room, but once I got there she revealed that the house was for her AND her toothless, chain smoking partner… oh, AND six cats, 4 yappy chihuahaus, and a trio of cockatiels. So, yeah. Do the legowork on picking out a place. People live with roommates here, more than other places. Meet them. Come back to the apartment at night to make sure you feel safe. Test out what the commute would be like from your workplace. The traffic is a huge part of what makes here suck, so minimize yours, for your mental health. And if an add says “must have a sense of humor,” double-check whether that’s code for willingness to legally wed.

#9. You have no friends. And you never will. Staying in touch requires effort. In Los Angeles, staying in touch requires effort squared. Hollywood-types carry to-do lists they couldn’t complete given a time-stopping watch and a personal assistant. You will sincerely like people, and you will sincerely promise to stay in touch, not like all those OTHER people in this city who only SAY they’ll stay in touch. And then you won’t. If you live on opposite sides of town, forget it. The upshot is that Los Angelenos don’t have friends, they have acquaintances. I think that’s why they form such ridiculously co-dependent relationships with their dogs.

#8. New York it ain’t. The city that never sleeps? That’s on the other coast. L.A. goes to bed pretty early. Most establishments close by 10 p.m. Especially if you live on the West Side, finding a location for late night writing can be tough. I found an electrical outlet at an IHOP. (And I’m not telling you where it is.) Meanwhile, know that CVS sells paper and toner 24 hours.

#7. Peak hours are for suckers. Simple errands take ridiculous amounts of time, given the intensity of L.A. Beat the crowds by getting up early, or waiting until the store is almost closed. It’ll help with your commute, too. Within two hours either direction of rush hour, congestion will own you. But at 10 p.m., L.A. freeways are downright usable. Going across down takes me 20 minutes on a Sunday evening, and 1.5 hours on Monday.

#6. Grocery stores come in tiers. A can of peas could easily cost you anywhere from 59¢ to $4.59 depending on where you shop. The “regular” stores—Albertson’s, Ralph’s, and Von’s/Pavillions—vary greatly in customer care and grocery price based on the neighborhood. Meanwhile, Whole Foods or Gelson’s will happily sell you baby-vine, organic, imported Bolivian peas with no aspertame added, because 90% of what anyone in L.A. does is about status. Me? I’ve learned that 99-cent stores are decent places to supplement your grocery shopping with cheaper options. Meanwhile, the Super King on San Fernando Boulevard, along with being the most racially diverse establishment on the planet, and one of the most crowded, has amazing prices on produce. Please don’t shop there. You’ll only wind up taking my parking space.

#5. Some neighborhoods are more equal than others. You will affiliate yourself with the region of L.A. in which you reside. Every other city I’ve ever experienced has a main downtown where most of the business happens, surrounded by neighborhoods that grow smaller as they radiate outwards. In L.A., you could go years and never need to go downtown. There are numerous mini downtown-like clusters splayed across this far-flung city and surroundings. Identify your personal priorities and goals, and do research, because the part of town you decide to live in matters. (…if for no other reason than, as mentioned in #9, you won’t hang out with friends in the other sections of town.) A lot of the young and hip migrate to Silver Lake, Echo Park, or Los Feliz. These neighborhoods offer creative energy, affordability, and convenience to Hollywood and downtown. Then again, if you work in the Valley (Burbank, North Hollywood, Sherman Oaks, et. Al) , you might as well live there, so you don’t have to take the nasty, congested roads through the hills each day. But Santa Monica is a big pocket of entertainment employment, so maybe the west side is the way to go. Downtown Culver City is up-and-coming. West Hollywood and West L.A. are fun. For me, temperature was a factor; on a given day, the beaches will be 80 degrees, inland will be 90s, and the Valley in the 100s.

#4. Make friends. I know, in #9 I said you won’t have friends. But making friends is the most important reason to move here. (I never said La-La Land was free of contradiction…) Find professional groups that help you meet people. Show up to industry panels, lectures, Q&As, etc., and shake hands with the person sitting next to you in the audience. When someone is genuinely cool, make the effort to stay in touch. It’s hard. But it’s essential. In a business where it’s not about who you are, but about who you know… you have to know people.

corollary: Don’t expect to meet someone who will give you your “big break.” There’s no good reason for the super-successful to reach a hand down and pull you up. Instead, rise with your peers, and offer as many favors as you ask for.

#3. However much money you brought, it’s not enough. Los Angeles finds ways to claim your money. Besides a high cost of living to begin with, there are constant opportunities to improve your career, many of them justified, few of them free. Meanwhile, creating up-to-date work samples is a full-time job. Networking and promoting yourself is another full-time job. And, on top of that, you probably need an actual full-time job. Having funds saved up so you can concentrate on those first two full-time jobs is useful. Oh, and by the way, you WILL get parking tickets. You’ll need a lawyer to understand the street signs. Budget for failure.

#2. Head: clouds. Feet: ground. You will meet delightful, silver-tongued souls who will tell you wonderful stories about how they can help you. Believe it when you see it. Don’t give them any money.

#1. Don’t give yourself an expiration date. Succeeding in the entertainment industry is a lot like building a Twitter or YouTube following: yes, some people get lucky and score big with one viral hit. But they rarely have staying power. For most of us, it’s a slow, years-long slog built a piece at a time through genuine relationships. If you show up bags-in-hand with a long term plan of “givingL.A. a year” to see if you can “make it,” believe me when I say you might as well buy a round trip ticket. An entertainment career is, for 99.999% of those involved, a long-term game. Overnight success often takes years. Don’t move toL.A. unless you mean it.

new show review: The Bionic Woman

screenwriterguy — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 09:55:47 +0000

Geeks everywhere have been wondering whether Ronald D. Moore and company, now universally loved by critics for turning the 1970s sci-fi cheesefest Battlestar Galactica into a relevant and beautiful allegory for the 21st century, would be able to work their same magic on an even cheesier sci-fi show. So far, the answer seems to be yes.

