March 6 – Special Pre-Oscars Meeting (FREE)

StoryBoard Development Group Presents

A Special Exclusive StoryBoardDG.com Pre-Oscars Event!

Meet online from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on March 6th (the Monday before the 95th Academy Awards) to discuss this year’s ten Oscar-nominated screenplays!

If you’ve never been to a StoryBoard meeting, or have previously attended, now’s your chance to participate in the fun with writers and filmmakers for free! Instead of our usual script analysis and in-depth screenwriting discussion of a single script, we’ll have a casual conversation about each of the ten nominated screenplays and discuss their chances of winning the industry’s top prize.

***HOW TO REGISTER*** If you wish to participate in this event, please send an email to StoryBoardDG@gmail.com prior to March 6 and you will receive an email with login instructions on the day of the event.

Don’t worry about reading the scripts. Just try to see as many of the films as you can before the meeting. Here’s how:

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

The Banshees of Inisherin
Martin McDonagh
HBO Max, Amazon digital rental, DVD/Blu-ray

Everything Everywhere All at Once
The Daniels
Showtime, Amazon digital purchase, DVD/Blu-ray

The Fabelmans
Steven Spielberg / Tony Kushner
Amazon digital rental, DVD/Blu-ray

Tár
Todd Field
Amazon digital rental, DVD/Blu-ray

Triangle of Sadness
Ruben Östlund
Amazon digital rental, DVD/Blu-ray

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

All Quiet on the Western Front
Edward Berger / Lesley Paterson / Ian Stokell
Netflix

Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery
Rian Johnson
Netflix

Living
Kazuo Ishiguro
currently in theaters

Top Gun: Maverick
Ehren Kruger / Eric Warren Singer / Christopher McQuarrie
Paramount+, MGM+,
Amazon digital rental,
DVD/Blu-ray

Women Talking
by Sarah Polley
currently in theaters

DANNY HERCULES will lead the not-so-in-depth discussion. Danny is the creator, publisher, and one of the authors of ScripTipps, a line of inexpensive ebooks on screenwriting conceived in part by his participation in StoryBoard. An award-winning filmmaker, Danny was co-founder and president of San Diego Filmmakers and sat on the board of directors of Scriptwriters Network where he ran their writers groups and staged readings programs. In 2012 he published the popular young adult Christmas novel North Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus and later adapted it into a musical through the Academy of New Musical Theatre, where he also wrote the book for Chaturbate: The Musical, which premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2017. A member of StoryBoard’s Screenplay Discussion Group since November 2009, Danny has never missed a meeting.

Note: StoryBoard will hold our regular Screenplay Development Group meeting on Monday, March 13.

February 13 – The Fabelmans

Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on February 13th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of Steven Spielberg’s screenplay THE FABELMANS.

LOGLINE: A young aspiring filmmaker explores how the power of films can help him see the truth about his dysfunctional family and those around him.

“I’ve been hiding from this story since I was 17 years old,” director and co-writer STEVEN SPIELBERG said at the Golden Globe awards last week, where The Fabelmans won Best Motion Picture – Drama and Best Director. “I put a lot of things in the way of this story. I told this story in parts and parcels all throughout my career. E.T. has a lot to do with this story. Close Encounters has a lot to do with this story. But I never had the courage to hit this story head on until [co-writer] TONY KUSHNER sat me down and said, ‘Tell me about all these stories I’ve heard about your life.’ And we started a conversation that lasted all through Munich, all through Lincoln, all through West Side Story. And my wife, Kate, was always saying, ‘You have to tell this story.'” So the 74-year-old filmmaker finally sat down to tell the most personal story of his career, a story he says is “about the fact that it’s not easy to be a kid, the fact that everybody sees me as a success story, and everybody sees all of us based on how they get the information, but nobody really knows who we are until we’re courageous enough to tell everyone who we are.”

(registration deadline: Friday, February 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!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

The Fabelmans premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival last September and opened nationwide in November. Also currently available on VOD and scheduled for DVD/Blu-ray/4K UHD releases the day after our meeting, the film stars Gabriel LaBelle (Showtime’s American Gigolo) as Sammy Fabelman — a fictional version of Spielberg, Michelle Williams (Dawson’s Creek), Paul Dano (There Will Be Blood), Seth Rogen (Knocked Up), Judd Hirsch (Ordinary People), and filmmaker David Lynch as filmmaker John Ford. It currently holds a 92% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been nominated for hundreds of awards so far. 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 on the page.

UPDATE: On January 24, The Fabelmans was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay!

Rated PG-13. 144 pages. 151 minutes. Drama. Coming-of-Age.

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.