All posts by Lauri Donahue
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“Being In Charge Of Your Own Story”: Tony Gilroy on the Joys and Embarrassments of Being a Writer-Director
Tony Gilroy is one of the busiest and most successful screenwriters and directors working today. His first produced screenplay was The Cutting Edge—a hockey rom-com...
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Hearing What’s In Your Head: Kenneth Lonergan On His Process of Writing As a Director
Kenneth Lonergan is a playwright, screenwriter, and director best-known for his searing Oscar-winning original screenplay for Manchester by the Sea. He was also nominated for...
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Advice From Austin: The 27 Best Things Screenwriters Said at the Austin Film Festival Writers Conference
To hear smart, funny, and interesting things about screenwriting—from people who know what they’re talking about—the place to be is the annual Austin Film Festival...
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Finding the Human: Dan Gilroy Talks Script Formatting and Writing Roman J. Israel, Esq. on Spec for Denzel Washington
Dan Gilroy’s newest movie, Roman J. Israel, Esq. stars Denzel Washington as a legal savant—a civil rights attorney who’s been toiling in the back office...
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A Screenwriter’s Guide to Getting (and Keeping) an Agent: An Interview with David Boxerbaum of Paradigm
Many new screenwriters think about getting an agent as soon as—or even before—they’ve finished their first scripts. For most people, this makes about as much...
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Bryan Cranston Goes Feral: Writer-Director Robin Swicord on Her Strange New Feature, Wakefield
What if you could disappear from your own life, but still, somehow, watch it go on without you? That’s the premise of the new film,...
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Secrets of Successful Screenwriting Teams: How to Avoid Bloodshed When Writing a Script With a Partner
Throughout history, most writers have worked alone, whether scratching away with quills in garrets or tapping on laptops at Starbucks. But many screenwriters have discovered...
Summer 2019
Spring 2019
Winter 2019
Guide 2019
Summer 2018
Year in MovieMaker
Inside the Issue: Acting
Things I’ve Learned as a Moviemaker: Richard Dreyfuss
American Graffiti, Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stand By Me, Mr. Holland’s Opus… even while reading like a what’s what of cinema, those titles are just a handful...
1Inside the Issue: Directing
Cold Piece of Work: Richard Linklater Braves Greenland Hurricanes for Where’d You Go, Bernadette
Richard Linklater’s Where’d You Go, Bernadette opens with the answer to its titular question. In an impressively executed overhead shot, the camera gazes down onto placid Antarctic waters as...
Inside the Issue: How To
How They Did It: The Farewell Writer-Director Lulu Wang Shares Secrets to Turning Your Life Story into a Memoir Movie
The week before production started on The Farewell—my sophomore feature about a young woman (Billi, played by Awkwafina) and her family’s attempts to keep their grandmother’s cancer diagnosis hidden...