The Matrix RSS

Recently, I was working on a script rewrite. Most of the notes I had gotten were fairly straightforward, and I thought turning it around would take perhaps a week at most. But then I realized… wait, we’ve never figured out our themes; the script doesn’t yet have a clear thematic statement. This is really basic, foundational stuff, and it didn’t occur to me until late in the development process. That’s because it’s very easy to get caught up in the spinning gears of plot and character. But the themes are just as important, because this is the true “what this...

My wife and I recently went back and watched the Lord of The Rings movies, and on my own I went back and watched The Hobbit(s) once we had finished the original trilogy (remember Hobbit was made after LOTR). It made me hyper aware of the epic scope that all Saga’s embody, and how powerful the world-building in those stories are. Other examples include: The Matrix, The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones, Star Wars, The Godfather, Harry Potter, Narnia, Indiana Jones, and Pirates of the Caribbean… In this article, I want to breakdown what those movies have in common, what...

I run one of the largest writers’ groups in Hollywood, with writers at all different skill levels. Every week the group hears 30 pages of a screenplay acted out by professional actors (like a table read), then the rest of the writers in the group gives notes on the pages. As you can probably imagine, people mostly present the first 30 pages of a feature. At this point I have heard nearly 1000 Act One’s, and in this article, I want to discuss what makes an Act One FLY or DIE. There are multiple things you need to accomplish in...