Category Archives: Screenwriting

By Robert J. Avrech | May 29, 2014

The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters — They Died With Their Boots On

Tweet One of the most beautiful and touching films where marriage and family is the central subtext is They Died with Their Boots On (1941), a fanciful retelling of the George Armstrong Custer legend starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland. The screenplay is by Æneas MacKenzie,Wally Kline, and Lenore J. Coffee.

Also posted in Errol Flynn, Hollywood, Olivia De Havilland, They Died With Their Boots On, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Tagged George Armstrong Custer, Lenore Coffee, Libby Custer, They Died With Their Boots On, Wally Kline, Æneas MacKenzie | 18 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | February 6, 2014

Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s: To Kill a Mockingbird

Tweet We continue our survey of the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s. For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1950s, click here. For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1940s, click here. For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1930s click here. For the Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1920s click here. 6. To […]

Also posted in Great Movies, Greatest Movies of the 1960s, Hollywood, To Kill a Mockingbird, Twenty Greatest Movies of the 1960s | Tagged Atticus Finch, Boo Radley, Brock Peters, Gregory Peck, Mary Badham, Robert Duvall, Truman Capote | 27 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | November 19, 2013

Confessions of a Shomer Shabbos Hollywood Screenwriter

Tweet Act I: Exposition—In Which the Main Characters and Primary Drama Are Introduced It’s Shabbat morning. I’m in synagogue, praying, where an undertone of chatter is definitely not the norm. For me, a frum-from-birth screenwriter, this synagogue, where my wife and I have been members since we moved to Los Angeles from Brooklyn, is my […]

Also posted in Devil's Arithmetic, Hollywood, Judaism | Tagged A Stranger Among Us, Brittany Murphy, Eric Thal, Kirsten Dunst, Melanie Griffith, Social Propaganda | 37 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | September 17, 2013

Tough Dames, Tough Dialogue

Tweet Less is more. That’s the rule I follow when writing dialogue for one of my films. In truth, when writing a screenplay, I make every effort to draft scenes with no dialogue. Zip. Zero. Nada. Film is, or should be, primarily a visual medium where the story is told using images. But of course, […]

Also posted in Great Dialogue, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars | Tagged Barbara Stanwyck, Cleo Moore, Condemned Women, Henry Fonda, Joan Bennett, Lee Patrick, One Girl's Confession, Sally Eilers, The Lady Eve, The Reckless Moment, Women in Prison Movies | 17 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | September 12, 2013

Tough Guys, Tough Dialogue

Tweet The trick in writing dialogue for movies is to write as little as possible. Less is more. But when you do use dialogue, every word counts; every word a precious jewel that, ideally, delivers the proper balance of tone, characterization, and story. Here are a few examples of brilliant dialogue where we learn everything […]

Also posted in Great Dialogue, Hollywood, Hollywood Stars | Tagged Alan Ladd, Appointment With Danger, Dead Reckoning, Humphrey Bogart, Lizabeth Scott, Robert Taylor, Westward the Women | 18 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | January 30, 2013

Israel Faces Chemical Islam — The Screenplay

Tweet Wide Angle Shots: American liberal-progressives move to disarm law-abiding American citizens. Barack Obama’s vision of a degraded American military gains traction among the elites. America supports the Muslim Brotherhood, a proudly Jew-hating, America-hating, genocidal-yearning gang of Islamic theocrat fascists. Intertitle: Somebody has to take the lead in the fight against the rising tide of […]

Also posted in Islamic Terror, Israel, Israel Defense Forces, Muslim Brotherhood, Obama Watch, Second Amendment | Tagged Benjamin Netanyahu, Chemical Weapons | 6 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | November 6, 2012

How to Write a Screenplay — How to Win an Election

Tweet Seraphic Secret voted early. A few years ago, at our local polling station, an election volunteer looked at yours truly, checked my name on the registration ledger and said: “You’re a Republican? But you look like such a nice man!” That was the last time I voted at a polling station. I decline to […]

Also posted in 2012 Election, Mitt Romney, Obama Watch | Tagged Screenwriting Technique, Voting | 11 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | November 5, 2012

