✍🏿 Writer’s Quotes to Live By
“Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”
— Virginia Woolf
✍🏾Taika Meets Flash Gordon
New Zealand’s own Taika Waititi (Thor Ragnarok) is a very busy man in Hollywood, attaching himself to yet again another project for Fox. This time around, by attaching to write/direct Flash Gordon, as an animated feature film.
We will see how this plays out as Taika is another director in a long list of other’s who have signed on only to sign off as Flash Gordon while attempting to tell such an expansive and visionary story.
The comic strip, (which was a space opera launched in the 1930’s) follows hero Flash Gordon as he navigates trouble in the futuristic world of tomorrow.
✍🏼Good Morning, Clooney Boy
Clooney and associates, are doubling down on streamers just a few weeks after the release of his Hulu original series “Catch-22”. Clooney and producing partner Grant Heslov have announced Clooney will write, direct and star in the feature film Good Morning, Midnight for Netflix.
The film will be produced under the Smokehouse Pictures banner with Anonymous Content and Syndicate Entertainment, who also sourced the material.
The post-apocalyptic plot follows the parallel stories of Augustine (Clooney), a lonely scientist in the Arctic, as he races to make contact with the crew of the Aether Spacecraft as they attempt to return to Earth.
✍️John Woo and The Joy of Shooting Without a Script
The Master of the flying dramatic dove, John Woo’s classic action film The Killer (starring an 80’s cool Chow-Yun Fat) went on to become one of the most influential shoot em’ ups of all time. With it’s 30th anniversary around the corner, John Woo details how he shot the masterpiece WITHOUT a script.
“With no script. Just an outline”, Woo goes into detail on how the entire film was quote “in my head.”
Woo explained that he kept his general outline for the film in mind, giving his actors “a very simple idea of a story.”
From there, he simply envisioned the action and with most of the action being choreographed by Woo himself, since he’s a pretty good dancer. He likened action sequences to choreographing dances with actors, and guns being props.
Woo spoke about showing up to set with only a general idea of what he needed to shoot. He described asking for just “30 stunt guys and 150 extras.”
Honestly Woo was able to accomplish this feat from his strong background in storytelling and relying on the strength of his outline.
If you’ve never seen The Killer, please give it a watch. The synopsis is Chow Yun-fat is an assassin who seeks an exit out of the business after he accidentally blinds a singer, played by Sally Yeh. Danny Lee plays a cop who intercedes in unpredictable ways.
UPDATE: Woo plans a remake of “The Killer” starring Lupita Nyong’o, surely this version will have a screenplay….or maybe not.
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