If there’s one thing any screenwriter knows, it’s to hook your audience on the first page of your script. This show absolutely did that for me. And for the most part, it kept my attention and respect. There were a few moments when I rolled my eyes, or when I spent my time discussing with my housemate what a bionic vagina might feel like, but for the most part I was interested in the handling of this new incarnation of Jamie Sommers. So far, her character is a little thin, but the texture of her world filled that gap, and giving her a badass nemesis helped plenty.

The Bionic Woman managed to achieve something few superhero features seem to do, and that’s getting the character’s origin story out of the way so we can skip to the interesting part. The plot moved along, and soon enough we were at a climactic action sequence. I often zone out when dialogue stops, but the rain-soaked rooftop face-off at the end of this episode kept me watching.

The best sci-fi deals with humanity, society, and emotion, leaving monsters and powers and space and magic simply as metaphors for discussing those topics. The new Battlestar Galactica has that idea down firm (as evidenced by the subdued use of special effects.) So far, the new Bionic Woman seems likely to explore humanity as well, so I’m ready to add my first new show of the season to my list of appointment TV.

Best Aspect: Can I pick Michelle Ryan’s eyes? OK, no, really the best aspect was Katee Sackoff’s turn as a bionic villain.

Worst Aspect: The bitchy, computer hacker kid sister.

Verdict: I’m in. They’ll have to drop the ball to get me to take it off my watchlist.

Odds of Success: Can anybody tell me why NBC didn’t pair this with Heroes? Do they think BW‘s audience is women? Um… hello! It’s NERDS, people. That’s who’s going to watch this show. Across the nation, pants-wearing contests will be decided between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends over whether the remote points at this show or Private Practice. From the pilots, BW is stronger. The show has a shot.

I write, teach writing, teach how to write, and am a writer.

screenwriterguy — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 06:55:19 +0000

Tutoring is slow over the summer, but I do have a couple of students I’m working with. One of them is a teen doing something of a writing intensive. To reinforce varying sentence structure, over the weekend I had him write 20 sentences of several different types. One of the resulting efforts was this sentence:

“To be a lawyer, you must go to a lawyer school, like my dad, who is a lawyer.”

Clearly, my work is not yet done with this particular student.

Still, even if his diction isn’t up to snuff, he has a future in philosophy. This was another of his sentences:

“Life is a mystery, and girls are complex.”

Amen, kid.

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten Strongest Female TV Characters

screenwriterguy — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 09:29:59 +0000

Last month I posted a comedy monologue for women I had written on a lark. I was surprised by the immediate reaction it received. I wound up talking to several female friends with acting backgrounds who agreed wholeheartedly that it’s tough to find good comedic material for women. The screenwriterguy.com stats seem to back up what my friends said, as a steady stream of hits have come through from people searching for female monologues. This morning I was surprised to see that the monologue post had pushed to the top position of most-read posts on the site. The whole thing has left me thinking about the delicate art of writing female roles. As part of my meditation on the subject, I decided to create this list of Top Ten Strongest Female TV Characters.

The subject of strongest female characters begs definition. I’ve learned that it’s a far more complicated issue than one might think. A member of my old comedy troupe once expressed disappointment in the roles she had been playing in a show. She felt that she was constantly the mom, the girlfriend… rarely the funny person. (It’s a far deeper issue than I have time for in this explanation, and it’s a question with which I’ve heard many sketch troupes wrestle. Let me quickly invite you to think about how many female players there were on Kids in the Hall or in the Monty Python crew.) Anyway, long after this member of our troupe had forgotten the conversation, we were casting a show and I went (probably a little too far) out of my way to make sure she had nothing but strong characters to play. She was the funny person to someone else’s straight man. Her characters had authority and status. I casually asked later about how this new show felt, and I was shocked to hear her explain that her favorite moment was a number in which she was a back-up singer: “It’s the first time in the show I feel sexy,” she said. Clearly I had something to learn about what defined a good female role.

So when I list strong female characters, my goal is not entirely about feminist ideals or girl power, but to find writing that creates a distinct, defined character. She must be more than a foil to the male lead. Her femininity should not be her defining characteristic, and yet it must be intrinsic to her identity. Succinctly, what roles would the female actor just love to sink her teeth into? What roles would be really fun to play? Further, Xena the Warrior Princess doesn’t count as a strong woman just because she’s a woman who’s strong. And while Mary Tyler Moore was a masterfully written and groundbreaking show, Mary’s significance had as much to do with her situation as with any specialness to her character. Like any character in any story, our strongest female TV characters should help us understand a corner of the human condition, the only restriction being that the understanding come from a woman’s perspective. Here’s my list:

#10

Buffy and Sydney–Yes, there’s a certain originality to the female butt-kicker. Not often do we meet a woman we expect to take down all comers, mano-a-mano.However, the quality that earns these heroines a place on the chart is how little they actually want their gifts. Both Buffy and Sydney gained specialness and destiny from forces beyond their control. While each has a champion’s heart and cannot help but use her skills when called upon, each express a need to live a normal life as a normal girl. It is in this duality that the depth of their characters lies. The action scenes are fun, but if you want to see when Sarah Michelle Gellar and Jennifer Garner truly shine as actors, look for the moments when they cry over a lost love or struggle against an authority figure. That’s the part that truly makes them strong female characters.

Samantha Stephens–Plenty has been written about the metaphor present in Bewitched. A patriarchal male refuses to allow his wife to utilize her power and ability. There’s certainly something to that idea, but to me it’s the subsequent thought that’s more interesting: how Samantha continuously walks the line between obeying the rules of the house to which she has agreed, and yet… not. In what episode does Samantha actually not use witchcraft? She loves and respects her husband, and truly wishes to live in the mortal world, but with all those magical relatives popping in all the time…

AllyMcBeal–This may be something of an on-the-nose selection, but Ally nonetheless qualifies as a strong female character. At least in the early seasons, Ally’s desire to balance career, biological clock, and true romance afforded her a realistic complexity. While Ally’s quirks provided uniqueness, she also embodied a universal conundrum faced by modern women. Most days she fought the good fight, but sometimes she walked home sad in the snow to Vonda Shepherd music. Either way, even us guys could sympathize with her quest for happiness–as long as happiness meant having it all.

