The Ellen Page thriller Into the Forest is like most indie films in that character - not plot or action sequences – fuels the movie’s central story arc. Here are 5 tips according to writer/director Patricia Rozema to distinguish your character- driven indie film from the rest.
What’s a guy who has a military background as a captain in Iraq, who also went to the same high school at Barack Obama doing writing a screenplay about a failed musician planning his big comeback? He’s living the American dream. The one that says you can do anything if you put your mind to it.
Screenwriter Robert Edwards came from a ...
Writer/director Mike Binder is a veteran Hollywood filmmaker with a credit list that includes Reign Over Me, The Upside of Anger and The Sex Monster, among others. His latest film, Black or White, is about a white man who fights for the custody of his biracial granddaughter. Binder found inspiration for the story from his own life experience...
White God is an independent Hungarian film about a girl who becomes separated from her pet dog when she’s forced to give him up. The dog – although captured by abusive owners -- sets out on a journey to be reunited with the girl. The film explores violence toward animals as well as a coming of age storyline for the young girl, played by ...
Screenwriter Graham Moore has been obsessed with mathematician Alan Turing since he was a teenager. This obsession paid off. He is now nominated for an Oscar for best adapted screenplay for The Imitation Game – the story of how the code-breaking genius cracked the Nazi encryption machine and won World War II.
So, how did Moore take his childh...
They wrote The People Vs. Larry Flint, Ed Wood and Agent Cody Banks, among many others. Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski have been writing partners for more than two decades, and their specialty is biopics. Their process involves extensive research and brainstorming. They pore over the material in great detail and search for the quirkiest, ...
The private life of physicist Stephen Hawking comes alive on screen in the adaptation of his ex-wife’s book about their life together. Beginning in the early 60s at Cambridge University and following the couple through marriage, Hawking’s fame and three children, the story tracks the couple’s life and struggles – emotional and physical.
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It was 11 years ago when screenwriter Margaret Nagle started writing about the Sudanese refugees know as the “Lost Boys” who were orphaned by civil war in the mid 80s. “No one else is trying to tell their story in a movie. I felt I owed it to them,” she said. “They never gave up and I didn’t either.” Nagle describes the journey of ...
“For a long time I wanted to write a story about woman who was struggling to balance her career and her relationship with her child,” says Claudia Myers about her inspiration for Fort Bliss. The indie drama is about a female soldier who comes home after her second tour abroad and has to decide whether she wants to return to the front lines – ...
“He’s probably the greatest American living actor,” says screenwriter Richard Wenk of Denzel Washington. “I’m a huge fan.” And who isn’t? Philadelphia, Flight, Training Day. The list goes on.
So, when Wenk was offered a chance to write the feature adaptation of the 80’s TV show, The Equalizer, with Denzel Washington in mind for ...
The idea of the government selling drugs to its own people in order to fund an ideological war overseas sounds like a conspiracy theory to some. To others, like Gary Webb, a journalist of the San Jose Mercury News, it seemed more than possible. Webb reported on the issue in 1996. He was exalted for his work in investigative journalism, but soon ...