When we talk about screenwriting rules, Hollywood legend Frank Capra said it best: “There are no rules in filmmaking. Only sins. And the cardinal sin is dullness.”
If you were a fan of edgy, youth-driven literature in the 1990s, you may remember books like Sarah or The Heart is Deceitful Above All Things by an author named JT LeRoy. Jeremiah Terminator LeRoy quickly became a literary sensation. But his story, like many stories that make it to film, is lovingly filled with both fantasy and fraud.
When you think of poet Emily Dickinson, it’s likely you think of a hysterical Victorian recluse who locked herself in her bedroom and went to the grave without sharing her trove of poetry. The new film Wild Nights with Emily, however, paints a very different portrait of America’s favorite poetess. I sat down with the film’s writer/director Madeleine Olnek to find out how history got Dickinson’s story so very wrong.
In 1993, I was invited to a party in Beverly Hills at 10050 Cielo Drive, a dead-end street roughly half way up Benedict Canyon. I knew full well it was the so-called “Sharon Tate Mansion,” where the Charles Manson “family” brutally murdered Sharon Tate and three other unfortunate souls.
Horror movies and televisions shows are a perennial favorite among audiences. The storylines tap into our single most primal animal desire—to survive—and give us space to imagine how we would react if we were put into the same situation. But there’s more to horror than jump scares and music. It’s a complicated beast, as any director will tell you—and it’s not as easy as it may look.
