Boudicca is here!
Britain will vanish under a sea of blood. Cities will burn. The moon will be shattered by the screams of the dying. Yes, my first graphic novel is here. Boudicca,…
London Screenwriters Festival, sequences & me
The London Screenwriters Festival may well be the biggest and best conference for screenwriters on Earth right now. There used to be a plethora of L.A.-based writerfests - I've been…
The Colorado Movie Shootings and The American Dream
I wanted to put down a few thoughts on this week's shooting spree in Colorado at the screening of The Dark Knight Rises. I'll try to put them down freely,…
X-Women and Hollow Men
In 2001, I wrote the below piece, "X-Women and Hollow Men", for The Hollywood Reporter, about the explosion of female action heroes at the turn of the 21st century. I…
The Valley Of Gwangi (1969), The Dinosaur Is The Father Of The Man
(article originally written for Mark Deniz’s “Monster Appreciation Month”) I first saw The Valley Of Gwangi in 1973 or 1974, well after its 1969 release. I was about 5 or…
Dialogue Is Just Another Sound Effect
When a civilian meets a screenwriter, usually the second thing they say is, "Oh, so you write all the dialogue then?" (first thing is "Have you written anything I would've seen?")…
I Ask Inga von Staden: What IS Transmedia?
The term “transmedia” seems to have originated in 1991 with Marsha Kinder, the critical studies dynamo of USC’s cinema school. When I was at USC, cinema students were divided into…
A Tale Of Two Star Warses, or Why The Phantom Menace Gives Us A Bad Feeling
(this article originally appeared at screenwriting website Twelvepoint.com, July 2010) I stepped out of Star Wars: Episode 1 - The Phantom Menace (1999) onto the sidewalk in front of Mann's…
Full Spectrum Story Dominance
I'm on my way now to the third and final day of the Transmedia Next Training For Media Professionals, where the Pickfords, Chaplins, Fairbankses and Griffithses of the 21st century…
Martin (1977)
(article originally appeared on Mark Deniz's "Vampire Appreciation Month" site as "George Romero’s Martin: Portrait Of An Honest Vampire”) My first exposure to George A. Romero's Martin (1977) came via…