Sublime

The movie producer and all-around mensch Stuart Cornfeld once told me that in a good screenplay, every structural unit needs to do two things: (1) be entertaining in its own right and (2) advance the story in a non-trivial way.

By the time we’re done, you’ll have 40 of these — count ’em, 40 — and no more.

three-act form allows us to access the root structure of storytelling,

the most memorable, fascinating characters tend to have not only a conscious but an unconscious desire.

It’s a truth on which all film grammar is based.

create a Braintrust. Every creative person, no matter their field, can draft into service those around them who exhibit the right mixture of intelligence, insight, and grace. “You can and should make your own solution group,” Andrew Stanton says, adding that on each of his own films, he has made a point of doing this on a smaller scale, separate fr

Dickian,

Unless they have a plausible story engine, a regular throughput of new and different characters, or stay stubbornly in two dimensions (thus removing themselves from the ravages of time), they will almost always die, spiritually if not physically, after an average of around three seasons. There’s a striking pattern to it: year one is initial enthusi

IN THE VERY early days of Pixar, John, Andrew, Pete, Lee, and Joe made a promise to one another. No matter what happened, they would always tell each other the truth. They did this because they recognized how important and rare candid feedback is and how, without it, our films would suffer. Then and now, the term we use to describe this kind of con