All screenwriters have an emotional attachment to their screenplays. I loved my early spec screenplays like they were my babies. When screenplay analysts, film producers or screenplay agents told me they were less than perfect film scripts I was gutted. You know the feeling. The fact is: they were pretty poor screenplays. Or not. My then agent Julian Friedmann took me on the strength of a script called MEETING SHAKESPEARE I wrote . . . just before Tom Stoppard rewrote Marc Norman's script for SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE. Julian sent my script to all and sundry, some of whom turned it down because of the Tom Stoppard project. Of the producers Julian sent it to, many liked it but felt it was a bit too
I’ve only now seen LION (Garth Davis) 2016). I have never been so affected (emotionally and humanely) by any film. This film states the obvious, which we all need to hear on a regular basis: that human emotions are universal. They transcend and are independent of different ethnicities, religions, and social mores. LION is an amazing achievement. Well done to all involved. From a screenwriting perspective, several things occurred to me, however – when I could finally think straight. The emotional spine of the film is obviously Saroo’s journey. Specifically: Young Saroo’s journey. We enter and experience the world of the film through Young Saroo’s eyes. When he is taken into foster care by Mr
Most of us are familiar with method acting. “Method acting initially came to the attention of the U.S. public at about the same time that television enjoyed its first growth spurt: the late 1940s and early 1950s. At that time, director Elia Kazan brought Marlon Brando to the stage and then to the screen in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), which was followed by On the Waterfront (1954). Brando was the most visible of several distinctive new actors who were advocating the Method. He, James Dean, Montgomery Clift, Julie Harris, and others had been trained by Method teachers such as Lee Strasberg (at the Actors Studio) and Stella Adler (Brando’s principal teacher). However, the Method was being
