Spoiler alert: this breakdown divulges key information about the plot of the film. The Imitation Game is a beautifully executed script that goes in one door – cracking the Nazi code – and comes out another – a man tragically persecuted because he is gay. For anyone writing a Memoir-Tr

Spoiler alert: this breakdown divulges information about the plot of the film. John Ridley, the writer of 12 Years A Slave, had tremendous advantages and disadvantages in adapting Solomon Northup’s true story to film. Northup, a free black man in New York in the early 1840s, was kidna

Captain Phillips is the kind of edge-of-your-seat action thriller that Hollywood does better than anyone else, which is why it’s one of the best American films of the year. If you’re looking for depth of character or complex themes, this is not your movie. But it can teach screenwrite

The whole time I was watching Lincoln, I kept wondering: Could someone please turn on the lights? All that darkness, combined with Lincoln’s black suit, made him look like a walking bobblehead doll.  I know that’s not the proper respect I should be showing this film. But the sad fact

I had the pleasure of co-writing a wonderful film that’s just come out, called African Cats. This is Disney Nature’s third release, after Earth and Oceans. These films were all made by the highly talented nature documentarians at the BBC, who work together not unlike the writers and d

Whenever I break down a film script to see how it works, I always start by identifying the central problems and challenges the writer faced in cracking the story code. In adapting the true story of the creation of Facebook, master screenwriter Aaron Sorkin faced at least three major c

Continuing our look at the True Life stories genre, Greg Mottola’s semi-autobiographical film Adventureland was successful in what it did not try to do as much as it was in what the film accomplished.  Mottola, the director of 2007’s Superbad, never thought of penning the

Want to solve the mystery of Tree of Life? This is one of the most original films to come along in some time, but most people don’t know what to make of it. They suspect something important is going on, but they don’t have the experience to know what it is. The secret is in the genre

Spoiler alert: this structure breakdown contains information about the plot.  Mixing genres has been the central storytelling strategy in Hollywood for at least twenty years. You simply have to write a script with multiple genres if you want any chance of selling it.The Informant! is

Great drama is among the most advanced and challenging forms of storytelling. Sadly the glory days of drama in worldwide entertainment are long gone. Witness the highly acclaimedFrost/Nixon, the latest example of “much ado about nothing” in the drama form.  Frost/Nixon seems to have m