There I stood, all five eight of me, poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, soaking wet in my retro bathing suit, holding a dry pair of tickets to the Emmys that night, in front of a gorgeous woman, and I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or why I was. Or, just as importantly, who she was and what she was to me.
Over the course of the next few days I discovered I was a thirty-something Emmy winning writer-actor showrunning a popular sitcom, but I had to learn about that one detail at a time until my memory came back. Then I realized I could be anyone I wanted to be, but I had to decide who that was and what that would mean for my girlfriend, my wife, my kids, my father, my brother, my cast, my agent, my PR maven, my assistant, and a 135 other people who depended on me for their livelihoods or their lives.
I had the opportunity to change my life completely, and I did, eventually doing something real for other people while my gay sitcom character came out as straight and flipped the script on my show and my life.
Paul Chitlik didn’t write and direct his first play until he was eleven, considered somewhat late by many studio and network executives barely out of their teens. But then, he was born in Cleveland.
When he moved to California at the age of thirteen, he built his own skateboard out of a piece of 2X4, an old skate, and a scrap of carpet. Years later, he became ASB president so he could kiss the homecoming queen. It worked… once. The joys of politics.
As a college student, he went to Spain to study at the University of Madrid and trace his Hispanic roots. There, he also published his first work in any language – a Spanish poem.
Bouchercon, the Anthony Boucher Memorial World Mystery Convention, is an annual convention of creators and devotees of mystery and detective fiction. It is named in honour of writer, reviewer, and editor Anthony Boucher, and pronounced the way he pronounced his name, rhyming with "voucher."
There I stood, all five eight of me, poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, soaking wet in my retro bathing suit, holding a dry pair of tickets to the Emmys that night, in front of a gorgeous woman, and I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or why I was. Or, just as importantly, who she was and what she was to me.
Over the course of the next few days I discovered I was a thirty-something Emmy winning writer-actor showrunning a popular sitcom, but I had to learn about that one detail at a time until my memory came back. Then I realized I could be anyone I wanted to be, but I had to decide who that was and what that would mean for my girlfriend, my wife, my kids, my father, my brother, my cast, my agent, my PR maven, my assistant, and a 135 other people who depended on me for their livelihoods or their lives.
I had the opportunity to change my life completely, and I did, eventually doing something real for other people while my gay sitcom character came out as straight and flipped the script on my show and my life.
There I stood, all five eight of me, poolside at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, soaking wet in my retro bathing suit, holding a dry pair of tickets to the Emmys that night, in front of a gorgeous woman, and I didn’t know who I was, where I was, or why I was. Or, just as importantly, who she was and what she was to me.
Over the course of the next few days I discovered I was a thirty-something Emmy winning writer-actor showrunning a popular sitcom, but I had to learn about that one detail at a time until my memory came back. Then I realized I could be anyone I wanted to be, but I had to decide who that was and what that would mean for my girlfriend, my wife, my kids, my father, my brother, my cast, my agent, my PR maven, my assistant, and a 135 other people who depended on me for their livelihoods or their lives.
I had the opportunity to change my life completely, and I did, eventually doing something real for other people while my gay sitcom character came out as straight and flipped the script on my show and my life.
When the police told newspaper columnist Rob Berns that his brother, Danny, had committed suicide, jumping off the Vincent Thomas in the darkest hour of that black night, it just didn’t add up.
Danny was thoroughly middle class, in everything from possessions to life-style. He even wore ties with short sleeved shirts. And wingtips! If anyone should be gone, it was Berns….
But the search for his brother’s killer leads him to a hidden world of sex and sex addiction – and a horrible secret which he’ll have to fight against if he’ll ever solve the crime, bring his brother’s killer to justice – and see himself for who he really is.
The great gene mapping project of the late 20th and early 21st centuries had located every trait on the double helix. Splicing, and then cloning, had made it possible to detemine the inclusion of any desired characteristics or the exclusion of any fault.
Humans could be designed like an automobile, created for specific purposes, and then reproduced exactly and endlessly by cloning. And they had, by the thousands, when trust in ordinary biology had become too risky. And to ensure that biology would mind its own business, genes for sexual preference had been controlled.
No mating would be allowed…
Legendary screenwriting instructor and award-winning writer Paul Chitlik presents an easy-to-read, step-by-step process to take your script from first draft to submission draft. He reveals the hidden structure of screenplays, sequences, and scenes, as he guides you through the process of examining your draft, restructuring it, and populating it with believable, complex, and compelling characters. Along the way he outlines how to make your action leap off the page and your dialogue crackle.
While the first edition was widely used in film school rewriting classes, it was also recommended as an introduction to screenwriting craft by a number of professors and professionals. Paul Chitlik has included, for the second edition, more examples, exercises, and applications for television, the web, and other media, using a wide range of citations in film, television, and the Internet to underline his approach.
This is not a beginner’s book on screenplay writing, though a beginner could read it and learn. This is a writer’s consigliere. It’s a book of advice and reflection that will kick ass against just about any screenwriting problem. It’s a series of essays on film and television writing, a deep background on very specific craft issues ranging from punctuation to meaning in your screenplay. Chapters range from “The Antagonist as a Good Guy” to how to establish an emotional core in your script, to one on Katy Perry’s use of story in her concerts (Yes, that Katy Perry) to “The Power of Story.” There’s even one called “What Film School Should I Go to?” You’ll want to carry it with you to the Starbucks and consult it like you would your best friend when you run into trouble. It will get you to think about your writing in new ways and to give you tools to express those thoughts. It’s a writer’s secret weapon, and now you can have it, too.
