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Stories are Connectors: Screenwriter-Filmmaker Randy Wilkins on the Evolution of his Craft

August 6, 2020

Screenwriter and filmmaker Randy Wilkins has a history with Spike Lee that goes way back. As an English major with a passion for filmmaking at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Wilkins was assigned as Lee’s host when Lee vis...

5 Takeaways from Hulu's 'Ramy'

August 4, 2020

Viewers watching season two of Ramy (co-written and played by Ramy Youssef) will note the writers have set aside his hilarious quest for love for a much deeper, philosophical quest. As the title character tells Sheikh Malik, played beautifully by Mah...

The Weekend Movie Takeaway: The Emmy Awards Nomination Announcements Signal Hope For Our Narrative Future

August 4, 2020

When it comes to collectively celebrating the power of mass narrative, the Oscars® and the Emmy® Awards are arguably the two highest-profile events of the year. While the 2020 Oscars managed to come and go a few weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic hit...

The Fast Five: Netflix Ups Its Emmy®’s Game, While Issa Rae and Jordan Peele Help One Writer Break Out

August 3, 2020

A writer in Spokane sold her short-story for seven figures, professional writers share their expertise via Comic-Con@Home, and Netflix shatters the record for most Emmy nominations in a single year. There’s a lot of lessons that aspiring writers can ...

Weekend Writing Inspiration: 7 Creative Strategies to Survive 'Distance Learning' and Keep Writing this Fall

July 31, 2020

With many school districts here in the U.S. planning to open this fall with “full distance” or “hybrid” learning in short order, many writer-parents are anxiously wondering how to keep working their day jobs — let alone keep writing and preserve our ...

Unscripted 7.30.20: This Week in Screenwriting News

July 30, 2020

Screenwriting career consultant Lee Jessup discusses this week's success stories, industry news, online events, and more.

The Current Occupant' Poses Thought-Provoking Questions, But Offers No Answers

July 29, 2020

The Current Occupant has a huge hook: it’s a movie about a man in an insane asylum who believes he’s President of the United States. It plays on internet conspiracy theories right and left, not to mention the merits of the 25th amendment—and what wou...

Filmmaker Benjamin Cavell on his modern retelling of Stephen King's 'The Stand'

July 28, 2020

Benjamin Cavell and the team behind the CBS All Access limited series The Stand got to shelter in place for the pandemic by the skin of their teeth. They wrapped in Vancouver, British Columbia on March 11, 2020 — mere hours before much of North Ameri...

Tayarisha Poe On Writing, ‘Selah and The Spades’

July 28, 2020

Selah and The Spades is a culmination of ideas that writer-director Tayarisha Poe pieced together into her ambitious first feature film. The film gives us an inside glimpse into the life and complex relationships of a seventeen-year-old Black girl on...