December 11 – Ferrari

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on December 11th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay for Michael Mann’s FERRARI.

LOGLINE: With his auto empire in crisis and his marriage in shambles, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari enters the 1957 Mille Miglia, a treacherous thousand-mile race across Italy.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: Ferrari is based on the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by BROCK YATES, executive editor of Car and Driver magazine. Yates, who died in 2016, co-conceived and drove in the non-stop Cannonball Run cross-country race and co-wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name as well as the screenplay for Smokey and the Bandit II. The book was adapted by British screenwriter TROY KENNEDY MARTIN, who began writing for the BBC in 1958, creating the six-part 1961 anthology miniseries Storyboard. His first and best-known feature film screenplay was the original 1969 version of The Italian Job starring Michael Caine. Martin died in 2009 while Ferrari was still in development. Director MICHAEL MANN, who first became interested in making this film in 2000, did an uncredited rewrite. (We will be reading and discussing his 2015 draft.) Mann’s other credits as writer and director include Thief (1981) starring James Caan, Heat (1995) starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, and Miami Vice (2006), based on the 1980s TV series he produced.

(registration deadline: Friday, December 8)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
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Ferrari stars two-time Academy Award nominee Adam Driver (Star Wars sequel trilogy) as Enzo Ferrari, with Pelope Cruz (Vanilla Sky) as his wife, Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars) as his mistress, and Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy). The biopic, which received a seven-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, opens wide on Christmas Day.

Rated R. 131 pages. 130 minutes. Drama. Biopic. Sports.

JAMES ‘DOC’ MASON will provide in-depth script analysis and lead our discussion. Doc is a screenwriter, producer, consultant, and father of four. His book, Mastering the Logline: How to Excite Hollywood With a Single Sentence, with a foreword by WME story editor Christopher Lockhart, is available on Amazon. Doc is currently in pre-production on a drama feature Journey to Now, and is co-writer of the 2021 thriller feature Caged starring Edi Gathegi and Melora Hardin.

October 9 – Killers of the Flower Moon

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on October 9th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.

LOGLINE: The newly-formed FBI investigates a series of murders after oil is discovered on the Osage tribal lands in 1920s Oklahoma.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: The screenplay was adapted by ERIC ROTH from the non-fiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by DAVID GRANN. Other films that have been adapted from Grann’s books and articles include The Lost City of Z starring Robert Pattinson, Dark Crimes starring Jim Carrey, The Old Man & the Gun starring Robert Redford, and Trial by Fire starring Laura Dern. Screenwriter Eric Roth has six Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, including Dune and A Star Is Born. He won the Oscar in 1995 for his adaptation of Forrest Gump, which also won Best Picture. Roth spent four or five years writing the Killers of the Flower Moon screenplay. When Leonardo DiCaprio signed on to play the villain’s nephew instead of the FBI hero, the screenplay was contentiously overhauled and the film was put into turnaround. The final screenplay is credited to Roth and the film’s director, MARTIN SCORSESE (Goodfellas). We will be reading and discussing Roth’s original draft.

(registration deadline: Friday, October 6)

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Killers of the Flower Moon stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic), Robert De Niro (Joker), Lily Gladstone (Certain Women), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad), Tantoo Cardinal (Legends of the Fall), John Lithgow (3rd Rock from the Sun), Brendan Fraser (The Whale). The film premiered at Cannes, where it received a nine-minute standing ovation. Apple TV+ and Paramount Pictures are currently planning a worldwide theatrical release on October 20, followed by a streaming release on Apple TV+ at a later date.

Rated R. 153 pages. 206 minutes. Historical Crime Drama. Western.

WENDELL WELLMAN will provide in-depth script analysis and lead our discussion. Screenwriter, actor, playwright, teacher, and author of A Writer’s Roadmap, Wendell has taught screenwriting at UCLA and UWV and has been a frequent guest moderator at StoryBoardDG.com’s Screenplay Development Group. As an actor, Wendell studied under Lee Strasberg and Peggy Feury at the Strasberg Institute and has appeared in episodic television, theater, and motion pictures, including prominent roles in the films The Klansman starring Lee Marvin and Richard Burton, Sudden Impact, Sommersby, and Street of Dreams. As a writer, he teamed up with Alex Lasker to adapt the novel Firefox for director Clint Eastwood, which Quentin Tarantino praised on his podcast for its “fantastic use of exposition.” Wendell also did additional work for Eastwood on the screenplay for Sudden Impact and wrote a final Dirty Harry project. Wendell also worked with the West End Theatre Group as co-founder and artistic director while continuing to alternate between acting and writing assignments. He is currently writing and producing original feature scripts.

