Fav kiddie songs -- Never liked most of them when I was a kiddie. Like the songs from 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. Michael Feinstein has an album out called Pure Imagination which has kid songs from movies. I like that.
Jay, I've only had a chance to read the main article on screenwriters and scan the other stuff.
Most of it I find isn't about screenwriters at all, but aspiring screenwriters. Two entirely different creatures. I've always said I'd like to meet a waitress in this town who's really a waitress...I'm tired of everyone saying "but I'm really a singer/actress/writer/director." You know, until you actually earn your living at one of these professions with some degree of regularity, you're a waitress or whatever it is you do to earn your daily bread.
There is an obscure little film I love, produced by Tony Bill, called HEARTS OF THE WEST. In it, Jeff Bridges is an aspiring writer of western novels who through circumstances falls into acting in "B" westerns. One of the stuntmen is Andy Griffith, who we find out later used to be a Zane Grey type novelist. Anyway, Bridges constantly goes through the movie calling himself a writer. "I'm really a writer." even though he's sold nothing. Andy Griffith tells him: "You're not a writer until somebody else calls you a writer."
I've always lived by that little motto. Until someone's willing to acknowledge your writing by publishing it, producing it, paying you for it, reading it, you ain't a writer. Until then, you're just a waiter (or whatever) aspiring to be a writer. Some remain waiters (or whatevers) and never become writers. Most, in fact.
I rarely read the trades. It's mostly hype and has nothing to do with what I need to do to earn my living. I did have a subscription once to Weekly Variety...when they gave me a deal on it...but mostly it's press agents and studios telling lies about deals that often don't seem to pan out or never see the light of day. It's counter-productive for me to read about deals that aren't mine, about books optioned I won't be adapting, movies going into production that have nothing to do with me.
What I do like about being a writer. I can mostly make my own hours (deadlines and production drafts the exception), I never have to leave the house, and I can work in my underwear (I save a lot on gas).
All those pictures of people working on their computers in coffee shops....or discussing too loudly their project with their collaborators in restaurants...? They're the writer equilvalent of Lana Turner would-bes waiting to be discovered in Schwabs. They have to show everybody they're a writer, because they don't have any work to show that they're a writer. They want to be seen to be writing more than actually writing.
I don't know how anyone can get writing done in a public atmosphere with distractions. I need to sequester myself away and have absolute quiet so I can hear myself think. I also act out aloud every scene I write to make sure the dialogue rolls off the tongue right and it builds the way I want it too. And I'm a chronic pacer. A coffee shop ain't the place for that sort of energetic writing.
Gurus...I've no use for them. Rarely have any of them ever actually made their living writing screenplays and they're usually teaching basic guidelines (that you can learn in drama school) to amateurs who mistakenly embrace them as rigid truths and just end up being confused and writing formulaic screenplays. You can't teach talent.
I also have always been a firm believer of the seat-of-the-pants school. I learned how to write by being an actor and putting drama on its feet. I learned how to write by studying great plays and watching hundreds of movies. I learned how to write by reading everything I could get my hands on, from novels to cereal boxes. I tell writers to get involved with a theatre group, take an acting class, learn how drama is put on its feet, read, read, read.
Mostly when I read these stories, I get sad thinking about how many of these people will never make it, how many are diluted, how many are just losers. Also looking at some of the pictures of the people in the article, I notice how old they are. They all look thirty-five or forty. That's a bit late to be getting started in this business. More and more, this is becoming a young person's game. Careers are getting shorter and shorter. I've had a twenty-three year career so far. Writers before me had careers for thirty/thiry-five years. Writers coming after me will be lucky to have fifteen year careers. It's gotten harder to make a sustained living at it. If you're 35 and just starting out, you're facing tremedous odds.
It used to be the dream to write the Great American Novel, now it's the Great American Screenplay. I think because people think it's easier to write a 120 pages than 350 pages and you get more money. Neither is necessarily true. Each discipline is just different, not necessarily harder or easier. But the movies is perceived as a glamourous business (that's not necessarily true either, particularly for writers...though it beats selling shoes, I suppose) and the siren song it sings is alluring.
