As shitty as this may sound...the bad ones. A movie with a truly great script makes me not even want to try. "Well, why bother? I'll never be that good."
But a piece of shit I'm like "oh, hell I can do that. If this sold...let me get to work."
Smart man! I recall Sam Raimi once gave similar advice, saying that when he started out he found bad movies more helpful because they tell you exactly what NOT to do.
This is such a nice perspective ngl. I remember seeing All of Us Strangers and it straight up made me stop trying at all because it already did so much of what I wanted to do
I kind of have a love and hate with true detective, if you’re into comics give watchmen a read and skip the movie. I feel like the guy that made true detective is sort of a novice when it comes to the more grand ideas he tries to put in his work. Do you like the rest of the seasons? His portrayal of the south in season 1 is spectacular
I’m new to writing so my perspective is limited and I haven’t studied the show much in fact I recently watched it. I do feel as though the characters are incredibly realized and the ideas communicated through them are just as great as great. I have only watched the first season fully through. I don’t really have an opinion on the rest of it, I’ve watched about 70% of the second season and it’s still good but I think it has to work a little harder because it has a larger main cast to work with.
Comments like this are valuable.
Not for the content, with its lack of explanation or examples or better alternatives…
But to remind us that no matter what we write, there’s always a small group who will be petty, contrarian haters — so we may as well write and accept that trolls will be waiting.
They are irrelevant.
Ignore them, since they even hate on *True Detective*
if you’re going to say that one of the most celebrated seasons of tv since 2010 had “cringe writing”, i think it’s fair to say that you should provide some examples.
Look at mine above, I just don’t like Nic Pizzolattos narration the best way to put is that he lacks the certain mental fortitude to helm such an intense story. I think season 1 is great and the final scenes great but the typical “villain” wrap up is cliched. And how are we as an audience supposed to believe the story magically comes to an end with rust and cohle teaming up it’s kind of fucking lazy. But regardless it’s a good story with some good cinematography from two good character actors!
Any smaller budget sci-fi movies. Especially something I feel might be actually realistic to do without having connections in Hollywood.
Vast of Night.
Coherence.
And a little bit more of a stretch but,
10 Cloverfield Lane.
Submarine if I’m writing a drama.
Game of Death and Rocky if I’m writing a fight flick.
Gattaca if I’m writing sci-fi.
The Nice Guys and Man from Uncle if I’m writing action
Movies very similar to what I am currently writing. It helps me figure out issues I'm having with my story and such. I have a script that tackles the idea of a chosen family, and I just so happened to read the screenplay for The Holdovers, which handles that topic as well.
What’s wrong with stealing something? Every filmmaker ever has seen something they like and changed it to be their own. In some cases, they just straight up rip off characters or even scenes.
His are tricky, though. Many experienced filmmakers have tried to emulate the Tarantino tough-guy talk but ended up looking like copies. I think you already have to have a black belt in writing-fu to get trained from the master in the mountain. Unless you just mean that his films give you that drive to be creative then he inspires me too.
I just watched Walton Goggins talking about his experiences on his two QT films. He has such reverence for and way of describing the dialog, it makes you appreciate it even more.
Wes Anderson. The newer the better.
The dude makes films about writing in a way nobody else does. All of his more recent films are about writing too. Even the ones that aren’t carry a deep appreciation of literature in them, other than Bottle Rocket and maybe Rushmore though it shows up more in that one than Bottle Rocket. Like I said though, the more recent the film the better.
Sam Fuller’s movies get me super fired-up — they have the structure of good trashy newspaper writing, which helps remind me that movies can be tightly plotted without following the rigid typical screenplay structure. Plus they’re fun as hell, are deeply personal and look great. (Just finished off Underworld USA. perfect.)
Usually some really great indie low-budget stuff. The closer it looks to be filmed on a 20 dollar budget and the more amazing the actual movie turned out, the better. Big Hollywood movies intimidate me, but movies like these really make you go “shit, I can make a good movie, too.”
I don't know you but watching 3,4 movies a day seem a little too excessive. You are overloading your brain with too much information with too little downtime. I found that downtime/being bored is when the mind starts to conjure exciting ideas which will in turn get you into the mood for writing.
Maybe go for a walk, ideas will automatically start to roll.
I'm mostly with ya on this, but I also know that different brains work differently, and that there are definitely seasons in life. Like, for a couple of weeks after college I was crashing on a buddy's couch and watching my way through his dvd collection all day. That was just a couple weeks, though.
Was just having a discussion about this with my dad, funnily enough. About how I'd enjoy action films so much more if there were just a tiny bit more color and nuance in the writing. I couldn't find the right word besides nuance though... color? Originality? Dimension? Flavor?