April 10 – AIR

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on April 10th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay AIR.

LOGLINE: A shoe salesman hustles to sign rookie basketball player Michael Jordan to a deal that ultimately results in the most popular line of sneakers in history.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Air is the first produced screenwriting credit for ALEX CONVERY. Growing up in suburban Illinois, Convery first became interested in screenwriting as a teenager when his father gave him a collected volume of Coen Brothers screenplays for Christmas. After graduating from USC, Convery wrote spec biopic scripts on Stephen King and Stan Lee. The latter reached the second round in the Austin Film Festival screenplay competition, where he networked with panelists who gave him advice that helped him pick more marketable material to write about. Inspired by Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton, Convery wrote Bag Man, about a college football “fixer,” which got him a manager and landed on the 2018 Black List. He hit the Black List two more times with Excelsior! (his Stan Lee biopic) in 2020, and finally with Air in 2021. Director Ben Affleck did some revisions to the script with co-stars Matt Damon and Chris Tucker, and input from his wife, Jennifer Lopez, but says they didn’t ask for writing credit. Affleck and Damon shared an Academy Award for their first screenplay together, 1997’s Good Will Hunting.

(registration deadline: Friday, April 7)

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Air premiered at South by Southwest in March and will open in theaters on April 5. The film was produced and directed by Ben Affleck (Argo), who stars as Nike founder Phil Knight alongside Matt Damon (The Martian), Jason Bateman (Ozark), Marlon Wayans (Scary Movie), Chris Messina (The Mindy Project), Chris Tucker (Rush Hour), and Viola Davis (How to Get Away with Murder). If you plan to see the movie, it is highly recommended that you read the screenplay first so that your initial impression is from the writing on the page.

Rated R. 103 pages. 112 minutes. Drama. Sports. Biopic.

Donna Michelle Anderson, will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. “DMA,” as she is professionally known, is a story analyst, development executive, and the author of Write It, Pitch It, Sell Your Screenplay: A Hollywood Buyer’s Insider Guide to Getting Your Script Past the Gatekeepers, an update of her 1-3-5 Story Structure Made Simple System: The Nine Essential Elements of a Sellable Screenplay, which was the first story structure system integrated into Final Draft. She has helmed top-rated programming for CBS, Bravo, BET, A&E, TLC and more. Visit her at PlanetDMA.com.

April 11 – BELFAST

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on April 11th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the Academy Award winning screenplay BELFAST.

LOGLINE: A young boy and his working-class Belfast family experience the tumultuous late 1960s.

THE WRITER: Sir KENNETH BRANAGH was almost nine years old in August of 1969 when the thirty-year conflict known as the Troubles began in his Belfast neighborhood in Northern Ireland. Trained at the Royal Academy of Art in London, where he has served as its president since 2015, Branagh received his first two of eight Academy Award nominations for directing and starring in Henry V in 1989. The actor-writer-director continued making acclaimed films of Shakespeare’s plays with his 1996 screenplay of Hamlet bringing him another Oscar nomination. Some of his other films include Disney’s 2015 live-action Cinderella remake starring Lily James, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein starring Robert De Niro, Murder on the Orient Express and its sequel, Death on the Nile, currently in theaters, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe blockbuster Thor. As an actor, he has appeared in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk and Tenet, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and My Weekend with Marilyn as Laurence Olivier, for which he was nominated for another Oscar. Based on his own childhood, his most personal film, Belfast, was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning Branagh his first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

(registration deadline: Friday, April 8)

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Filmed in black and white during the COVID pandemic, Belfast stars ten-year-old Jude Hill in his film debut, for which he was nominated for fifteen industry, critics, and festival awards, winning six. The coming-of-age film also features Caitríona Balfe (Now You See Me, Ford v Ferrari), Jamie Dornan (Christian Grey in the Fifty Shades trilogy), Dame Judi Dench (Shakespeare in Love, Skyfall), and Ciarán Hinds (There Will Be Blood, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows Part 2, Game of Thrones).

The film received more than 200 nominations and won more than 40 awards, including the BAFTA for Outstanding British Film of the Year, a Golden Globe for Best Screenplay, and Best Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. Belfast grossed over $46 million worldwide at the box office and is currently available to rent or purchase on DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming.