Veronica Mars–She’s a taser-packing smart-girl crime solver. For one so young, she carries emotional damage aplenty. And while she works her way through most situations with banter-y bravado, in a field typically occupied by men, at no point does Veronica feel remotely tomboy-ish. She emits her own style, flirting and flouncing if she so chooses, outwitting and evading if she doesn’t. The most interesting aspect of her nature is her interaction with the men in her life: Duncan, Logan, Wallace, and especially father Keith. We see her mistrust, but also her desire to be truly loved. It’s beautiful and sad to watch Veronica and Keith keeping things from each other, each hoping to protect the other, only to damage situations worse.Veronica is a big ball of vulnerability and skill, not afraid to use her feminine wiles, but never willing to let them outshine her cleverness.

Dianne Chambers–Aficionado of high culture, she nonetheless spends her days in a salt-of-the-earth bar. Overly educated, she nonetheless works as a waitress. Though on one hand she feels he’s below her station, she nonetheless feels an animal attraction for a washed-up baseball player. Dianne is an exercise in dichotomy. Still, there’s amazing clarity to her character. You absolutely know the viewpoint that will inform the next lines from her mouth.

Lindsay/Georgia/Jane–Three short-lived shows–Freaks and Geeks, Dead Like Me, and Wonderfalls–each made a brilliant effort to bring us a young female protagonist struggling to find her place in life (or death, as the case may be.) Unlike the other two shows, Dead Like Me saw two seasons. Sadly, it almost immediately lost the magic it built in the pilot. The other two stayed truer, but neither saw a full season. In any event, I personally love writing that successfully pulls off the very thing everyone tells you not to do in your writing: building an interesting protagonist with ambiguous goals. All Lindsay, Georgia, or Jane wanted was to know what they should want. Trauma left each of these disaffected ingenues seeking purpose and identity in a way that speaks to younger generations as characters on television rarely do.

Lucy Ricardo–In an era when homemaker was essentially the only option for a female sitcom character, I Love Lucy turned that role into so much more. In creating a dizzy character desperate to live in her husband’s world, creators of this show opened magnificent possibilities to show off a comedic legend. Lucy’s desire for acclaim and her fear of upsetting Ricky were driving forces in her life, matched with a natural ability to make any situation much worse before it got better.

Lois–While she may be defined by her “momness,” Lois (Wilkerson) takes Mother to whole new levels. The absolute alpha-female of her household, parenting is an art of war to her. Perhaps her attitude is because of how difficult her boys are, and perhaps her boys are difficult because of her attitude. As the only female in a house of boys, we can sense Lois’s underlying desperation for a moment’s peace, but at no point do we doubt her absolute skill to command and conquer her household.

Joy Turner–I had an immediate instinct that Joy didn’t belong on a list of strongest female characters. After all, she’s hardly a role model. And when you’re considering well-drawn characters, Joy’s trashy, slutty nature makes her seem at first like too easy a joke. But I realized that excluding Joy would make me guilty of the same sin I disdain so much in others: refusing to recognize the artistic merit of comedy. And the more I thought about her, the higher she went on my list. Her hedonistic, brash, ignorant side provides the show a window through which to mock the worst qualities in some Americans. But a strong bond with her husband (her new one, anyway) and her underlying drive to protect her children add just enough depth for her to stay likeable. And unlike in so much of comedy, Joy is a female character with as many or more of the punchlines than her male counterparts.

Willow Rosenberg–No character has ever explored so complex an arc as Willow’s over the seven seasons of Buffy. From adorable nerd, to socially competent groupie, to budding witch, to burgeoning lesbian, to content romantic partner, to power-hungry sorceress, to unstoppable vengence-driven killer, to all-powerful goddess? Show me any other show, any other character, male or female, with a journey to rival Willow’s. I dare you. AND, every last growth in Willow’s personality was motivated and logical. I heard an NPR interview with Joss Whedon in which he confessed that while he loved all of the characters on Buffy, Allyson Hannigan always delighted him with her delivery, and so Willow was one of his favorite characters to write for. Well, having a powerhouse writer like Whedon decide you’re his favorite has it’s perks, because Hannigan was lucky and skilled enough to play a part that would be the high point of any actor’s career.

Honorable
Mention

Carla/Sofia– They’re not the most complex characters, but there’s something beyond delightful about these two ladies who speak their minds.Brenda Leigh Johnston–No one has ever found so much depth of meaning from the words “thank you.”

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten TV Character Deaths

screenwriterguy — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 11:21:16 +0000

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 it. I thought I’d reflect for a post on how television shows through history have handled the ultimate facet of life. When TV is at its best, reverent or not, death is handled artfully. Of course, we know that when TV is at its worst…

Here are my selections of notable storytelling surrounding the death of a main or recurring character. Because they really do fall into extremes, and to save me from sorting through which Sopranos character really had it coming, I feel like I have to break this Top Ten into five best and five worst:

WORST TV CHARACTER DEATHS:

Nate Fisher (season three)–Six Feet Under deserves props for its handling of death. The series starts grippingly with the death of Nate Fisher, Sr. (in one of the first times we’ve seen that traffic crash-out-of-nowhere moment that has become so common.) Every episode began with a death, often delightfully self-aware. Death was a prevalent theme of the show, and the finale episode of the series used death to magnificent advantage to depict some of the most moving television I’ve ever experienced. Still, this show got some deaths wrong, too. Every once in a while a subplot about that episode’s intake turned cloying. The passing of Nate’s wife Lisa was painfully anti-climactic. And worst was Nate’s death–the first one, that is. At the end of season two, Nate is going in for brain surgery and we watch him die. Season three begins with this surreal exploration of multiple realities that goes on way too long, and suddenly he’s not dead, he’s in an unlikeable marriage with a kid. Yuck.

#4	Rosalind Shays–Evidently they don’t mess around when getting rid of annoying characters on L.A. Law. One minute she’s there, the next she’s dropped down an elevator. Huh.