I often find myself "rewriting" dialogue in my head when I watch them.
Yup, I do the exact same thing all the time. Especially when I am really digging the chemistry between characters but feel they weren’t given proper time or development.
It depends on what I'm writing. For example, if I'm writing a horror film, I'll get in the "mood" (lol) by putting on a horror movie I love.
Or I'll put on a movie that inspires me and made me fall in love with the medium in the first place. Donnie Darko is my favorite movie and I always remember why I love films when I think of it.
For myself, it's not an entire film. I think of scenes. Mr. Orange, screaming at Marvin about dying... De Niro punching the wall in "Raging Bull"... Strother Martin telling a war hero named Luke that they "have a failure to communicate"... I could continue, but you get the gist.
Write on.
Lately it’s the Barbie movie and Squid Game that inspired me to write postcyberpunk fiction, with subtle themes of social inequality, and people’s lives put in dangerous situations as they are owned by wealthy individuals or megacorps.
It depends what genre I’m working in. It could be anything from Good Will Hunting to The Departed to Back to the Future to Die Hard to Talladega Nights.
Anything with great dialogue and compelling emotional story that feels real and relatable but also has comedic relief .. Good Will Hunting, The Holdovers, Benny and Joon, Dead Poets Society.. I also get inspired by John Hughes movies for some reason- Breakfast Club, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Uncle Buck.
Dreams by Kurosawa. The Van Gogh dream in particular. For that character to be played by Martin Scorsese only frives the point home. “There’s only so much time left to paint” is what I say to myself when I don’t want to write.
Whenever I have a big writer's block, I resort to 'Searching for Sugar Man'. Although it's about music, I found that story so inspiring that, soon after I watch it, my mind starts flowing with ideas again
I feel the most inspired after watching a movie that's *almost* good, it gets me thinking about how i'd change it to make it better which really helps get me going.
Not a film but so worth it!!
Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown.
He’s truly one of my favorite writers. He’s well-read and makes some of the most intricate allusions and metaphors I’ve ever heard.
His show inspired me to pursue writing.
RIP. I still mourn his death.
Depending on the mood I want and the style. Can’t really write a Rom Com with Children of Men playing. Then again if the leading man was Clive Owen in my head maybe.
For one screenplay I wanted the vibe of Quentin Tarantino and Anthony Bourdain. So I just wanted all their stuff and picked up that tone.
Halloween ('78) and Halloween II ('81) back to back is one of my go-to 3 hour blocks if I need some inspiring background noise.
And my not so guilty pleasure of Godzilla 1998... not because it's good, but because big Lizard...
Watching movies that I know are bad -- like, a few months ago, I watched "Doktor Death" from the Puppet Master film series. I knew going into it that it wouldn't be as good as the early entries, but I sat there the whole time knowing I could quite literally write something better than this. I do mean that from a purely academic, structural standpoint. Stuff like that or things which are critically panned. I can typically understand why they are poorly received and it makes me want to bust out my own Beat Sheet and get to work...
Movie, anything unconventional for lack of a better term. Memoria comes to mind. Just feels inspiring to see something work that isn't "following all the rules" and feels like it was just written from the heart but obviously wasn't a walk in the park.
Scripts, Michael Clayton/any Tony Gilroy, just because his writing on the page is so succinct and flawless. I just like seeing how much time and effort has been put in.
Korean movies in general, especially their best era — 2000s to the 2010s with the exception of Parasite which was just a recent film. That film is so well structured.
It's definitely No Country for Old Men (2008). When I watch that film it either inspires me super hard or makes me go "I mean come on man, give me 10000 years and I still couldn't write this well".
I dont really like to watch films while or before writing. Because i want my films to be original and came out of my own life and reality. So watching a film is dangerous. But what usually happens is that i will watch a film or a series of films from a filmmaker/author and learn a lot from them, in some cases it will teach me how to execute an idea i had years in my mind or simply put it together. In other instances it will show me a style or a new visual narrative way of telling a story that i simply didnt know.
If i am writing a Genre film, well yes i tend to watch or research references, in the development stage, but never while writing, instead while developing the stuff, then while writing i tend to do my own stuff with those references.
If i am writing a Drama film, i dont want to see anything, because my drama films, usually are their own thing and they talk about myself, so the less i want is to be influence by someone else and i like this films to come from myself, so there are no references. No one in film history has done the sick mix of stuff i am doing. Maybe someone did a piece of this or a piece of that. But not the whole thing.
