Inneresting 39
issue 39
February 12, 2021
Making new things by learning from the old
In a recent blog post, author Susan Orlean talked about learning to write by studying and adapting writers she admired:
"I was bowled over by Tom Wolfe when I first started writing, and I’m sure some of my early pieces exuded more than a whiff of his tone and tenor. But there was only one Tom Wolfe, and I really don’t sound like him at all, and over time I started sounding less like a cut-rate Tom Wolfe and more like me. I still loved having his books on my desk while I was working, and whenever I got stuck on a piece I would paw through them, looking for ways he solved whatever writing problem I was having. It helped me enormously."
Austin Kleon echoes this sentiment, linking his kids learning to draw with the way several artists speak about copying their influences.
But a screenwriter looking for inspiration needs to look beyond what’s currently trending. Only watching and analyzing things drowning in hot takes doesn’t help give you a personal point of view.
So where can a screenwriter go to dig deep and find films to inspire them?
Celebrating the video store tradition
During a small portion of cinematic history, the best way to expand your horizons was heading to the video store. An entire generation of filmmakers got their education absorbing everything they could off the shelves.
For a taste of what that video store culture was like, check out this short documentary on 20th Century Flicks in Bristol, which claims to be the longest continuously operating video store.
(And to answer the obvious question, since this video was published in February, 2020: No, COVID-19 has not pushed them out of business. They are currently filling requests through a drop box and mail-delivered triple-features.)
But what if you don’t live in Bristol?
As John pointed out in 2018 on his blog, a substantial number of classic and relatively recent films aren’t available for streaming or online purchase.
Stephen Follows crunched the numbers after reading that post, and created a set of graphs and lists to show what years are best (and worst) represented online, and what films are still missing from digital circulation.
So where can you turn when you want to seek out that one film that you need to see?
Amazon Prime has built an improving catalogue of classic films. RogerEbert.com wrote up a run-down of some of the highlights.
If you’re looking for a smaller, eclectic set of offerings, try The Film Detective. The site offers some free films and a subscription fee to stream movies ranging from My Man Godfrey to Brother From Another Planet.
If you have a library card or are a university student, Kanopy may offer you free access to their streaming service. It has thousands of films including a large foreign collection and selections from the Criterion Collection and A24.
Read The Originals
The best way to learn about screenwriting is by reading scripts. You can find now screenplays for nearly every movie produced online.
Because it’s a challenge to read a script on your iPhone, we make Weekend Read. This free app melts PDFs to give you a perfectly-formatted version for your small screen.
Need a screenplay to read? You’ll find collections of some of our favorite scripts of all time across many genres.
And we’ve just added a dozen of the best scripts of the past year in our For Your Consideration 2021 list!
Other Cool Things
Sound designer Ren Klyce explains to Wired how he didn’t just make Mank sound like it was made in the 1930s, he made watching it sound like sitting in a 30s theater.
If you want some actual humans to recommend new music to you, check out Station Rotation. Started by Danger Mouse and Nigel Godrich, it features playlists curated by familiar names like David Lynch, Dee Rees, Danielle Haim, and Rian Johnson.
Lauren Oyler makes the case for semicolons, our most misunderstood piece of punctuation.
And that’s what’s inneresting this week!
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