Maude Flanders I remember quite specifically the episodes of The Simpsons that prompted me to stop watching. It was after the premiere of season 9, “The City of New York vs. Homer Simpson,” that the show stopped being appointment television for me. The single episode that made me stop watching entirely was “Alone Again, Natura-diddly. I knew only that something about Homer’s character felt fundamentally wrong. Gone was the born-loser everyman who often came up short but at least wanted to do well by friends and family. In his place was an uncaring hedonist happy to–or even seeking to–inconvenience others with his buffoonery. When his clowning at a Nascar race caused Maude to be hit by a t-shirt cannon, plummeting hundreds of feet off a stadium to her death, Homer showed almost no remorse for his part in the death of his neighbor’s wife. It was not only inconsistent character work, it was just plain unfunny. (Only years later did I piece together that both of these scripts were the work of Ian Maxtone-Graham, and learn of the contempt for him among fans.)

Dr. Robert Romano–He was the E.R. doc you either loved to hate, or just plain hated. Having lost an arm to a helicopter, he later lost his life to another helicopter. That fell on him. It was wrong, and not in an intended way. Add all the “someone’s gonna die” pre-show hype, and you have a moment of shame in television history.

J.R. Ewing–There’s a concept in improvisational theater that applies well to all of storytelling. Basically, it says that if you start a story in a certain direction, asking your audience to accept certain exposition, you should never reverse what you’ve done. If you move the story then move it back, you’ve effectively told no story. Applied to a TV show, for example, if you say that a main character is dead, a big “JUST KIDDING!!!” will leave your audience members unsatisfied. And it did.

Honorable
Mention:

Billy Thomas–Producer David E. Kelly does a lot of things right. Death is not one of them. I remember in the early 2000s there was a period of about a month in which minor, minor, minor characters died on various shows–a judge on Ally McBeal, a girl wrestler on Boston Public, and a D.A. or some such on The Practice. Each one had this glorious funeral scene with a big musical send-off, all for a character we didn’t care about in the least. Bleck. Another thing he didn’t do well was get rid of characters whose part had been played out. Ally’s old boyfriend Billy went through this ridiculous phase of blonding his hair and owning his male chauvinist pig-ness. Then he got a brain tumor and died. Bleck. Oh well. David E. Kelly married Michelle Pfeiffer, so he still wins.

John Ritter–8 Simple Rules for Dating My Teenage Daughter met the death of its star with attempts to play out the family’s experience of losing its patriarch. Adding James Garner was not enough, nor was David Spade useful; the show was too intricately wrapped around Ritter. I give the creative staff credit for the shows that directly addressed the death. Scripts still held jokes, presented with no audience laughter as characters struggled. It was a noble experiment. Ultimately, the schmaltzy promotion by ABC is what lands this TV death in the “worst” column.

BEST TV CHARACTER DEATHS:

Chef–When Isaac Hayes decided to leave South Park, presumably because of their scientology episode (there was much written at the time, some of which implied that it was Hayes’s people who quit for him, as he would have been too sick to write the letter himself) the show ended the character of Chef. In an odd way, the episode honored Hayes’ contributions, as the South Park boys encouraged the citizens to remember Chef’s great qualities, before that “fruity little club” messed with his head. Of course, Trey Parker and Matt Stone also had no mercy when terminating the character, first implying that his membership in the “fruity little club” had turned him into a child molester, then killing him quite definitively. Amazingly, though, after the extreme finality of Chef’s death–he is hit by lightning, plummets down a cliff, impales himself on spikes, and is torn apart by a bear and a mountain lion–he still gets revived as “Darth Chef,” suggesting that there may be a way for the character to live on if Hayes ever changes his mind.

#4	Susan Biddle Ross–Nothing could better epitomize George Costanza’s character than the death of his fiancée because he was too cheap to buy better wedding invitations

Jenny Calendar– Her death, while masterfully handled, might have been minor compared to that of characters that followed on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Tara was amazingly significant, Willow’s revenge that followed was huge, and of course the brilliant episode “The Body” was one of those moments where Joss Whedon lead television to bleed into experimental film. Still, I chose Miss Calendar’s demise because it helped establish how Buffy, and I would argue, all of TV, would hence depict death: sometimes people we care about die, and sometimes it is senseless and pointless. Following that moment, everything became more real. ANY of the characters on the show might die. It wasn’t long before shows like 24, Lost, and Heroes were killing main characters every other week.

Mr. Hooper–When actor Will Lee died in 1982, the producers of Sesame Street decided that his character would die as well, and that the show would explore grieving and loss for children, through the eyes of Big Bird. So powerful was the resulting episode that it never aired again. I remember seeing the episode as a kid, and I tracked it down again at the Museum of Radio and Television in New York a few years ago. I was shocked at how close my memory was to what I had seen as a child. Big Bird has a present for Mr. Looper (sic). The adults explain to Big Bird that he can’t give Mr. Hooper the present, because Mr. Hooper has died. Big Bird says he will have to wait then, until Mr. Looper comes back. They tell him, no, Mr. Hooper isn’t coming back. That’s what dying means. And Big Bird learns what death is about, and he grieves, and he eventually copes with loss. You can’t ask for much more honest dealing than that.

Col. Henry Blake–The story goes that the actors didn’t even know the story, so the scene was their genuine reactions to the death of the character. “Lt. Colonel Henry Blake’s plane shot down over the Sea of Japan. It spun out of control. There were no survivors.” Here was a show that had to turn on a dime between silliness and tragedy. Henry was on his way home from it all when he lost his life. It was a dramatic moment that made TV history, and a bold statement about the true cost of war.

Honorable
Mention:

Leo McGarry–Faced with the real-life death of actor John Spencer, the team behind The West Wing did an amazing job of ending the life of the character of Leo McGarry. His passing was suspended for a few episodes, in which characters would mention that Leo was working the campaign trail elsewhere, and even hinted at a romance with his aide, played by Kristen Chenowith. Then Leo’s death was woven into the existing storyline so masterfully that it might have been a choice. Kudos to the writing team for having some of the characters on the show a bit callous as to the loss, all while simultaneously ensuring that the show honored both the character and the actor.

Brian Cooper–He doesn’t really qualify, probably having had a minute of screen time. However, the death of Winnie Cooper’s older brother in the pilot episode of The Wonder Years is an impressive use of death in storytelling. What could more solidly set time and tone for the series than the loss of a town’s favorite son to the Vietnam War?

