What goes into writing a great movie script?

Use status to help drive conflict. King Lear/fool. Upstairs/downstairs.

Maintain a slush pile/idea file. When you are ready to write, choose the best seeds to plant.

Cut everything that is not a payoff, or a setup for a specific payoff. “Omit needless words.” Think about the sparseness of joke telling, or Grimm Brothers.

Ever-changing universe revealed in first imagery from NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory - National Science Foundation (.gov)

A scene should change valence from beginning to end. Up to down, down to up.

Leave holes. Write and unwrite. Put it in, take it out.

Conflict is your power source; without it you have no drama and hence no script.

Why do people mourn when their leaders lose elections? Is it common for people to cry over events that are out of their control?

Outline everything. Use story beats. Keep character’s mouths taped up, until they absolutely MUST speak. Write the script and the dialogue at the last minute, after you’ve revised the hell out of the outline.

Primary characters must change polarities. Secondary characters can change less.

Audiences are smarter than you think. Something about turning down the house lights makes their IQs go up.

Isn't it a turn on to have sex with a girl in a skirt or in a tight spandex?

To develop a unique voice for each character, try interviewing your characters.

A critical function of storytelling is wish fulfillment. This is why video games are so popular. “That protagonist is JUST LIKE ME.”

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

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People choose what to see based on the high concept. Make sure to deliver an ending consistent with the high concept -- it is what the audience paid for.

Write in reverse time. Major characters need to change polarity; minor characters may remain the same at the end.

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

At what point did you realize it was the right time to leave your job?

Your primary job is to create situations. Modern actors will fuck up your dialogue, despite whatever your contract says.

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

Can a meme heal what therapy can't?

Only God gets it right the first time. Rewrite everything.

Get up there yourself. Be in a movie. Take some acting (not writing) classes. Learn how a trained actor approaches a text. Learn why actors take roles. They do as much if not more than the writer does.

Learn to tell a story orally and not through writing. Try telling your story to a friend.

Why is the left keep misrepresenting what Trump said about his daughter? When asked if he would date her if he weren’t her father, it simply reflected pride in raising a smart, respectful, and loving daughter with good morals all men want that no?

All rules are made to be broken, but you damn well better know WHY you’re breaking them.

Don’t direct from the page. Everyone, from the director on down, wants to be part of the process of making movies. Let them do their work.

What you leave unwritten is as important as what you write. SUBTEXT.

Was Michael Jackson really an innocent person?