Days of Heaven

Tweet There was a moment on my walk this morning, at about 5:30 a.m., when I just stopped dead in my tracks and watched the horizon change from blue-black to blushing violet. In the movie industry, this stretch of time is known as magic hour. Cinematographers who shoot in these few precious moments, if they […]

Also posted in 2012 Election, Mitt Romney, Movies, Obama Watch | Tagged Big Government, Days of Heaven, Haskell Wexler, Magic Hour, Nestor Almendros, Terence Malick | 18 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | September 28, 2012

Friday Flickers: My Life As A Mankiewicz

Tweet The son of famed writer-director Joseph L. Mankiewics, (All Abut Eve, A Letter to Three Wives, Guys and Dolls, Cleopatra) and the nephew of Citizen Kane screenwriter Herman Mankiewics, Tom Mankiewics (1942-2010) was Hollywood royalty. Humphrey Bogart gave Tom his first drink. He dined with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, and spent an evening […]

Also posted in Hollywood, Tom Mankiewicz | Tagged All About Eve, Hollywood Memoir, Marilyn Monroe | 12 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | July 26, 2012

Preston Sturges’ Rules for Box Office Appeal

Tweet The other day a young screenwriter asked yours truly how I go about constructing a script. “I start at the end. I need to know my ending and resolution—two distinct narrative end-points—before I start writing the script.” The young screenwriter asked if my story ideas start with character or plot. “Sometimes character, sometimes plot. […]

Also posted in Preston Sturges | Tagged Eleven Rules for Box Office Appeal, Lajos Egri, Movie Narrative, The Art of Dramatic Writing | 11 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | July 6, 2012

Union Depot: Yearning For Zion In A Hollywood Classic

Tweet The camera swoops majestically through an enormous train station picking out individuals in the crush of humanity: soldiers, sailors, hookers, pickpockets, cops, Pullman porters, immigrants in peasant garb. This exhilarating opening is a tour de force of vignettes with characters delivering rapid fire dialogue perfectly timed to the swirling, unfettered movement of the G-d […]

Also posted in Hollywood, Israel, Jean Harlow, Joan Blondell, Kubec Glasmon, Zionism | Tagged Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Hollywood History, Hollywood Screenwriters, John Bright, Pale of Settlement, Union Depot, Warner Brothers | 4 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | June 14, 2012

Telling the Truth in Hollywood

Tweet A less than glamorous job, most successful screenwriters are solitary individuals who work quietly and diligently at their craft. But screenwriter Peter Viertel (1920 – 2007) lived the jet-set life that is the glittering exception. Born in Dresden to an artistic and assimilated Jewish family, mother Salka was a screenwriter who was Greta Garbo’s […]

Also posted in Hollywood, Peter Viertel, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Tagged Bettina, Billy Wilder, Charles Lederer, Darryl F. Zanuck, Ernest Hemingway, John Huston, Nancy “Slim” Hawks, Peter Viertel | 24 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 23, 2012

The Religious Wisdom of Preston Sturges

Tweet The Great McGinty (1940) charts the rise and fall of a Depression era hobo to mayor of a city, then Governor, and finally exile in a banana republic. Though a satire, Preston Sturges, certainly the greatest writer-director in Hollywood history, was a keen observer of American political life. McGinty, played by Brian Donlevy, finds […]

Also posted in Hollywood, Movies, Preston Sturges, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Tagged The Great McGinty | 12 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 10, 2012

The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters

Tweet From where do we draw wisdom? First and foremost, Seraphic Secret relies on Torah, on the lessons of 3,000 years of Jewish history and the common sense advice of my wife Karen. And then there are the movies, a moral landscape of immeasurable power where searing images and razor-sharp dialogue deliver lessons in human […]

Also posted in Hollywood, The Wit and Wisdom of Hollywood | Tagged Beast of the City, Greta Garbo, Jane Greer, Jean Harlow, Jean Peters, John Lee Mahin, Lag BaOmer, Out of the Past, Pickup on South Street, Richard Widmark, Robert Mitchum, Sam Fuller, The Temptress, Wallace Ford | 20 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | February 23, 2012

The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters

Tweet From where do we draw wisdom? First and foremost, Seraphic Secret relies on Torah, on the lessons of 3,000 years of Jewish history and on the common sense advice of my wife Karen. And then there are the movies, a moral landscape of immeasurable power where searing images and razor-sharp dialogue deliver lessons in human character […]