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top 10 Most Trusted Actors

screenwriterguy — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 01:20:27 +0000

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.

Now, today’s Top 10 list does not necessarily include my favorite actors, or the people I think deliver the best performances. Michael Caine is fantastic, but you never know when he might make a Bewitched or a Miss Congeniality. As much as I’ll expect to like his performance in anything he does, I can’t trust John Malkovich to pass on scripts like Eragon or Art School Confidential. Steve Martin is one of my favorite entertainers, but he has also made some real duds.

And there are, of course, eye candy performers whose movies I will catch no matter what. I admit to you here and now to watching both Underworld and its atrocious sequel for a chance to see Kate Beckinsale in vinyl. But that hardly makes her a performer whose taste in movies I trust.

Qualifiers have few sell-outs picture in their career, and overall have good taste in what projects they should take on. I haven’t seen every movie ever, so I’m sure I’ll mess up on somebody, but here’s my list:

#10

Johnny Depp–This guy was my favorite actor since long before it was cool to have Johnny Depp as your favorite actor. We’re talking Jump Street early He brings so much to every project he touches that they may or may not be great before he comes on board. Maybe it is a self-fulfilling prophesy that movies he choses will be good. Would you have trusted a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory remake if he hadn’t been in it? And his career has pretty much been great project after great project, all the way back to the first Nightmare on Elm Street. So why not further up on this list? Well, there’s the fact that he seems to want to play a pirate for the rest of his life, for one thing. And then he has stinkers like Sleepy Hollow, From Hell, and The Corpse Bride to answer for. But I have to be forgiving, chalking those films up to his willingness to risk-take, realizing that that same risk-taking brought us Blow, Chocolat, and Benny & Joon. Can’t wait to see his Sweeny Todd.

Tom Cruise–OK, OK, I know I’m going to take heat for putting this guy on the list. And I admit that Mr. Couch-jumper’s antics have kept me from seeing Mission Impossible 3 so far. And I’ll also grant you that later this month, when I put out a list of “Worst-Ever Movie Endings,” he’ll be in two of them, with War of the Worlds and Far and Away. But THIS list is based on the quality of the projects in which an actor chooses to involve himself, and, especially in his recent career, Cruise has some magnificent titles to his credit: The Last Samurai, Magnolia, Collateral, A Few Good Men, and Jerry Maguire. Those titles make me think that, however annoying his tabloid headlines, his movies are worth a look.

Gwyneth Paltrow–Close your eyes for a moment, and pretend View from the Top never happened. There. Now you can appreciate a career that includes choices like The Anniversary Party, The Royal Tannenbaums, Sliding Doors, Sylvia, Proof, and Se7en. What’s that? Shallow Hall? Bounce? Shhhhh….

Maggie Gylenhaal–I haven’t seen World Trade Center to know if it disqualifies her, and I’m making allowances for the uneven and clunky Cecil B. Demented, early in her career. But her subtle-but-powerful performances in Secretary and Sherry Baby put her on my short list of best actresses alive. As well, I think it’s the smaller roles a performer takes that truly measures her worthiness for the trusted actors list; what is she willing to take on for some extra money when her part will only commit her for a week or two? Will she do just any movie? Gylenhaal has gone with films like Stranger Than Fiction and Mona Lisa Smile. Brilliant. I’m guessing that as her career progresses, she will only ascend this list.

Tim Robbins–Bull Durham, Jacob’s Lader, Bob Roberts, Short Cuts, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Shawshank Redemption, Arlington Road. Wow. Sure, I wish he would stop doing silly side roles like the one in Tenacious D (his hilarious cameo in Anchorman being an exception,) but looking at his overall career, Tim Robins is a god. Stick with features in which he is the lead, and you’re golden.

Cate Blanchett–There are a couple of movies on her resume that are nothing special, but not many, and Elizabeth washes those away for me. Overall, she makes films that don’t get remembered as the most amazing things you’ve ever seen, but they’re really, really good. Babel, The Shipping News, Charlotte Grey, The Talented Mr. Ripley, and Pushing Tin are examples. Add to that the fact that you know that her individual performance is likely to be stellar, and she makes the list.

Jimmy Stewart–I have to include the legend. Sure, it’s a little unfair to list an actor who has passed, since the real question is whether I would want to see his next project. However, I haven’t seen all of his past movies, and I would happily do so based on his name, so I think that qualifies. As part of the studio system, he probably didn’t always have as much choice in what projects he took as modern actors, but he continued to make great pictures after the studio system’s collapse, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Credit him with Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life, Vertigo, Broken Arrow, The Man Who Shot Liberty Vallance, Rear Window, Harvey, and one of my favorites, The Philadelphia Story, to name a few. That’s a heck of a career.

Katherine Hepburn–If we are to speak the integrity of legends past, it’s not fair to pass up the woman that Hollywood couldn’t make wear a dress. Not to mention that it was she, as owner of the rights to The Philadelphia Story, who chose Jimmy Stewart to play along with her. With twelve Oscar nominations and four wins, it’s safe to say she was choosing quality projects.

Kate Winslet–You might not LIKE every movie she ever made, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a flick in her career that is fairly labeled as bad. Of course she was in a little movie called Titanic (which I promise is better than you remember it), but she was also part of daring pics like Quills, Heavenly Creatures, The Life of David Gale, and Finding Neverland. Those are probably enough, but Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind puts her over the top for me.

Billy Crudup– Keeping one foot firmly on the stage, here you have a man who has actively passed up the movie star life in effort to seek out great little gems to make. And he really has made some gems. Of course, Almost Famous is where he came onto most people’s radars. If you want to see an amazing movie that will grab onto your heart with one hand, your gut with the other, then twist, do yourself a favor and watch Waking the Dead. Crudup is dating Claire Danes, and he passed on The Incredible Hulk. These facts alone prove the man has taste.

Near
Misses:

Kevin Spacey, but for K-Pax or Pay It Forward.

Jake Gyllenhaal would probably be higher on my list than his big sister is, but for The Day After Tomorrow. (I know, I’ve forgiven other actors with more than one questionable choice on their resume. But… The Day After Tomorrow!!!)