If you have not yet seen the movie, it is highly recommended that you first read the screenplay so your initial impression is from the writing. After reading the screenplay, please make an effort to watch the movie as our meeting will include discussion of the writing as well as what is seen and heard while watching the movie.

Rated PG-13. 94 pages. 98 minutes. Drama. Coming-of-Age.

DIANA LESMEZ will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. A produced feature-film screenwriter and an award-winning filmmaker, Diana is a Jane-of-all-trades with vast industry experience in production, development, acquisitions, distribution, physical production, film finance, business and legal affairs, as well as new media. She wrote the adapted screenplay for the feature film The Journey Ahead starring Michael Madsen, and produced the feature film Culture Class in AmeriCCA directed by Emilio Estevez. Previously, she served as President of Production at a mini-studio, Arenas Entertainment in partnership with Universal Pictures, and was the Head of Development for a production entity, Patriot Pictures, and the industry liaison for Banque Paribas, a film financing institution, and has taught at the New York Film Academy. Via her banner company, Bumptious Media Consulting, Diana offers screenwriting and producing one-on-one coaching, workshops, and master classes, with a specialty in pitching and mastering communication skills. Follow her on Twitter (@DianaLesmez).

February 14 – CODA & The Tender Bar

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on February 14th for a coming-of-age DOUBLE FEATURE in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplays CODA and THE TENDER BAR.

This month we’ll read, discuss, analyze, compare, and contrast not one, but two screenplays, both in the coming-of-age genre and both generating awards-season buzz.

Written and directed by SIAN HEDER, CODA follows a hearing teenage girl who is a Child Of Deaf Adults torn between following her dream of attending Berklee College of Music and her fear of abandoning her deaf family. Heder won a Peabody award in 2010 for her work on the TV series Men of a Certain Age and wrote for the first three seasons of Orange Is the New Black. She made her feature debut as writer/director with Netflix’s Tallulah starring Ellen Page and Allison Janney. An English-language remake of the 2014 César-nominated French film La Famille Bélier, CODA stars Emilia Jones (Locke & Key), Academy Award winner Marlee Matlin (Children of a Lesser God, Switched at Birth), and Eugenio Derbez (Instructions Not Included, How to Be a Latin Lover).

Based on the memoir of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist J.R. Moehringer (Resurrecting the Champ), The Tender Bar tells the story of a nine-year-old Long Island boy from a dysfunctional family who bonds with his uncle, a bar owner who encourages him to become a writer. The screenplay was written by former journalist/novelist WILLIAM MONAHAN, whose screenwriting credits include Ridley Scott’s Kingdom of Heaven, Body of Lies, and The Gambler (2014). In 2007, Monahan won an Academy Award for his screenplay adaptation of Infernal Affairs, Martin Scorsese’s The Departed. The Tender Bar is directed by George Clooney (The Ides of March, Suburbicon) and stars Ben Affleck (Justice League, The Accountant), Tye Sheridan (Ready Player One, The Card Counter), Lily Rabe (American Horror Story), and Christopher Lloyd (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Back to the Future).

(registration deadline: Friday, February 11)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!
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WENDELL WELLMAN will provide in-depth script analysis and lead our discussion. Screenwriter, actor, playwright, teacher, and author of A Writer’s Roadmap, Wendell has taught screenwriting at UCLA and UWV and has been a frequent guest moderator at StoryBoardDG.com’s Screenplay Development Group. As an actor, Wendell studied under Lee Strasberg and Peggy Feury at the Strasberg Institute and has appeared in episodic television, theater, and motion pictures, including prominent roles in the films The Klansman starring Lee Marvin and Richard Burton, Sudden Impact, Sommersby, and Street of Dreams. As a writer, he teamed up with Alex Lasker to adapt the novel Firefox for director Clint Eastwood. He also did additional work for Eastwood on the screenplay for Sudden Impact and wrote a final Dirty Harry project. Wendell also worked with the West End Theatre Group as co-founder and artistic director while continuing to alternate between acting and writing assignments. He is currently writing original feature scripts.

CODA is currently streaming on Apple TV+. It premiered at Sundance in 2021 where it won the audience award, the grand jury award, and the directing award, and was nominated for two Golden Globes, Best Picture Drama and Best Supporting Actor (Troy Katsur) among its many other accolades.

Rated PG-13. 79 pages. 111 minutes. Drama.

The Tender Bar is currently streaming on Amazon Prime Video. Its accolades include a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor (Ben Affleck).

