Writing is Cake

I was pretty sure The Dark Knight was going to be the best Batman movie yet and it was.  I wasn’t fully prepared to be quite so blown away though.  For me, Batman Begins raised the bar and The Dark Knight jumped over that bar on a souped up rocket-bike.  Pretty much left the bar [...]

I’ve been a deep fan of Alan Moore’s graphic novel for twenty years now, but I’m torn on the upcoming film version.  It was written to be a comic, and it works brilliantly in that format.  It doesn’t need to be a movie. Yet part of me would love to see these images move and [...]

When I heard there was going to be a new Indiana Jones movie many moons ago, I groaned.  I was not happy with what Mr. Lucas did with the new Star Wars movies, and I just couldn’t see a new Indy movie being anything other than a train wreck.
I wanted it to be good the [...]

The ‘Illiad’. The most classical of classics. An epic in every sense of the word. And best of all, no copyright. Nobody owns rights to this thing! Let’s make a movie!
Troy: (some guy named) Homer, David Benioff
I got into Greek myths at an early age. I don’t know [...]

When I organized these movies in my head I thought I was going from the least changed to the most changed in regards to the source material. Now I realize I’m also going in reverse cronological order. The X-Men originated in the sixties, The Lord of the Rings was published in the fifties, [...]

I saw Cloverfield this week and got into a debate about it with a fellow screenwriter.  He didn’t care for it because he felt it left too many questions unanswered.  Where did the monster come from, what happened afterwards, and other points I won’t bring up to avoid spoilers. Now I’m an admitted fan of [...]

Tolkien gave us a fully realized world of fantasy. A history-that-might-have been with its own long history, languages, and races. He gave us maps with mountains, seas, and countries so we knew just where our heroes were when we read they rode up to Minas Tirith or rowed across the Long Lake. [...]

Last time we talked about the difficulty of adapting the long, intricate storylines of a comic series into a movie. X-Men went on to be a trilogy although if you’re looking for good writing, there’s only two movies.
What if you already had a trilogy though? Wouldn’t that be tailor-made to a movie trilogy? [...]

The book is better than the movie. It’s a common complaint from people who read a lot. It’s often true but you know what? Movies aren’t books. They’re movies. It seems obvious but I think many people just don’t really grasp how different writing a screenplay is from a novel. [...]