Denzel Washington, but for one too many big action movies lately.

Will Smith if his choices weren’t quite so poppy

Sigourney Weaver, if she had stopped making Alien sequels sooner.

Leonardo Dicaprio’s second half of his career doesn’t quite make up for the first half… YET. Think I’m being harsh? Critters 3 and Poison Ivy.

George Clooney, minus his Oceans.

Who did I miss?

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten L.A. Culture Shocks

screenwriterguy — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 23:17:50 +0000

Since this week marks my one-year anniversary living in the City of Angels, I thought I’d post some of what I’ve learned about this town in which I’d rather not dwell, and the industry that keeps me dwelling here. Following are my top ten observations of things you just don’t see anywhere else but La-La-Land.

#10

You’ll get what’s coming to you…
Good things happen to good people? People who screw over others will meet retribution? Uhhh… no. Still, folks in L.A. are true believers that karma rules the entertainment industry. This despite flagrant, flagrant evidence to the contrary

The inalienable, God-given right to a sunny day
Being from the Seattle area, I’ve seen winters with successive rainy day records on par with that endured by Noah. People grumble a little, and definitely look forward to spring. Here in L.A., similar griping beings about halfway though the first cloudy morning.

It’s a dog-eat-caviar world
L.A. is a cutthroat city, and people treat each other like dogs. Except, of course, that they treat their dogs like royalty. A dog owner will not flinch to bring her pet into public places or to work, and will certainly not ask those around them if they mind, or if they are allergic. All that displaced maternal instinct leaves mommy quite certain that everyone loves her Poopsykins. Yes they do! Yes they do wuv wittle Poopsykins vewy much, doesn’t dey!?

GILF? No thanks.
There’s a line in the musical version of Sunset Blvd: “Nothing’s wrong with being 50! Unless you’re acting 20.” This town has a staggeringly high percentage of middle-aged to elderly women dressing and primping as if they were high school seniors. Don’t get me wrong. It’s important to take care of yourself. Still, there’s such a thing as grace. It is nothing but delusional to respond to one’s mortality with yet another surgery and ever-tighter skirts. Lipstick has a point of diminishing returns, ladies.

Aren’t you that guy…?
Supposedly in this business, you’re only as good as your last project, and it’s not what you’ve done, but what you’ve done lately. But I’m impressed with how much mileage VIPs seem to get from something they did long ago. For example, I recently received a Happy New Year e-mail from a producer who included a picture of himself wearing a jacket from a syndicated TV show he had executive produced in 1988.

Me, Me, Me! MEEEEEEEP!Nowhere is L.A.-style selfishness more evident than in driving patterns. Sure, every city has those obnoxious people who handle a line-up at a freeway exit by driving in the next lane as far as possible and then blinking and waving to get in. (I like to believe there is a special circle of hell just for such individuals, who evidently didn’t learn any important life lessons while in line for the kindergarten drinking fountain.) And yes, heavy traffic in most big cities requires that left turns happen AFTER the light goes red. (In L.A., there seems to be an unwritten law that three cars should be able to go at a major intersection, and you are rude if you don’t pull forward enough that they can all wait in the intersection together.) But only here have I actually witnessed a man speed through an intersection despite a perpendicularly oncoming ambulance, all so he could make the yellow light.

The big thing that gets me, though, is honking one’s horn at those who are packing unnecessary seconds onto your day. In Washington, a friend of a friend once actually got a ticket when he passed a friend’s house and beeped hello, because he was sounding his horn in a non-emergency situation. Here you get honked at if you are insufficiently aggressive. I’ve managed to avoid getting honked at for the most part, but sometimes when I am preparing to make a right turn and allow pedestrians to cross in front of me, the car behind me gets mad. This has happened to me several times now, such that if I were to accelerate at the moment the person sounded their horn, I would have killed a person. I’ve been thus encouraged to get out of a car’s way despite the fact that I was allowing a BABY carriage to cross directly in front of me. Twice.

This is the dawning of the age of my ass
When I first looked around for housing in this fair city, more than one potential roommate skipped any questions about cleanliness or schedule and wanted instead to know my astrological sign. When I returned to the kind people who were letting me crash at their place and tried to laugh with them over why I might be incompatible with a Virgo, I was treated to a half an hour on meanings of various signs, all from memory. Astrology is more than a diversion at the bottom of the funny pages to people out here.The stunner to me is the idea that our lives get all chaotic when Mercury goes retrograde. This belief comes from early civilizations noticing that the planet Mercury’s orbit would every so often seem to shift directions and go backwards for a couple of weeks. Since Mercury is the Greek messenger god, the only logical conclusion is that all of Communication should be disturbed. Now, the phenomenon of Mercury’s retrograde is based on the relative positioning of our two planets and our perspective of Mercury’s orbit–a concept I fully understood as a planetarium worker demonstrated it when I was EIGHT.

Nonetheless, there is a widespread (and I mean wide) belief down here that the orbital shifting of a planet that is millions of miles away somehow causes a general disarray of schedules, travel, and (my favorite) the internet.Let’s be clear. Mercury’s orbit doesn’t actually shift. In fact, it does the exact same thing it does when it’s not “in retrograde,” moving around the sun. But this observational illusion is the reason my e-mail isn’t working. A former employer actually waylaid a staff meeting to explain to us all how we shouldn’t create any new business or draw up any contracts for several weeks while the retrograde thingie happened. Yep. I was ordered not to generate any new deals for a couple of weeks. That’s sound business planning.

We should totally get together sometime!
For an industry that almost cannot function without collaboration, entertainment sure has a lot of people involved who are looking out for #1. Don’t get me wrong; I count myself just as selfish. It’s just sorta part of living here and pursuing the dream, by definition. You want your big break, and that means your time is precious. Combine that with the fact that it takes forty-five minutes to get ANYWHERE, and keeping in touch drops in priority. The weird corollary is that thread-flimsy friendships are good enough to contact someone for a favor. As long as you don’t mind it taking months for that favor to happen, you’re golden.