Rated R. 131 pages. 104 minutes. Drama.

If you have not seen the movies, it is highly recommended that you first read the screenplay so your initial impression is from the writing on the page. Also please watch the movies before the meeting as our discussion will include comparison of the writing on the page with what is seen and heard while watching the movie.

December 13 – House of Gucci

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on December 13th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay for the upcoming Ridley Scott-helmed crime thriller HOUSE OF GUCCI.

LOGLINE: Three decades of love, betrayal, decadence, and revenge mark the extravagant life and grisly 1995 murder of fashion designer Maurizio Gucci.

THE WRITERS: The screenplay is based on the book The House of Gucci: A True Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed by SARA GAY FORDEN, a journalist who covered Italian fashion for fifteen years and now covers corporate influence in Washington, DC for Bloomberg News. Academy Award nominated screenwriter BECKY JOHNSTON (The Prince of Tides) wrote the screenplay. Johnston’s other credits include Under the Cherry Moon, starring and directed by Prince, and Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt. Ridley Scott was first attached to the project in 2006 with a script by Andrea Berloff (Straight Outta Compton). Charles Randolph (The Big Short) also worked on the script. We will be reading and discussing the April 19, 2019 draft by Italian filmmaker ROBERTO BENTIVEGNA. This will be the first feature screenwriting credit for Bentivegna, which he shares with Johnston, who also has story credit.

(registration deadline: Friday, December 10)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!
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Scheduled for release on November 24, House of Gucci stars Lady Gaga (A Star Is Born), Adam Driver (Marriage Story, Star Wars sequel trilogy), Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club, Fight Club), Jeremy Irons (The Lion King, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice), Salma Hayek (Frida), and Al Pacino (The Godfather trilogy).

Rated R. 133 pages. 157 minutes. Drama. Crime. Biopic.

JENNIFER DORNBUSH will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. The daughter of a medical examiner, Jennifer is a forensic specialist who began investigating deaths at eight years old. Trained at the Forensic Science Academy, her decades of experience have made her a sought-after consultant on such shows as Hawaii Five-0, Suits, Rectify, and Prison Break, and speaker at The Writer’s Store, Sisters in Crime, Scriptwriters Network, and Story Expo, to name a few. Wanting to share her love of forensics with other storytellers, she penned Forensic Speak: How To Write Realistic Crime Dramas, published by Michael Wiese Productions. She is also the author of the Coroner’s Daughter Mystery two-book series and wrote the screenplay for God Bless the Broken Road as well as its novelization for Simon & Schuster. Visit jenniferdornbush.com for more.

November 8 – King Richard

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on November 8th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay KING RICHARD.

LOGLINE: Richard Williams, an undeterred father instrumental in raising two of the most extraordinarily gifted athletes of all time, changes the sport of tennis forever.

THE SCREENWRITER: King Richard is the first produced script by ZACH BAYLIN, who previously had art department credits on Steven Soderbergh’s Side Effects and Philip Seymour Hoffman’s Jack Goes Boating. Baylin’s spec biopic about the father of tennis pros Venus and Serena Williams came in second on the 2018 Black List and, with Will Smith attached to star and produce, was picked up by Warner Bros. after a bidding war. Baylin, who had won a spot on the Black List the year before with a script called Come as You Are, about a woman who moderates X-rated content on a social media platform and goes on a violent mission to take down the creators, was recently hired to pen the screenplay for the third film in the Rocky spinoff franchise, Creed, expected to be released in November 2022.

(registration deadline: Friday, November 5)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

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Directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green (Monsters and Men), King Richard stars Will Smith (Independence Day, Bad Boys, Men in Black), Tony Goldwyn (Ghost, Scandal), Jon Bernthal (The Walking Dead, Marvel’s The Punisher), Dylan McDermott (The Practice), Aunjanue Ellis (When They See Us), and, as the Williams sisters, Saniyya Sidney (American Horror Story: Roanoke, Fences) and Demi Singleton (Godfather of Harlem).

The movie, which features the original song “Be Alive” by Beyoncé, premiered last month at the Telluride Film Festival and opens in theaters and on HBO Max on November 19. It won the audience award at the Heartland International Film Festival in Indiana and currently holds a 93% critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Entertainment Weekly called King Richard “a surprisingly nuanced portrait of a flawed and deeply complicated man and the kind of classic-uplift sports movie that used to fill multiplexes once upon a time.”

