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Native excellence with comedic revelation Jana Schmieding of ‘Rutherford Falls’

April 29, 2021

Jana Schmieding stars in and serves as a staff writer on the revolutionary new series, Rutherford Falls. Helmed by co-creators Sierra Teller Ornelas, Mike Schur, and Ed Helms, the new comedy is the very first Native sitcom. Schmieding stars as Reagan...

History of TV: Bad boy for life ‘Martin’

April 29, 2021

The Martin Lawrence vehicle was one of Fox’s highest rated shows during its run between 1992 and 1997. It won a People’s Choice Award for Favorite New TV Comedy Series in 1993, as well as multiple NAACP Image Award nominations and wins for outstandin...

Write On with 'Selena' Creator Moisés Zamora

April 28, 2021

Moisés Zamora, creator of Netflix's Selena: The Series about the legendary singer, talks to guest host Lee Jessup about why it was important for this show to have a writers room primarily made up of Mexican American voices. "All of the writers I hire...

Limbo' writer-director Ben Sharrock on using humor to share the story of the refugee experience

April 28, 2021

Standing alone in a telephone booth on a remote Scottish island, Omar (Amir El-Masry) calls his parents to share the progress of his asylum request. He looks down at the plaster cast on his arm as his father badgers him over his inability to play his...

Growing Up Milwaukee' seeks to go beyond statistics

April 27, 2021

Statistics out of Milwaukee are shocking and depressing for Black kids in the city. In a report that came out in August 2020, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Economic Development stated that "Black Milwaukee is generally worse off toda...

5 Screenwriting Takeaways: ‘Thunder Force’ offers female superhero movie in the form of farce

April 26, 2021

Thunder Force has Chicago facing a lot of bad guys, aka Miscreants, in the wake of a radioactive blast that gave ordinary humans extraordinary powers — or simply the arms of a crustacean, like Jason Bateman’s wayward crab-armed love interest "The Cra...

5 Screenwriting Takeaways: 'Willy’s Wonderland' is Nicolas Cage horror

April 23, 2021

There are very few movies in which the protagonist does not utter a word for a period of time. What makes Willy’s Wonderland truly unique is that the film's star, Oscar® winner Nicolas Cage, does not say a single syllable throughout the 88 minutes of...

Natasha Henstridge attempts to survive one wild night in ‘Night of the Sicario’

April 23, 2021

Night of the Sicario follows a group at a retirement home just trying to ride out a hurricane. Things go sideways when members of a cartel show up because the determined Taylor Ward (Natasha Henstridge) has agreed to shelter two witnesses in a drug t...

From novel to script: writing an adaptation

April 22, 2021

Hollywood loves adaptations. Especially if you adapt a screenplay or script from a bestselling book with an enormous reader following. And, if the book pretty much lives on the New York Times Bestseller List, has made millions in sales, and is part o...