Film School

Ira recently realized he didn't have a writing routine, a habit of working on his WIPs every day. So, how can he start one? And how can he KEEP one? Both of the boys talk habit forming and share thei…

Hello Clarice. Anthony Hopkins turns in the performance of a lifetime as the cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter, as does Jodi Foster as FBI agent-in-training Clarice Starling in the film that has…

We all have bills to pay. But how do we work full time week in and week out and still get our creative work done as well? What KIND of job allows us to do both and not get burned out? Josh and Ira ha…

They call me MISTER TIBBS. Sidney Poitier is an absolute badass and he pairs beautifully as the black master detective stuck with Rod Steiger as the racist local cop to solve a murder. This film take…

"You gotta have an elevator pitch!" How many times have we heard this as a storyteller? Omg. All the time. But what actually IS an elevator pitch? Both of us didn't even know ourselves until very rec…

We all have those movies that just make us feel warm and fuzzy inside. They feel like home. This week, the boys talk about those movies for them, Josh's self-imposed project to watch more of them, an…

Life is like a box of chocolates, folks; you never know what you're gonna get. Tom Hanks plays the titular character in a film that defies traditional story structures and genre conventions. At the b…

It's the story of how Richard Nixon's presidency came to an infamous end: Watergate. Intrepid (god, I love the word 'intrepid!') reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Berstein doggedly pursued the truth at…

Charlie Chaplin is on point this week with one of his most beloved appearances as the The Tramp. He can't hold down a job for his life, he's getting strapped into a homicidal auto-feeding machine, an…

If any of them move, kill 'em! Our first Western on the AFI list is a bloody, gritty, corker of a bandit heist flick. It stars William Holden, whose star power was waning at the time, along with Erne…

Okay, so we've gone through each of the different Genres of story. Great. But how do we actually APPLY that to our own writing? We use Josh's current work in progress as a launching point, discuss hi…

"That's the way it crumbles, cookie-wise." Jack Lemmon and Shirley McClain star in this absolute gem from writer/director Billy Wilder. One of the movies that defined the Romantic Comedy genre, it fe…

We conclude our dive into the fundamental story types we tell by by going over the remaining external Content Genres of Horror, Crime, Western, Performance, Thriller, Society, and War, and the remain…

I'm Spartacus! No, I'm Spartacus! No...WE are SpartacALLofus! :) We hit our second sword-and-sandal epic of the late 50s / early 60s. This one is directed by a very young Stanley Kubrick and stars Ki…

Our deep dive into the story content genres continues with what might be THE MOST important, ubiquitous internal genre in human history: the Worldview story. It's the foundation of the Hero's Journey…

Considered by many the greatest film of the Silent Era, Sunrise is a German Expressionist poem of a marriage on the rocks. It brings the visuals, helter-skelter sets, melodramatic performances, a swe…