FrankenScript :: Lee Gabel's Screenwriting Journal/Blog

I finished my last screenplay two months ago and have not reread it yet. I finished writing it, closed the laptop and here we are two months later. I don’t know what I’m worried about, but something is holding me back. Perhaps it’s the next step, the rewriting, that I am trying to avoid. I [...]

I had the choice to go see Cars 2 or Kung Fu Panda 2. I made the right choice. Pixar isn’t the only studio producing top-notch animated features these days. The version I saw was in 3D, but it didn’t need it. The richness and detail of the environments would come across in 2D equally [...]

Get past the branding, these are quite entertaining if you know or live with a screenwriter (HT to Go Into The Story for finding these gems).  

I didn’t have much expectations going in, but was pleasantly surprised to find an entertaining story here. Yes, it’s formulaic. Yes,  it’s instantly forgettable. The love interest seemed only to pop up when the heavy action needed to be lightened up. It’s almost like the screenwriters realized that they had better give the girl something [...]

Here’s some great advice from Chip Street, a writer who’s been through the process a couple of times now. It’s a good read, so check out the whole two part article here.

This is another example of a film with very real violence trying to be funny. It’s an incredibly hard balance to achieve. But that’s the least of this film’s problems. First, it takes too long to set up. What was done in 40 minutes could have been done in 10. Heigl and Kutcher do have [...]