It’s likely you remember the film What Women Want starring Mel Gibson back in 2000, about a man who can hear women’s private thoughts. That premise has been delightfully flipped for the new R-rated comedy What Men Want, written by Tina Gordan Chism (Drumline, Peeples and the upcoming movie Little) and Peter Huyck & Alex Gregory.
Even if you haven’t seen the film The Wife starring Glenn Close, you probably know that Close is cleaning up this awards season having won both the Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Actress. She’s also nominated for her seventh Oscar for playing Joan Castleman, a wife who must face her life choices when her husband Joe (Jonathan Pryce) is set to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Soon, however, the question of who’s really the literary talent in the marriage begins to plague the long-married couple. Secrets, repressed emotions and anger all begin to bubble to the surface.
Entering into a new year is a great time to rededicate yourself to your screenwriting practice. If you just read that sentence and felt excited, great! But if you just read that sentence and felt an overwhelming sense of dread, maybe it’s time to try something new. How about a new genre?
As you’re learning to write, it’s important to observe yourself and consider what kind of writer you are. Different writers have different strengths and gravitate toward different types of stories. When I was in film school, it was pretty easy to pick up what kinds of writers the other students were. Roughly, we broke down into two camps. Some of us were much more focused on commercial story-telling, while others were attracted to films that were more artistic.
“Film’s thought of as a director’s medium because the director creates the end product that appears on the screen. It’s that stupid auteur theory again, that the director is the author of the film. But what does the director shoot—the telephone book? Writers became much more important when sound came in, but they’ve had to put up a valiant fight to get the credit they deserve.” – Billy Wilder