Dreams. The most valuable (one-way) currency.
Everywhere you go, producers want writers to crank out weeks or months worth of work because of the promise of just how tremendously huge this or that project is going to be. They’ve got it all figured out, and all they need is a script. But that’s no big deal, right? Try to pitch something you’ve already written, however, and sell it on the just how big you know it could be, and suddenly dreams aren’t worth as much.

Do not arouse the wrath of the great and powerful Oz!
Power matters to people everywhere, of course. But what is interesting about L.A. is that the illusion of power is at least as much if not more important than the power itself. And so I present to you a top-ten list within a top-ten list! (Oooh!!!) Here are ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten Things You Must Do To Make Sure Everyone Around You Knows How Important You Are, Hollywood-Style:

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top 10 Worst Cliché Lines of Dialogue

screenwriterguy — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 01:09:35 +0000

With this posting I make a promise to you and to myself that the following lines shall never make their way into my writing. I’m not targeting clichés like, “What seems to be the problem, officer?” because people overuse them in real life as much as they do in movies and TV. Instead, the below phrases not only get tossed into screenplays with alarming frequency, they just aren’t how people talk.

#10

“Is that all you got?” / “Is that the best you can do?”
For some reason, if a hero (especially a superhero) finally gets into a fight with the Big Bad of their story, the two must taunt each other for a while early on in their battle. So if your opponent has dealt you a weak blow, the most logical response is verbal antagonism? Hell no. It’s to attack back as hard and quickly as possible. Notice also that the answer to, “Is that the best you can do?” is always something equally lame like, “I’m just getting warmed up.” See it’s, another brilliant strategy our combatant has used. See, I thought I’d start with something less than full power, just to see if I would really need to TRY in order to defeat you.

#9	“She’s standing right behind me, isn’t she?” The moment you give a long diatribe about another character or, better still, do an impersonation of that character, she’ll walk up behind you with pursed lips and hands on hips. And say nothing.

#8	“Yeah. A little TOO quiet.” Always followed very quickly by things getting unquiet.

“Now… where were we?”
Two people are making out. Something interrupts. The pair deal with the interruption and can finally return to their primary goal. And then it’s always, “Now… where were we?” What, you don’t remember? OK, I get it’s a rhetorical question, but come on. Just shut up and go back to getting busy.

#6	“But So-and-so lives on, as long as we remember him in our hearts.” / “So-and-so lives here [point to head] and he lives here [point to heart.]” I can’t ever imagine consoling someone like this.

“What part of _____________ don’t you understand?”
Here’s a line that has just exploded in its overuse within the last five years. So it gets liberally sprinkled into scripts anywhere a joke ought to go. Oh, I get it. You’re sassy. (Note: I could imagine using this line if it were working against its very cliché nature. For example, I think it would be hilarious to have a techie character speak something like, “What part of redundant quantum harmonic oscillators didn’t you understand?”)

#4	The “I’m not leaving you!”-“You have to go on without me!” exchange Sigh.

“I always wanted to say that!”
How marvelous. It’s a meta-cliché! It’s a cliché that one can only use after first using another cliche! A character gives an enthusiastic “Full-steam ahead!” or “Stop the Presses!” or “Follow that cab!” His friend looks at him funny for using the cliché. He follows with, “I always wanted to say that.” First of all, no, you haven’t always wanted to say that. And secondly, if you really had always wanted to say it, then you would just say it. Nothing’s stopping you. You could say it all the time, right up until you didn’t feel like saying it any more, at which point it would once again be true that no, you aren’t going around really wishing you could say it. Dropping insta-jokes like this into a script does not a comedy make.

“If my calculations are correct…” / “According to my calculations…”
I suppose part of my problem with this tripe dialogue is that it’s almost never delivered by someone who actually did any calculations. Worse, the kind of characters who say, “if my calculations are correct…” are inevitably superbrains whose calculations are NEVER incorrect. Just once, I’d like to see the professor/wizard/engineer do his thing and have it turn out wrong. You know. “If my calculations are correct, we should be—Oh, snap! I forgot to carry the four! Oh, see, now, yeah… that’s going to make our rocket head straight into the sun. My bad, everybody.”

“Don’t you die on me!”
Can’t you just smell the dramatic tension? While desperately administering CPR, or covering a gunshot with one’s palms, our hero shouts in anguish, “Don’t you die on me!” Maybe there’s a pounding of the fist on the victim’s chest, even. Mmm… that’s good drama. Am I wrong in believing that no doctor, paramedic, or soldier has ever uttered this phrase? Were I in such a situation, I could imagine perhaps, “Oh, God, please don’t die. Please, please, please don’t die.” But instead, this hackneyed utterance implies that the the dying person does so almost as a personal affront. Say nothing of the fact that as far as dramatic conflict in a scene goes, you can’t expect much when one end of the conversation is, well, near death. Bleck.
corollary
Every once in a while a writer delves into an even deeper level of hackishness. That’s right. There’s always, “Don’t you die on me! Not now!” What I find so delightfully cringe-inducing about this particular flavor of the cliché is that implies that the victim shouldn’t die on the protagonist NOW. On the other hand, if the victim wants to die on him, LATER…

Honorable
Mention

“Is that clear?” “Crystal.”
This one was great, ONCE, in A Few Good Men. Everyone else, you’re copy cats.

“Did I just say that out loud?”

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top 10 Favorite Movies of All Time

screenwriterguy — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 20:02:32 +0000

A brand-new blog is born!

I’ve taken a cowardly route, selecting a safe, cushion-y first posting topic. See, instead of putting forth my list of BEST movies, or even the ones I think have the Best Writing or Best Use of a Talking Rat in Act Three, I’m offering my FAVORITES. I’m hiding behind a technicality. These are the films I enjoy most, especially upon repeated viewing, rather than I find most skillfully made. There’s a difference.

So, before all of you film nerds come screaming about The Godfather and Citizen Kane, remember that I’m not selecting the ones I think are the BEST. That’s another list.

Don’t worry. We’ll argue about chiaroscuro and mise en scène some other day. Meanwhile, these are the movies from which I constantly quote, to the annoyance of my friends. These are the kind of movies I hope I can create some day.

