“Winning Time” Co-Creator Jim Hecht on His Love Letter to the Lakers
Jim Hecht‘s road to co-creating Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers began in 2014. Hecht was, by his own admission, at a low point, and he was looking for a project that really spoke to him. During his daily meditation, which he admitted with the qualifier “this sounds very LA,” he had a thought: “You gotta stop writing sh*t that you think other people would want to see and start writing the show that you would want to watch.”
Oscar-Nominated “Dune” Screenwriter Jon Spaihts on Decoding Frank Herbert’s Tome
For Dune‘s Oscar-nominated screenwriter Jon Spaihts, the opportunity to help Denis Villeneuve find a way to crack the elusive code to adapting Frank Herbert’s magisterial, meaty sci-fi tome came at a funny time. “I’d decided I wanted to focus on a personal project that I’d direct myself, so I told my reps, ‘No new jobs,'” Spaiths says. “Then my agent called and said Denis Villeneuve is doing Dune, and I said,
“The Adam Project” Screenwriter Jonathan Tropper on Teaming With Ryan Reynolds & Shawn Levy
The development of The Adam Project has its own time-traveling origin story, one that dates back roughly ten years. Screenwriter Jonathan Tropper says the production took flight, in part, because of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (2017) which stars Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan, and Dwayne Johnson in a reboot of the beloved Robin Williams’ film that sucks them into a video game in an adventurous fight for survival.
“Before Jumanji came out,
“Turning Red” Co-Writer Julia Cho on Writing Pixar’s Tender New Film
Pixar’s new movie Turning Red follows straight-A student Meilin, whose perfect 13-year-old life implodes when she starts turning into a giant panda every time her emotions get out of control. Heir to a fierce ancestral spirit that’s affected women in her family for generations, Mei (voiced by Rosalie Chiang) defies her domineering mother Ming (Sandra Oh) and joins her friends to see Four Town, a boyband that sounds very much like NSYNC thanks to the period-perfect pop songs crafted by Billie Eilish and her brother Finneas O’Connell.
MPA Creator Award Recipient Writer/Director Nikyatu Jusu on her Stunning Debut Feature “Nanny”
Deploying West African folklore to interrogate the myth of the American dream, writer/director Nikyatu Jusu‘s debut feature Nanny is a remarkably assured genre-melding experience. Nanny also gives viewers something that’s sadly still quite rare—it evocatively places us inside the head, heart, and aching soul of Aisha (Anna Diop), an undocumented Senegalese immigrant trying to navigate the mystifying codes of the United States to create a stable place to bring her son,
“Winning Time” Writer Rodney Barnes on Scripting HBO’s Fast-Breaking Lakers Series
It’s pretty much a slam dunk that Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty will appeal to basketball fans. After all, it tells the story of one of the most pivotal moments in NBA history and features some of the game’s most notable figures — Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jerry West, and Pat Riley.
But Rodney Barnes, who shares scripting duties with Max Borenstein and Jim Hecht, and serves as an Executive Producer on the 10-episode HBO series that debuted March 6,
Writer/Director Jared Frieder’s Long Journey to Make “Three Months” Starring Troye Sivan
Imagine what you would do if, at one of the most pivotal moments in your life, you find out you’re at risk for a life-threatening disease? Jared Frieder turned the experience into a movie. That movie, Three Months, is out today on Paramount+.
Three Months, a funny and touching coming-of-age story, tells the story of Caleb (Troye Sivan), an unruly, gay high school senior who is days away from graduation and ready to pursue his dream of becoming a photographer.
“Cyrano” Screenwriter Erica Schmidt on Adapting the Iconic Love Triangle for Film
It is one of the dramatic arts’ most famous and heartbreaking love triangles: Cyrano de Bergerac, in love with Roxanne, who loves Christian and he her, aided in his pursuit by Cyrano’s eloquent written and spoken words. Edmond Rostand’s 1897 play about the brilliant wordsmith and his unrequited passion has been adapted over the past century-plus for many stages and screens.
Director Joe Wright (Atonement) is the latest filmmaker to tackle the tale with MGM’s Cyrano (in theaters on February 25),
“Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America” Directors & Writer/Producer on Relearning American History
The documentary Who We Are: A Chronicle of Racism in America has won numerous awards at fests across the country, including the Audience Award at the 2021 SXSW Film Festival, and boasts a 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is based on criminal defense and civil rights lawyer Jeffery Robinson’s work relearning American history and sharing knowledge that includes events and episodes either erased from in history books or never included in the first place.
“Ray Donovan: The Movie” Writer/Director David Hollander Gets Inside the Anti-Hero’s Head One Last Time
When Ray Donovan debuted on Showtime in 2013, Liev Schreiber introduced the character as a brooding fixer who uses a baseball bat to make problems go away for shallow celebrities and sleazy Hollywood moguls. But over the course of seven seasons, the one thing Donovan could never fix was his own broken family, headed by the charming but awful con artist father Mickey (Jon Voight).
