Seraphic Secret

Robert J. Avrech: Emmy Award winning screenwriter. Movie fanatic. Helplessly and hopelessly in love with my wife since age nine.

Screenplays

Books On My Night Table

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Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz is one of the greatest Torah scholars the Jewish world has produced in modern times. His new translation and commentary on the Talmud is already in use all over the world. This slim volume presents profiles of thirteen Talmudic sages that serves to humanize these great men and place them in historical context.

Preston Sturges was one of the greatest writer/directors of Hollywood’s Golden Age. His scripts are beautifully structured and if you want a master class in comedy dialogue, read his screenplay for The Lady Eve (1941) where con woman Barbara Stanwyck observes about Henry Fonda: “I need him like the ax needs the turkey.”

Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer is one of the greatest artists who ever lived. His life is also something of a mystery. Author Daniel Arasse suggests that Vermeer was a revolutionary painter who was attempting to conceptualize a new pictorial space within the classical tradition of art. A fascinating analysis of my favorite artist.

Screenwriting 101: The Two Biggest Mistakes

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I’m frequently asked to read and critique screenplays.

Most scripts by inexperienced writers are pretty terrible. This is to be expected. The craft of screenwriting is demanding and it usually takes several years and quite a few scripts to master the form.

There are two central problems I see over and over again. And it’s worth pointing them out to those who aspire to write scripts that have any hope of being produced.

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David O. Selznick Pitches a Movie in Israel

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Producer David O. Selznick

In 1958, producer David O. Selznick had an idea for a Biblical epic.

He explained to screenwriter Edward Anhalt, “I want to combine Mary the sister of Lazarus, the adulteress Jesus saved from the stoning, the whore who washed His feet, and the Mary Magdalene who was the first to see Him resurrected, into one character and tell the gospel story through her. And I want to tell it as purely a Jewish story.”

Anhalt liked the idea and set to work writing the Mary Magdalene script. When Anhalt finished he handed the screenplay to Selznick and the two men sat down to to discuss it.

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How to Write a Screenplay

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Casablanca Screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch Based onEverybody Comes to Rick's by Murray Burnett, Joan Alison
Casablanca, screenplay by Julius J. Epstein, Philip G. Epstein, Howard Koch
Based on Everybody Comes to Rick’s by Murray Burnett, Joan Alison

I get a fair amount of email from readers asking me about writing.

More specifically, how do I go about writing a movie?

Writing is ninety percent perspiration, ten percent inspiration. In other words do not wait to get struck with inspiration. That’s a load of romantic nonsense. In fact, that’s a sure way not to write. The biggest secret in Hollywood—at least for writers who actually work and make money—is how hard they work. Discipline is the name of the game. Organization is vital. An obsession with the minutae of a story is a requirement. G-d is in the details.

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