Also posted in Hollywood, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Tagged Andrew Solt, Anthony Havelock-Allan, Ben Hecht, Celia Johnson, David Lean, Ginger Rogers, Gloria Grahame, Humphrey Bogart, Noel Coward, Nunnally Johnson, Ronald Neame, Rupert Hughes, Souls For Sale | 8 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | January 26, 2012

The Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters

Tweet From where do we draw wisdom? First and foremost, Seraphic Secret relies on the Torah—written and oral—on the lessons of 3,000 years of Jewish history, and on the common sense advice of my wife Karen. And then there are the movies, a moral landscape of immeasurable power where searing images and razor-sharp dialogue deliver […]

Also posted in Hollywood, Wisdom of Hollywood Screenwriters | Tagged Ace in the Hole, Beast of the City, Ben Hecht, Billy Wilder, China Seas, Clark Gable, Dalton Trumbo, Gone With the Wind, Gun Crazy, James Kevin McGuiness, Jan Sterling, Jean Harlow, Jo Swerling, John Lee Mahin, John Van Druten, Jules Furthman, Kirk Douglas, Lesser Samuels, MacKinlay Kantor, Oliver H.P. Garrett, Sidney Howard, Victor Desny, Vivien Leigh, W.R. Burnett, Walter Newman | 7 Responses

By Robert J. Avrech | May 11, 2010

Billy Wilder: The Ten Commandments of Screenwriting

Tweet Billy Wilder (1906-2002) was one of Hollywood’s greatest writer directors. From the naughty elegance of The Major and the Minor, 1942, in which the grown-up Ginger Rogers disguises herself as a teenager, to the lacerating portrait of Hollywood in Sunset Boulevard, 1950, Wilder’s work stands at the pinnacle of movie craftsmanship. In the invaluable […]

Also posted in Billy Wilder | 21 Responses

How I Married Karen

The new book
by Robert J. Avrech

Available in All Major Book Stores

Adobe Digital Edition's version is available through the Lulu store!
About Me
Robert J. Avrech
Los Angeles, California
I'm an Emmy Award winning screenwriter. I'm also an observant Jew, a religious Zionist, a conservative Republican, and a member of the NRA. I've been writing and producing in Hollywood for over twenty-five years. But the focus of my life is my family: my radiant wife, Karen—with whom I have been in love with since I was nine years-old—and my two daughters, who, thankfully, look like Karen. Not too long ago, we had three children. But our son, Ariel, died at the age of twenty-two from cancer. We miss him terribly. We think about him practically every minute of every day. People tell us that time heals, but Karen and I know this is not true. Time grinds away doing its terrible work. Ariel is gone. Yet absence becomes presence.

Ariel Chaim Avrech, ZT'L, May His Righteous Memory be a Blessing.
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Annual Ariel Avrech
Memorial Lectures
Young Israel of Century City

Eleventh: June 8, 2014
Michael Medved: "Shifting Alliances: Why Liberals No Longer Reliably Support Israel — And Conservatives Do." Blog Post | Audio (mp3 97MB)

Tenth: June 9, 2013
David Horowitz: "The War Against Judaism on the University Campus." Blog Post | Audio (mp3 16MB)

Ninth: June 3, 2012
Joel B. Pollak: "The Mainstream Media's Betrayal of Israel." Blog Post | Audio (mp3 15MB)

Eighth: June 5, 2011
Yossi Klein Halevi: "What is Expected of a Survivor People: Lessons My Father Taught Me." Blog Post | Audio (mp3 18MB)

Seventh: June 13, 2010
Dennis Prager: "Happiness is a Mitzvah, Not an Emotion." Blog Post | Audio (mp3 80MB)

Sixth: June 21, 2009
Rabbi Steven Pruzansky: "Conformity in Jewish Life: Vice, Virtue or Affectation?" Blog Post | Audio (mp3 64MB)

Fifth: June 15, 2008
Rabbi Dr. Gil S. Perl: "What Was the Rosh Yeshiva Reading: Intellectual Openness in 19th Century Lithuania." Blog Post | Audio (mp3 70MB)
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