The High-Low Problem
The problem [Pauline] Kael undertook to address when she began writing for The New Yorker was the problem of making popular entertainment respectable to people whose education told them that popular...
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The origin of “I coulda been a contender”
A note from screenwriter Budd Schulberg to a fan, jotted on the back of an index card, explains the origin of the famous line from “On the Waterfront.” The note reads: 12/7/89 For Bobby Cotton — From...
View ArticleHappy St. Crispin’s Day
And gentlemen in England now a-bed Shall think themselves accursed they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day. Thrilling, though...
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Five Fingers of Death
Five Fingers of Death (1972). This poster hung in Jacob Barber’s bedroom.
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In the wry
A note from J.D. Salinger to aspiring movie director Hubert Cornfield declining an offer to turn The Catcher in the Rye into a movie. (Source. Via.) Salinger consistently refused to permit film...
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Making Eddie Coyle
Robert Mitchum signs an autograph while on location in Boston filming The Friends of Eddie Coyle, autumn 1972. (via)
View ArticleLaziness will not do
So avoid using the word very because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason, boys: to woo women. And in that endeavor,...
View Article“And then I saw her…”
When I’m stuck — as I have been for some time now, trying to crack the plot of my next book, to “break” the story, as screenwriters say — I always look for older stories to use as templates. The writer...
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Aaron Sorkin: Now all I have to do…
At the moment I’m at roughly the same place I was when I decided to write ‘The Social Network’ — which is to say I don’t know what the movie’s about yet. I know it won’t be a biography as it’s very...
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