Rated PG-13. 122 pages. 138 minutes. Drama. Sports Biopic.

MELODY JACKSON will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. Melody completed her Ph.D. in Mythological Studies in 2003 with her dissertation on “The Mythic Impact of Film.” She has been praised by Creative Screenwriting on multiple occasions for her exceptional knowledge of traditional three-act structure and character development. Known for approaching plot and structure through examination of character motivation and relationships, Melody offers consulting and marketing services to screenwriters through Smart Girls, which she founded in 1992. Since then she has helped over 2,500 writers improve their screenplays to get them to 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, CAA, and countless medium-sized and smaller production companies. Visit SmartG.com or follow @smartgirlspr on Twitter.

January 11 – MANK

Meet ONLINE on January 11th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay MANK.

“You cannot capture a man’s entire life in two hours. All you can hope is to leave the impression of one.”

Mank attempts to capture, in 134 pages, the life of Herman J. Mankiewicz, the legendary screenwriter who had a hand in creating such classics as The Wizard of Oz, The Front Page, The Pride of the Yankees, and Citizen Kane, considered by many to be the greatest movie ever made.

The biopic was penned by JACK FINCHER, father of its director, David Fincher (Se7en, Fight Club, The Social Network). The elder Fincher wrote the script in the 1990s, which David intended to be his next picture after The Game, but the studio where it was set up (with Kevin Spacey to star as Mankiewicz and Jodie Foster as Marion Davies) refused to let him shoot it in black-and-white. Around the same time, Jack Fincher also wrote a Howard Hughes biopic that ended up being merged with Martin Scorsese’s The Aviator. Jack, a talented essayist, had numerous articles published in Readers Digest, Saturday Review, The Smithsonian, and other major publications, and served as the San Francisco Bureau Chief of Life magazine. He passed away in 2003.

Now, thanks to Netflix, David Fincher has finally been able to realize his father’s dream project. The script underwent an uncredited polish by Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button writer Eric Roth (Forrest Gump, 2018’s A Star Is Born, next year’s Dune remake), who has a producer credit on the film.

(registration deadline: Friday, January 8)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

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Mank stars last year’s Best Actor Oscar winner Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour, The Dark Knight) as Mankiewicz, Amanda Seyfried (Les Misérables (the 2012 musical), Mamma Mia!) as Marion Davies, Lily Collins (Les Misérables (the 2018 BBC miniseries)), Arliss Howard (Full Metal Jacket) as MGM boss Louis B. Mayer, Tom Pelphrey (Ozark), and Tom Burke (Only God Forgives) as Citizen Kane director Orson Welles.

Note: The film is currently available on Netflix, but it is recommended that you hold off on watching it at least until after you’ve read the script. Our discussion will focus on the writing on the page, but we can also discuss changes in the finished film toward the end of the meeting. However, if you have not seen Citizen Kane, or have not seen it in a while, you are encouraged to watch that prior to reading Mank.

Rated R. 131 minutes. 134 pages. Biopic. Drama.

BARNEY MILES LICHTENSTEIN will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. Barney has worked as a professional story analyst for such companies as Amblin, Imagine, and New Line Cinema. He also assists in training new analysts for the Sundance Institute and is the recipient of the UCLA Extension Outstanding Instructor Award in Screenwriting.

December 14 – Hillbilly Elegy

Meet ONLINE on December 14th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay HILLBILLY ELEGY.

LOGLINE: A Yale Law School student returns to his Appalachian roots, recalling the values he learned being raised by his grandmother while his mother fought a heroin addiction.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Venture capitalist J.D. VANCE wrote the New York Times bestseller, Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and a Culture in Crisis, while at Yale Law School. The book received national attention during the 2016 election cycle as a window into the white working class. Vance currently lives in Ohio, where he started the nonprofit Our Ohio Renewal to combat drug addiction in the Rust Belt and has been contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate. Imagine Entertainment optioned the book’s film rights for Ron Howard to direct and hired VANESSA TAYLOR to write the screenplay. Taylor began her writing career in television with credits on such popular shows as Alias, Everwood, and Game of Thrones. Some of her feature screenplays include her original spec Hope Springs, which starred Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones; the adaptation of the YA dystopian novel Divergent; and The Shape of Water, which earned Vanessa her first Academy Award nomination and went on to win four Academy Awards including Best Picture. More recently, she adapted the nonfiction book Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, with Adam McCay attached to direct and Jennifer Lawrence attached to star.

