Josh Friedman

Point & Click

Kinda flat out.

There’s an interesting article over the ditch about the journey of multihyphenate Serhat Caradee who, despite having a developed script and a few short films, found he had to shoot ‘pilot scenes’ to attract funding. (Fedora-tip: Lynden Barber.)

If, like me, you found Battlestar Galactica‘s final moments wanting, to quote the late King of Pop, you are not alone. (Fedora-tip: Alex Epstein.)

The National Post has a cautionary tale about the four acts of a television series’ life. (Fedora-tip: Ben Boychuk.)

After a looong period of radio silence (hey, he was busy), Josh Friedman has lately thrown up two posts in as many months.

An excellent New York Times article explores the seduction and corruption of Graham Greene by the silver screen. (Try here if that NY Times link doesn’t work.)

And English playwright David Edgar has a brill’ extract from his book, How Plays Work, in The Guardian. (Fedora-tip: WGGB Blog.)

My take on the WGA strike? The thing is, obviously, –

(a) I’m not a WGA member, and
(b) I live a quarter of the world away.

There’s a lot of stuff on the web about it, and the screenwriting blogs have a screed of information to choose from. I’ve found Shawn Ryan‘s guest post on why he’s joining the strike despite being a multi-hyphenate, Josh Friedman‘s succinct report on standing for what’s right, and John Rogers‘ overview all particularly enlightening.

As a card-carrying screenwriter, I wholeheartedly exhort the strikers onward to victory.

So many things to post about. So few braincells to spare. Meantime, I give you these wonderful links to enjoy:

Alan Moore is interviewed about his career and latest work, Lost Girls.
Jeremy Slater has same cry-out-loud posts (here and here) about Heroes creator Tim Kring. Mm… maybe not for Heroes fans.
Phill Barron is writing a feature screenplay in one week. The man is insane. Virtual rubber-neckers can follow his progress so far: Day One and Day Two.
It’s that wonderful time of year when the Vidiots hold their annual Dead Pool competition. They may only be in it to see which newbie show karks it first, but for me it’s a good indicator of what to look forward to in the near future. Pushing Daisies and Dirty Sexy Money seemed to pass muster; here’s hoping The Bionic Woman and the long-silent Josh Friedman‘s The Sarah Connor Chronicles do the same.
Stephen Fry – yes, that Stephen Fry – has a blog. Nuff said, mm?

Between searching for bill-paying work, and drafting pitches for writing work, all I’s gots for ya this week is more linkages.

John Rogers has a great post on credits arbitration – it’s interesting in an “as you pass a flaming wreck” kind of way. (See also Josh Friedman‘s experience, Being A Play in Two Parts.) For myself, I swear by the excellent New Zealand Writers Guild model contracts, though none of them mention residuals.

John August has an interesting post on publicity. I admit to being Kiwi-bloke-ish in my self-promotion: essentially a “build it and they will come” approach. (This blog and the attendant dfmamea.com site was a tentative step in the self-promotion direction. It’s provided a fantastic avenue for procrasturbation.)

Whilst clearing up my massive RSS backlog (and inadvertently deleting a mass of ‘Important’-flagged ones), I found a wealth of left-field ideas and approaches to film distribution from Tim Clague‘s Projector Films blog. The ideas are a bit scary and newfangled for a conventional and blissful ignoramus like myself, but they’re exciting and exhilarating, and any day now, I’ll understand it all.

And finally, courtesy of this from TeeVee, there’s the Brilliant but Cancelled site which seems to have some neat feeds on a range of shows that didn’t survive transmission on American t.v. It doesn’t have UnSub, Game, Set and Match or Now and Again, but. Hope springs eternal.

Mr T over at Unkreative has finished – well, 98% finished – principal photography on 5. Onwards with post it is. Don’t forget to cruise some nice pics here.

Writer and director of Narc and the Ticker segment of BMW’s uber-cool The Hire ad series, Joe Carnahan, has a feature coming out: Smokin’ Aces. He’s pluggin’ it aplenty at Smokin’ Joe Carnahan. Looks fun – it’s my first must-see film of 2007.

The boys at How to Write Screenplays… Badly have given notice. Goddamnit. They were merciless. They were hilarious. I’ll miss the bastards.

After some period of silence Josh Friedman has a heartfelt post at I Find Your Lack of Faith Disturbing.

And I’ve tripped over a couple of UK blogs to recommend: Lee Thomson‘s The Light, It Hurts is a humorous and very personable blog about screenwriting around a full-time job; and Danny Stack‘s Scriptwriting & Script Reading in the UK is a resource rich site on the nuts and bolts of screenwriting.