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A Lesson In Raising The Stakes: Breaking Bad Season 2 Opener
Breaking Bad Commentary At the risk of flooding my site with Breaking Bad content, I want to comment on the first episode of the second season. Writers are sometimes told to make the story the worst day of their character’s life. We are told to raise the stakes, up the conflict, etc. But a lot…
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More Breaking Bad Love
Breaking Bad Commentary After watching Episodes 4-6 of Season 1 of Breaking Bad I continue to be blown away by the level of quality of the show. The Lead is Not A Simple Hero To me the most interesting part of it is the continuing dimensions Vince Gilligan and Co. are able to find of…
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Deconstructing Genre: Screenwriting
*In response to the popularity of my Fireproof article, here is another screenwriting article. Deconstructing Genre Is something tough to do. It seems like it should be easy right? But it’s not that easy, movies that just point out genre cliches (i.e. something like The Comebacks) tend to be pretty bad. Because just pointing out…
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Considering Character as Theme-Watchmen
Character as Theme in Watchmen In Alan Moore’s Watchmen some of the most prominent characters exist largely as commentaries on a theme. It’s an effective way to intermingle multiple themes in a story and establish character and theme simultaneously. Dr Manhattan, Power Jon/Dr Manhattan symbolizes the theme of power, and more specifically ultimate power. They…
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Writing Character-Jack Nicholson Scene As Frank Costello
Building Character Doesn’t Have to Take All Day In the first 4 minutes of “The Departed”, you find out all you need to know about Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson, “The Bucket List”) to know him, and what kind of person he is. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4nUFxsZqpA] His first line, intoned in voiceover is, “I don’t want to be…