🎞️ #187 - 2023 Oscar Nominees (Original Screenplay)
Rounding out the screenwriting nominees from last week!
Justine Triet and Arthur Harari - Anatomy of a Fall
Triet speaks with Jason Solomons about how writing the script during lockdown gave time to revise the films arguments and make the dialogue more pointed. Caleb Hammond looks at the specifics of the film’s central fight with Triet, and she discusses the story’s shifting points of view. From 2014, Justine talks with Emma Myers about her first feature, Age of Panic, and its relationship to documentary filmmaking and French politics. On Scriptnotes, John and Craig look at the unique style of the script itself, and how it points to a direction that production scripts might follow.
David Hemingson - The Holdovers
David writes for Time about how his Uncle Earl became his childhood hero, as well as the inspiration for Paul Giamatti’s character in the film. Hemingson talks with Gregory Ellwood about how a never-produced TV pilot about a boarding school lead to the partnership with Alexander Payne on The Holdovers. In Creative Screenwriting, David tells the story of his pitch for the show Whiskey Cavalier, and encourages writers not to push away ideas and feelings from their writing just because they may not fit the genre.
Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer - Maestro
Josh Singer describes working with Bradley Cooper on the script, and why the film focuses more on the relationship between “Lenny and Felicia” than it does on Bernstein’s artistic accomplishments. Singer tells IndieWire about the 10 year journey getting Maestro from page to screen. You can also hear Singer as part of a panel moderated by John in the Scriptnotes bonus episode Beyond Words 2016.
Samy Burch - May December
Samy speaks with Daniel Montgomery about making May December an original story to avoid feeling like a true crime dramatization, and the use of humor to break tension. Looking back, you can watch several shorts Burch made with Alex Mechanik (her husband and co-writer on the shorts), including All You Can Eat, starring Matt Warzel as a disgruntled Food Network host, and Family Dinner, featuring Kate Berlant, John Early, and the most uncomfortable eye contact while opening a fortune cookie you’ve ever seen:
Celine Song - Past Lives
Celine talks to Claire Valentine about keeping the lead actors apart to prevent them from developing physical chemistry, and how her Psychology background influences her writing. Song shares her picks from the Criterion closet. Petrana Radulovic talks with Song about her unique staging of Chekhov’s The Seagull using the game Sims 4:
“The Sims 4, I always felt, was very Chekhovian as a game,” says Song. “Because it’s about just living, right? It’s about drama between people, and also just like Chekhov, you have to go to the bathroom. […] There’s an interesting thing where it really is about the really extraordinary things that are happening in the mundane [lives of the characters].
👋 Are you new here?
Inneresting is a weekly newsletter about writing and things that are interesting to writers. Subscribe now to get more Inneresting things sent to your inbox.
📄 You’ve met the nominees, now read the scripts!
Almost all of the nominated scripts are in the Weekend Read 2 list “And the nominees are…”
On the blog, John shares why two scripts are still absent:
The screenplay for Past Lives hasn’t been released, while Anatomy of a Fall has a fascinating non-traditional format that can’t be converted out of PDF.
⏱️🦫 It’s time to Write Sprint (again)
Each week we post a comment thread for writers to meet up, cheer each other on, and put some words on the page with a Write Sprint.
What’s a Write Sprint?
John wrote up an explanation, but here’s the short version: Set a timer for 60 minutes, close down all distractions, and do nothing but write until that timer goes off.
Sometimes that’s all it takes to get some momentum going with your writing: You set aside this time for writing and nothing else, so you’d better use it!
Shout out to for sprinting with us last week!
Previously on Inneresting…
In case you missed it, in last issue’s most clicked link Jo Light offers a roundup of screenwriting advice from McNamara.
What else is inneresting?
Linda Holmes on diving in to Peloton classes every day for a month, and how it feels to build a new routine.
Sameer Vasta shares a personal list of No Skip Albums, where every track is worth listening to.
John Siracusa on the knotty considerations of using generative AI and who should be considered the creator and the owner of work made with it:
Suppose Bob writes an email to Sue, who has no existing business relationship with Bob, asking her to draw a picture of a polar bear wearing a cowboy hat while riding a bicycle. If Sue draws this picture, we all agree that Sue is the creator, and that some arrangement is required to transfer ownership of this picture to Bob. But if Bob types that same email into a generative AI, has he now become the creator of the generated image? If not, then who is the creator?
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
Inneresting is edited by Chris Csont, with contributions from readers like you and the entire Quote-Unquote team.
Are you enjoying this newsletter?
📧 Forward it to a friend and suggest they check it out.
🔗 Share a link to this post on social media.
🗣 Have ideas for future topics (or just want to say hello)? Reach out to Chris via email at inneresting@johnaugust.com, Mastodon @ccsont@mastodon.art, or Bluesky @ccsont.bsky.social
Post-Credits Scene
This dog is playing Nintendo. He is the goodest boy. Hat tip to Jessica Quiroga for sending this in: