filmmaking | filmmaking
Apr.26.2013
When the last of my filmmaking buddies left for Los Angeles I was lost. I realized I had a choice. 1). I could mope--which I did for about three weeks. 2). I could start all over making new connections--which is fun but time-consuming. 3). I could become a one-woman...
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Nov.14.2012
Alan Furst’s MISSION TO PARIS has all the qualities-- but perhaps a little more optimism --that usually mark his novels. The setting primarily is pre-WWII Paris, and the focus is on Germany’s attempt to co-opt Fredric Stahl (a lower-level Hollywood movie star born in Vienna) into...
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Nov.12.2012
From Shadows and Ghosts:
As filmmaker Ida Mae Glick tries to survive on the same meager rations as the homeless subjects of the documentary she is making, the boundaries between her world and the next dissolve....
Work faster. It sounded easy enough in the editing room...
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Jul.17.2012
When in doubt, crowd source.
So, recently I got a call for submissions from someone seeking an adaptable short story to use in a film production project. Naturally, this got me thinking. At the moment, I've got sixteen stories that have been published or will be soon. Which one do you think...
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Mar.15.2012
There’s a homeless man named Spencer K. Montague at the heart of Shadows and Ghosts...an odd figure in a story driven by women.
He wasn’t in the original design of the book. In fact, he wasn’t even created for the book later on. He was fished out of the bottom of the desk drawer where I’d put...
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Jan.25.2012
In a stroke of luck, during some recent channel surfing, I happened upon Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein. As I settled in and watched, and heard, for the umpteenth time, Victor's cry to the heavens (which I referenced at the beginning of Shadows and Ghosts), I couldn't help but be affected....
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May.23.2011
"Each word before leaving my lips seemed to have passed through all the warmth of my blood. There was no fibre in me which did not give forth an harmonious sound. Ah, grace! The state of grace! Each time it is given me to touch the summit of my art, I recover that unspeakable abandonment....
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Nov.17.2010
This post is the sequel to my first article for DailyFinance, "The Paltry Economics of Being a Novelist." In that piece, I describe how novelists (theoretically) profit from their books. Here, speaking as the author of Pay It Forward, which was adapted to film, I delve into what happens...
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Sep.20.2009
Yesterday morning at 4.30am I caved in and drove Thomas through to the set of Emma-O, the horror movie he's busy art directing for indie filmmaker extraordinaire, Ronnie Belcher. Firstly, let me say that filmmaking is is expensive. Even a short, twenty-minute production is costing the associated...
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Aug.04.2009
I had the humbling experience of hearing documentary filmmaker Ken Burns speak last night at the Chautauqua Institution in western New York.
All I can say is there have been very few occasions when I have been in the presence of true genius. Monday evening, beneath a nearly full moon, was...
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