#10

Good Will Hunting–For all the stories our culture tells of protagonists battling external foes, the conflict that is most often the truest and most compelling is a hero’s internal struggle. Of course, that’s a much, much tougher story to tell. But here’s a movie that handles internal conflict so very artfully as to seem effortless. It’s nice to know that great filmmaking can be this simple. Start with a clear yet sharp premise. Draw a handful of characters thoroughly and compellingly. From there the story just flows. Robin Williams was making great films in this era, and there’s a reason that this is the one for which he wins an Oscar. Matt Damon and even Ben Affleck are great, and it’s for this performance (and perhaps Gross Point Blank) that Minnie Driver deserves the fact that we know her name.

Hudsucker Proxy/Big Lebowski—The crown jewels of the Coen Brothers oeuvre, in my opinion. Your phone’s ringin’, Dude.

When Harry Met Sally—When I sit down to a new writing project, I watch every good example I can in its genre. If I tackle a romantic comedy, the art form in which so many try and so few get it right, I feel all the more need to study. But here’s a movie that is uncopiable, unstudiable—lightning in a bottle. It’s an anomaly, existing outside romantic comedies. When compared to your standard boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-wins-girl-back movie, WHMS somehow transcends while exemplifying. (By the way, the DVD extras are worth a look. Rob Reiner’s commentary lacks substance, but the footage of Meg Ryan trying to keep up with Billy Crystal improvising on the couch at the end is delightful.)

American Beauty—Alan Ball is amazing. This movie taps into something vital and true about humanity. The fact that one man wrote both this script and the series finale of Six Feet Under puts him in a category of artists with more than one masterwork on par with Michelangelo and the Beatles. Was that hyperbolic? At any rate, it’s a good script. And Sam Mendes knocks this movie out of the park. Kevin Spacey, Annette Benning, and cast are sublime.

Philadelphia Story/Mr. Smith Goes to Washington/It’s a Wonderful Life—Can I just list Jimmy Stewart as one of my top movies?

Say Anything—Sure, if I pick a Cameron Crowe flick I should be consider Almost Famous, Jerry McGuire, or even Singles before SA. However, there’s something absolutely magical about this early work of Crowe’s. While it has some classic lines and strong exploration of theme, I think the thing I respect most about SA is the elegance of its storytelling. This is a romance where the characters love each other for the purest of reasons: because they do. Lloyd Dobler makes a fascinating leading man, with his defining trait being his very earnestness. And while the scene we all remember is John Cusack with boombox overhead, the true amazing moment set to Peter Gabriel comes earlier in the back seat of Lloyd’s car. Here’s a love scene that’s actually about love. In a brief exchange, Crowe captures the heart of teen sex. It’s about vulnerability, intensity, and feeling. So is this movie. (As a side note, if you want to study how to establish characters and their motivations at the beginning of your screenplay, look no further. Lloyd Dobler proclaims his ultimate goal no more than 30 seconds into this film. In less than three minutes, we’ve seen Lloyd discussing romance with his significantly female best friends and then traveling alone in a deficient car, intercut with Diane preparing a graduation speech about her misgivings about the future, driven by her overly supportive father. Brilliant.)

The Fisher King—Sometimes it’s when an “artiste” tempers his own style that his best work can result. For me, Jim Carey and Adam Sandler are at their strongest when they abandon their schtick to bring us The Truman Show or Punch Drunk Love. I think The Straight Story is some of David Lynch’s best work. Similarly, Terry Gilliam’s fantastical imagery finds its best effectiveness in FK, where he employs it gently to support the emotional struggles of the characters. As well, here is a screenplay that manages to celebrate the human spirit without once feeling trite. What can I say? I like New York in June.

South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut—Too easily written off, here’s a classic that really holds up. Sure, it’s overly scatological. Sure, the animation embraces a bare-minimum sensibility. However, the shape of the story is remarkable. You will struggle to find an ensemble piece that takes so many of its characters along simple yet complete arcs. Perhaps not every lyric or joke is genius, but a whole lot of them are. And it’s solid as a musical—so much so that Stephen Sondheim wrote Trey Parker a letter of congratulations. And, of course, it pulls off South Park’s trademark intelligent-while-cheeky social commentary, self-awarely examining ideas of artistic censorship. I’ve never seen a man eat so many chicken wings.

The Shawshank Redemption—Here’s the one movie that would make my Top 5 list both for Favorites and for Best. I wish I could say, as I’ve tried with other movies on this list, what aspects of story, character, or premise make SR work. I wish I could pinpoint why this movie is so great; I’d be a better writer if I could. All I know is that when Andy escapes, and the crane shot pulls back on him as he stands in the rain free for the first time in years… well, that’s what movies are supposed to do.

The Princess Bride—While it is perhaps inevitable that William Goldman’s obituary some day will lead with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, I can’t help feel that PB is BCatSK‘s equal. This movie features a spot-on handling of tone, a true original in its defiance of genre. It’s the comfort food of my movie collection, conjuring epic romantic ideas from the charming trappings of a timeless, placeless fairy tale, all with a perfect seasoning of humor. This movie bubbles over with quotable lines. It feels beautiful.

Honorable
Mention:

Shakespeare in Love, Amelie, Babe, Little Shop of Horrors, School of Rock, 40-year-old Virgin, Lord of the Rings, Toy Story, Glory, Spanglish, The Spanish Prisoner, Whale Rider, Run Lola Run, Stand by Me, Dave, The American President

Writing this post was a good exercise in helping me to crystallize my own taste. I see now that what I love in movies is intelligent stories about connection between unique characters with sincere desires. I like action sequences only when a story really needs them. I love exploration of universal themes, but think it’s best done by examining specifics. All good things to keep in mind to guide my own writing!

ScreenwriterGuy.com » Top-Ten Lists

Top 10 Problems with Television

Ten things I wish someone had told me about moving to Los Angeles.

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ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten Strongest Female TV Characters

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten TV Character Deaths

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top 10 Most Trusted Actors

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top Ten L.A. Culture Shocks

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top 10 Worst Cliché Lines of Dialogue

ScreenwriterGuy’s Top 10 Favorite Movies of All Time