About Schmidt does something that is rare in movies, especially from Hollywood. It depicts a lone man. That is both a blessing and a curse. There is a very good reason films don’t usually depict a lone man. Film is drama. It is public. We need someone for the main character to t

I’m sitting here struggling with how to write a critique of this highly-praised yet flawed screenplay. Besides my usual feeling of not being good enough – in spite of being highly-successful in Hollywood – what I really want to do right now is have a muffin, and I mi

The script for this film, written by the lead actress, is very funny, even though it covers familiar ground. It confirmed for me a valuable lesson for the writer: find the gold in your idea and stick with it. This is a love story. Yet, unlike the normal Hollywood love story, there is

This popular film takes the Traveling Angel story structure (which I talk about in detail in the Comedy course) and gives it a French twist. In most Traveling Angel stories, the hero enters a community in trouble. The problems of a number of minor characters are detailed and then the

The Royal Tenenbaums comes from a long line of quirky family comedies, at least as far back as You Can’t Take It with You. These families are like caper or suicide mission teams. Each member of the family has a specialty. But the point of the crazy family members is not to form

Shrek has the best script I’ve seen this year. It’s the result of two elements of writing, structure and texture, that are rarely found together in Hollywood mainstream movies. Structurally, the writers combine the fairy tale form, the myth form and the buddy picture in a

Chocolat is a textbook example of the “traveling angel” story form that I talk about in the Comedy Class. It also shows us the dangers of following the textbook so rigidly you suck all the life out of the story. This writer hits every technique found in traveling angel fil

This modern-day Odyssey/Sullivan’s Travels is a pleasant diversion. But the question that kept nagging me in the back of my mind was: O Brother, Why art thou? Using the myth structure for a new story is a fine technique, but you have to create something truly new. Otherwise it i