Makes Movies. Writes with @ndsinnott. Will never pay for twitter.
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Mar 12 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Re: That Article but also just relationships, something I’ve learned over 14 years of marriage is that there are lines and walls. Lines can be negotiated and compromised around. You hate their mom. They don’t like ironing. These are lines.
Walls are things that no matter how convenient it would be be or how logical you are, cannot be changed or negotiated. If your partner is bi, for instance, you can’t convince them to be straight. If your mom was killed by bees, you will probably never share their love of bees.
Mar 11 • 11 tweets • 3 min read
“My husband might die if he gets Covid again. But I want to go to restaurants.”
Here’s the thing about a chronic illness or a medical vulnerability: it changes your life, and it’s not fun. And it’s not the vulnerable person’s job to compensate their partner for that change, because it’s not a choice they’re making, it’s a necessity of their condition.
Oct 17, 2023 • 14 tweets • 2 min read
Friendly Neighborhood Script Reader here: let me talk a little about unfilmables before I walk into the sea about them.
An unfilmable in a script is a piece of prose that gives the reader information but not the viewing audience. They tend to crop up in character intros, but can be in other places, too. An example is something like “JOE, 60s, Loves his 5 grandkids.”
Oct 6, 2023 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
I ask this when I see tweets like this. Whose side in this situation do you want to be on? And whose side does your behavior align with?
I’m not gonna argue the unimpeachable science that getting Covid is very bad and wearing masks is preventative. But I *know* there are smart, kind people out there who are choosing not to protect others because they have social permission to do so. And I know they can shift back.
Aug 9, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Guys you have no idea about the scripts I read. It’s my job. Heartbreaking dramas. Wildly funny comedies. Groundbreaking sci fi. Diverse voices. Amazing love stories. Biopics of fascinating people I’ve never heard of.
Almost none of them get made.
It’s not the writers.
Almost all truly great movies require a studio to take a risk on a new voice, a new idea, or a new twist audiences haven’t seen a million times. The way studios work now, those are all the OPPOSITE of what they want. They want a McDonalds hamburger, every day, every meal.
Aug 9, 2023 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Covid is going up pretty significantly everywhere right now, so I say this as a caution, not for sympathy: my life is nearly unrecognizable since I got Covid in 2022. I have what’s considered very mild long Covid. What does that mean?…
Well for me, debilitating fatigue. I cannot walk for more than 15 minutes on a flat surface. If I try to walk twenty, I can end up in bed for a week. No exercise. No yoga. No long grocery trips. No amusement parks. No fun days wandering the beach. No sports or physical games.
Jul 18, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Here’s another gentle thought from your friendly neighborhood script reader: sex scenes! I love ‘em, but they’re an art! A lot of writers stumble when they try to write intimate prose. This is an area to research! Romance novels and fanfic are THE PLACE to study up on this.
Sometimes these descriptions are very bad and you will recoil reading them! So take the time to learn what terminology you actually find arousing on the page, and what reads as clinical or off-putting. Just because you’ve had IRL sex doesn’t make you a sex-writing expert!
Jul 16, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Here’s your friendly neighborhood script reader thought of the day: if you are writing about real places and real issues - like say, NASA - it will help you to assume that one of your readers has never heard of NASA, and one is a literal astronaut. Here’s why I think this:
You need the astronaut to keep you honest on research. Of course movies can and do fudge details, and most experts are FINE with that - but if you’re getting the very very googleable basics wrong, your astronaut reader will go through the roof. And should!
Jun 3, 2023 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
I’ve been thinking about all this AI art stuff, and man, the “rest of the painting” ones were sure a giveaway as to what I think is going on.
We can argue about the concept of souls and creativity all we want, sure. But what an artist provides that I think people are starting to hate and fear is perspective.
Jun 1, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I am very very tired of the idea that characters should make perfect moral decisions at all times, like exactly zero people do.
You talk shit about your friends! You sometimes do underhanded things when you know better! When you feel insecure or frightened, I bet you revert to some bad prior habits! You sometimes think or say mean things because you’re feeling snarky!
May 31, 2023 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I’m the one!
Six months after I had Covid, I am struggling with energy - about 30-50% of my pre-Covid normal, and a rapid weight gain that is inexplicable by calories in/out.
I’ve tried to manage all this in a few ways. Scheduled rests throughout the day were a big help. I’ve gradually added in light exercise- I can walk about .8 of a mile now, and that’s a massive improvement - as well as gentle yoga and very very gentle weights. Still—
May 30, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I love playing piano and then I hear someone who can actually play and it’s like - no, what? That’s impossible. How many arms do they have??
I’ve been teaching myself since about 2021. I’m not good! There is such a wide gap between where I am (“can play intermediate Pixar songs in three months of practice”) and good!
May 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Love the contention that she has no bottom half at all, it’s just half a lady in front of dirt.
Da Vinci was known for painting ladies pokin out of big dirt
May 30, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This is an incredible read on the racist, sexist, toxic culture of LOST, created and encouraged by Lindelof and Cruse, who are both doing very well in Hollywood 15 years later.
Bad people can make great television, and their talent is used as an excuse to be worse. But good people can also make great television, and I guarantee if we got rid of every toxic showrunner in town and replaced them with decent people, quality would go up, not down.
May 29, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Y'all, I'm sorry. Wearing a mask is not a painful sacrifice on par with "putting your life on hold." It is somewhat inconvenient and not the funnest. Like seatbelts.
Also the rhetoric of "bowing down to the disabled" is a very nice powdery ski slope top to Eugenics mountain. High risk, disabled, and immunocompromised people would like to not get covid while accessing basic human services like grocery stores and doctors offices. That's it!
May 28, 2023 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I have two coverage gigs, one reading for studios for product placement, one at a script eval place. I read 25-35 scripts a month. The quality has not declined, not even a little bit. What has happened is that the gates for what gets made have narrowed tremendously.
It’s long been my contention that if you opened a studio making $5-$20m movies and opened the door on submissions, you would be suffocated in an avalanche of great scripts.
May 4, 2023 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Why though?? Why? What is the point of the intermediate AI step? Why do you think writers can’t read a book and adapt it, but can read a badly written gibberish script by a robot and make it somehow close to the book you didn’t want them to read?
This is like saying “instead of asking you to grow celery, I’m going to give you a plate of celery that’s been run over by a tractor, please turn it back into celery.”
May 4, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Once again - from someone who gets paid to read scripts for my job, to a guy who failed so hard at writing he became a grifter - NO WE ARE NOT.
This would concern me if I was, perhaps, in kindergarten and did not know what the word commensurate means.
May 4, 2023 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I do not ask for much by BY GOD do I want a non-see-through, non-shapeless white t-shirt for less than $35.
Men have no idea. NO IDEA.
May 3, 2023 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
The crazy thing about the AI In Hollywood Argument is that people claim the tech would be used to generate ideas for scripts. Let me tell you, the one thing we are not short on in this town is IDEAS.
Every screenwriter I’ve ever met has half a dozen great concepts, if not more. Ideas are breakfast. They are easy. The problem is the idea to movie pipeline, which is broken by two things:
May 2, 2023 • 12 tweets • 2 min read
As someone who does coverage…this is not a score you’d make public, I’ll say that.
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