(registration deadline: Friday, December 4)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

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Directed by Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13), the true coming-of-age story stars six-time Oscar nominee Amy Adams (Enchanted, Lois Lane in the DC Extended Universe), seven-time Oscar nominee Glenn Close (Fatal Attraction), Freida Pinto (Slumdog Millionaire), Haley Bennett (The Girl on the Train, The Devil All the Time), and Gabriel Basso (Super 8, The Big C) as Vance.

Netflix won a bidding war for the film’s distribution rights, putting up the entire $45 million budget. Although the Academy’s theatrical screening eligibility requirement has been suspended this year, Netflix did open Hillbilly Elegy on November 11 in Middletown, Ohio, where the film is set, as well as a handful of other cities in Ohio. It’s scheduled to premiere on the streaming service on November 24.

Rated R. 116 minutes. 122 pages. Coming-of-Age Drama.

WENDELL WELLMAN will provide in-depth script analysis and lead our discussion. Screenwriter, actor, playwright, teacher, and author of A Writer’s Roadmap, Wendell has taught screenwriting at UCLA and UWV and has been a frequent guest moderator at StoryBoardDG.com’s Screenplay Development Group. As an actor, Wendell studied under Lee Strasberg and Peggy Feury at the Strasberg Institute and has appeared in episodic television, theater, and motion pictures, including prominent roles in the films The Klansman starring Lee Marvin and Richard Burton, Sudden Impact, Sommersby, and Street of Dreams. As a writer, he teamed up with Alex Lasker to adapt the novel Firefox for director Clint Eastwood. He also did additional work for Eastwood on the screenplay for Sudden Impact and wrote a final Dirty Harry project. Wendell also worked with the West End Theatre Group as co-founder and artistic director while continuing to alternate between acting and writing assignments. He is currently writing original feature scripts.

October 12 – The Trial of the Chicago 7

Meet ONLINE on October 12th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay THE TRIAL OF THE CHICAGO 7.

LOGLINE: In a year of civil unrest, seven political activists stand trial for inciting a riot after an anti-war protest outside the Democratic National Convention turns violent.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Academy-Award-winning screenwriter AARON SORKIN initially wrote the script in 2007 for Steven Spielberg to direct. The writers strike that year delayed production, forcing Spielberg to drop out. A former playwright, Sorkin began his screenwriting career in the 1990s, adapting his Broadway play A Few Good Men for the 1992 Rob Reiner film. He created The West Wing in 1999 and wrote or co-wrote all but three of the series’ first 90 episodes, taking home six of the show’s 26 Emmy awards. In 2011, Sorkin won his first Academy Award for his screenplay about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, The Social Network, and earned a second nomination the following year for co-writing Moneyball. He won Golden Globe awards for The Social Network and his 2016 biopic of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and made his directorial debut with 2018’s Molly’s Game, which netted him his third Oscar nomination for screenwriting. Sorkin returns to the director’s chair for The Trial of the Chicago 7, which premieres on Netflix on October 16.

(registration deadline: Friday, October 9)

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Based on true events surrounding the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, The Trial of the Chicago 7 stars Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) as Tom Hayden, Sacha Baron Cohen (Borat) as Abbie Hoffman, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II (Aquaman) as Black Panther Party co-founder Bobby Seale, Mark Rylance (Bridge of Spies) as attorney William Kunstler, Michael Keaton (Birdman), Joseph Gordon-Levitt (Inception), Jeremy Strong (Succession), John Caroll Lynch (The Founder), Frank Langella (Frost/Nixon) as Judge Julius Hoffman, and William Hurt (Marvel’s Avengers and Black Widow films) as Attorney General John Mitchell.

Originally planned for a September 25 theatrical release by Paramount Pictures, movie theater shutdowns due to the COVID-19 pandemic prompted the studio to sell the distribution rights to Netflix for $56 million. The streaming service now plans to release the film online on October 16, just ahead of the November 3 election, with a possible limited theatrical run in September.

Rated R. 129 minutes. 130 pages. Historical Courtroom Drama.

JEFF KITCHEN, top-rated scriptwriting teacher and author of Writing a Great Movie: Key Tools for Successful Screenwriting will lead our script analysis and in-depth screenwriting discussion. Classically trained in playwriting technique, Jeff worked as a dramaturg in the New York theater, and taught playwriting on Broadway. He’s currently in the process of launching a two-year intensive training program for scriptwriters called Script Kitchen. His current BuildYourScript.com website will soon change to Script.Kitchen.