In February 2020, Showtime dumped the series without warning.
Best of 2021: “Spider-Man: No Way Home” Co-Writers Talk Villains, Peter Parker & Changing the Script
This interview is part of our highly subjective, decidedly non-comprehensive “Best of 2021” year-end list. It was originally published on December 20.
Reviewers raved, Twitter went berserk with anticipation and spoilers went (mostly) unleaked as Spider-Man: No Way Home hit theaters this past weekend, making box office history in the process. Third in the trilogy of Tom Holland-headlining Marvel films directed by Jon Watts,
Best of 2021: “Passing” Writer/Director Rebecca Hall On Navigating the Complicated History of Racial Identity
This interview is part of our highly subjective, decidedly non-comprehensive “Best of 2021” year-end list. It was originally published on November 30.
The complexity of bringing a thematically laced film like Passing to the screen isn’t a simple one. For Rebecca Hall, who makes her directorial debut, it was also a personal journey, “an extended catharsis” that allowed her “to get to the bottom of a lot of mysteries” in her family.
Best of 2021: Aaron Sorkin on Having a Ball Making “Being the Ricardos”
This interview is part of our highly subjective, decidedly non-comprehensive “Best of 2021” year-end list. It was originally published on December 10.
You might think the opportunity to write a film about the legendary Lucille Ball would have been irresistible for Aaron Sorkin, but he wasn’t immediately convinced. “It took me about 18 months to say yes, to commit to it,” Sorkin says of the project that would eventually become Being the Ricardos,
“A Journal for Jordan” Screenwriter on Adapting This Moving True Story for Denzel Washington
Virgil Williams knows a thing or two about crafting a screenplay based on a previously written work. After all, his script for Netflix’s Mudbound, co-written with director Dee Rees and adapted from the novel by Hillary Jordan, earned him nominations for an Oscar and both Critics Choice and Writers Guild of America awards, among many others.
Now, Williams has tackled a best-selling memoir, and a uniquely moving one at that.
“The Matrix Resurrections” Co-Writer David Mitchell On Conjuring a Meta Mind-Blower With Lana Wachowski
The Matrix changed everything in 1999 when it set the bar in Hollywood for mind-twisting science fiction expressed through next-level visual effects. Written and directed by the Wachowski siblings, The Matrix and its two sequels introduced “Bullet Time” and the “Red Pill/Blue Pill” to the popular imagination, merging art and commerce to the tune of $1.6 billion in domestic box office. Now, The Matrix Resurrections (in theaters and streaming on HBO Max now) updates the franchise with Keanu Reeves returning as the heroic Neo.
“Spider-Man: No Way Home” Co-Writers Talk Villains, Peter Parker & Changing the Script
Reviewers raved, Twitter went berserk with anticipation and spoilers went (mostly) unleaked as Spider-Man: No Way Home hit theaters this past weekend, making box office history in the process. Third in the trilogy of Tom Holland-headlining Marvel films directed by Jon Watts, No Way Home picks up where Far From Home left off 18 months earlier, with Peter Parker trying to cope with the consequences of vengeful Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) revealing his secret superhero identity to the world.
“Red Rocket” Writer/Director Sean Baker & His Cast On Their Charmingly Offbeat Comedy
Sean Baker, indie writer/director of award winners Tangerine and The Florida Project, has been very successful in creating narratives that feel authentic. Determined to always film on location, never on a soundstage, and a champion of hiring locals and newcomers in featured roles, he has employed guerrilla filmmaking and made more than one career for his performers. You can never see a Sean Baker movie coming,
Aaron Sorkin on Having a Ball Making “Being the Ricardos”
You might think the opportunity to write a film about the legendary Lucille Ball would have been irresistible for Aaron Sorkin, but he wasn’t immediately convinced. “It took me about 18 months to say yes, to commit to it,” Sorkin says of the project that would eventually become Being the Ricardos, his propulsive new film that takes us through a week of production on the set of I Love Lucy,
“C’mon C’mon” Writer/Director Mike Mills on Creating a Space For Intimacy
When it comes to family, we all have our own story. In C’mon C’mon, from writer/director Mike Mills, we connect with a tale not often told, one that drops us in the living room of a sister and brother who have been living their own adult lives on separate coasts and slowly drifting apart from each other. When her husband has an abrupt mental health issue, she asks her brother to step in to watch their child while she attempts to piece back their marriage.
“Passing” Writer/Director Rebecca Hall On Navigating the Complicated History of Racial Identity
The complexity of bringing a thematically laced film like Passing to the screen isn’t a simple one. For Rebecca Hall, who makes her directorial debut, it was also a personal journey, “an extended catharsis” that allowed her “to get to the bottom of a lot of mysteries” in her family.
The story, which is adapted by Hall from the 1929 novel by Nella Larsen, follows two Black women, Irene (Tessa Thompson) and Clare (Ruth Negga),
