Some great scripts to read as award season approaches...

Remember the opening of Goodfellas where you have three men driving at night in a car and there's a banging sound as if the car's got a flat tyre?  They pull over.  But the banging continues.  They open the trunk.  Inside is a bloodstained man, begging for his life. One man jumps towards him, cursing, stabbing him obsessively. A second shoots him twice. It’s horrific. We come into close up on the third, a young man and hear his voice over.  ‘As far back as I can remember I always wanted to be a gangster.'  And the story flashes back to his adolescence.

If you’re new to this screenwriting adventure, you’ll soon discover that many times when you go back to your creative well, it doesn’t always deliver a wealth of ideas as expected. As a result, many writers feel blocked and wait for inspiration as they constantly look for their “muse.” It’s that person or situation they believe will help spark their writing to flow.

Some writers never get started because they think they have to have it all figured out before they sit down to actually write.   Well I am here to tell you, you don't!  You don't need to have it all figured out, but you do need a few things absolutely resolved in your mind before you write.   As a matter of fact, I think you can over-plot and convolute your mind and your story, which can bog you down.  I've never been a note card person (not that there is anything wrong with that), it just wasn't my "screenplay starter." 

Twenty-two years ago Christopher Wehner wrote his first screenplay.   Like most writers he dreamed of seeing his work make it to the big screen.  After many struggles, rejections, and disappointments he is on the verge of his dream.   When you go to his IMDB page it shows EL CAMINO CHRISTMAS as his sole writing credit.   From that perspective you might considered him an overnight success; only its been a twenty-two year in the making one.   And like almost all of these kinds of success stories it took chance encounters, some luck, and a lot of perseverance. 

Godsend stars Greg Kinnear and Rebecca Romijn-Stamos as grieving parents who get the chance to have their son back thanks to a doctor doing secret fertility research (Robert De Niro). He clones their dead son into a new fetus that she can carry to term. Eight years later, the boy grows up to be the same as he was before, only now he’s having murderous visions, speaking in weird voices and generally disrespecting grown-ups. It is Mark Bomback’s first produced script since 1998’s The Night Caller, though he hasn’t had any shortage of work. He worked on Constantine and is writing a draft of Die Hard 4, as well as plenty of paying, though less visible, rewrite and development work.

Jeff Nathanson is shy. When he comes into an interview, he leans all the way back to put as much distance as possible between himself and the interview. He also prefaces each response with a deep breath. Perhaps the critical lashing he took from Speed 2 made him cautious. Even the successful Rush Hour 2 was no critics’ darling. However, Nathanson has reason to be proud now as Catch Me If You Can lingered at the top of the holiday box office and earned various award nominations. The film stars Leonardo DiCaprio as Frank Abagnale, a real life con artist who traveled the world, forged checks and impersonated pilots, doctors and lawyers.

First let me stop writing the script I am currently working on so I can pound out this short editorial. Though I should say allow me to stop bleeding at the keyboard as I struggle with the current scene I am writing. I have to admit that I am my own worst enemy as a writer.  I procrastinate, often, and it can sometimes be so debilitating that I never finish some screenplays. Why?

The Oscar nominated movie NEBRASKA, with an award winning screenplay by Bob Nelson, is in my opinion one of the better scripts recently produced for screenwriters to learn a little something about the craft. Why? It’s the epitome of efficient and dramatic storytelling. The script is pithy, direct, yet it has depth and emotion (theme) that is so subtle in its presentation.