A Tale of Two Dance Sequences
Every part of a story contains the DNA of the whole. An example of this can be found in two John Travolta dance sequences: one from Saturday Night Fever and the…
Influences: To Know Kommissar Rolf Wundt, Check Out Tibbs, Burakov, and Rockford
The protagonist of Summer of Long Knives doesn't have a historical counterpart. He's a product of imagination inspired by three different detectives from film and television. The first is Virgil Tibbs from In…
Ernest Goofiness In Its (Possibly) Highest State: Tommy Wiseau
Yesterday, I talked about the importance of ernest goofiness in the great bad movie. Today, I read the introduction to Greg Sestero's inside account of Tommy Wiseau's anti-masterpiece, The Room. Here's…
What Makes A Great Bad Movie?
Over on Facebook, someone responded to my posts about Birdemic: Shock and Terror, with a request for my top ten bad movies of all time. For those who were wondering and…
Two Documentaries That Helped Me Build the Background of “Summer of Long Knives”.
My interest in probing the history of the Third Reich predates the writing of Summer of Long Knives by about thirteen years. The war years never grabbed me quite as much…
Could One of the Worst Movies of the 1980s Be Salvaged?
Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d'you rearrange them into what you DO like? Part two of our little parlor game takes us to a…
Is it Possible to Make “The Final Conflict” Interesting?
Of Pixar's 22 rules of storytelling--which might better be understood as "22 questions and exercises that improve your storytelling odds" I get the biggest kick out of #20: #20: Exercise:…
The Movie I’ve Loved the Longest
The AVClub got me started on this. What film have I loved the longest? Hmm, let me see... I turned six years old in October of 1977. I was old…
Three Documentaries That’ll Help You Understand What Happened to Amanda Knox
About ten days ago, Amanda Knox released her book on her wrongful conviction in Italy and its aftermath. Reaction to it has centered to an uncomfortable degree on her sex…
There’s a 63% Chance Your Script Needs A Sexy Sidekick Named Veronica
When I read this article about Worldwide Motion Picture Group--an outfit that runs screenplays through statistical analysis in hopes of figuring out what'll make them bigger hits--my thoughts turned to…