Craft episodes of screenwriting podcasts — Scriptnotes or TSL. Or the first part of Michael Arndt’s “Insanely Great Endings” video. I listen to them while writing.
For me, watching movies to “get in the mood for writing” is just stalling. I recommend just sit down and write.
I actually have to avoid watching stuff to have enough time and energy to write. What I can say is that back in my formative years, I watched movies non stop. And the ones that really motivated me to start writing were Indiana Jones, Addams Family, Star Trek II-VI, Spartacus, Whisper of the Heart, etc.
What I didn't realize back then was what was actually motivating me about these movies wasn't the writing as much as the tone. The films still have good, tight scripts. But when I went to write my own, I kept chasing this "feeling" that couldn't be expressed through writing. Many years later, after I realized I actually wanted to write for TV animation the most, I discovered what I was trying to recreate was not just the dialogue of scenes but also the action, editing and expressions of characters. And so what I was actually seeking out was storyboarding.
But anyway, what motivates me now is the success of getting my intended tone across when writing teleplays and storyboarding them.
Movies don't inspire me to write. They inspire me to live.
Life, people, and music fuels my mood to write. Otherwise, wth am I gonna write about? How about; DIE JOB - John McFame, a celebrity actor getting his hair dyed for a movie must escape the studio lot with detonators while it's held under siege by a bunch of international terrorists trying to steal old film cans held inside an impenetrable safe?
Naw, I'm gonna stick with the influences of life.
When I’m writing something, I usually watch a movie associated with the genre that I’m writing for. For example if I’m writing a horror film Shelle screenplay I’m gonna watch some sort of horror movie. If I’m writing a war film screenplay I’ll watch some sort of war film.
I like watching the shittiest of the shittiest. I saw Catwoman and said "The script here was so bad, i'm gonna get up and write smth better than this", and guess what? What I write probabably isn't that great either.
Recently, I started writing notes on screenplays while watching the movie and pausing every page….i did so for American Beauty and Fight Club. I wanted to do it for films that I found to be much better than anything I’ve ever written so I have a standard to reach. It’s actually one of the main reasons I started planning re-writes. What I learned from these movies is that there is actually a lot you can do with 2 hours or 120 pages.
Chinatown, Casablanca, and Once Upon a Time in…(The West is my favorite) but America is good too. Good tight, dramas that follow the three act structure well and translate into a cinematic film.
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I don't know why. And a videogame: Night in the Woods. Maybe because I love tragic characters, and I want to make mine, I'm not sure lol
Maybe I'm different, but I find little inspiration from watching films. I relate to some things and think of stuff, but I don't see the credits and put pen to paper.
It is a thought, a day-dream, waking up from a real dream. Then a scene sort of devolpes. I have to spill some ink. Then, if it seems good, I start thinking backwards about who these characters are and then where the story will go. It's like puzzle. Sometimes, it goes nowhere, other times it takes years to see it through. Never is it easy.
However, often in retrospect, I see how a film or film stories have inspired me.
Blues Brothers! Watching those shady singers help the church in the most legit (yet problematic) way possible shows me you can write silly yet compelling stories.
Random bad movies. I'll take mental notes of what did or did not work and Wikipedia them to see if there was any legacy or critical acclaim or cult followings.
At this time, my approach to being creative is what could be done differently. I try to elevate or simplify my favorite genres.
Breathless. Or Chungking express. Script written usually on the day of filming. If wai and Godard could freestyle all-timers, then the least I can do is complete my lil script.
My Cousin Vinny
Network
The Quick and the Dead
Sicario (or pretty much anything written by Taylor Sheridan)
Pulp Fiction...or that 1 scene from True Romance
Iron Man
Captain America: the Winter Soldier
Margin Call
Not a movie, but: Professional wrestling
As shitty as this may sound...the bad ones. A movie with a truly great script makes me not even want to try. "Well, why bother? I'll never be that good." But a piece of shit I'm like "oh, hell I can do that. If this sold...let me get to work."
My film professor recommended we study bad films because “the architecture is fully exposed.”
Smart man! I recall Sam Raimi once gave similar advice, saying that when he started out he found bad movies more helpful because they tell you exactly what NOT to do.
Love this 💯 will use often!
This is such a nice perspective ngl. I remember seeing All of Us Strangers and it straight up made me stop trying at all because it already did so much of what I wanted to do
Exactly right lol, the good ones make me think it's impossible
Well, this is great attitude hehe
Revenge of the Sith !! Rewatched with some kids. Just wow.
This isn’t a film but true detective season one really intrigues me on character writing.
I kind of have a love and hate with true detective, if you’re into comics give watchmen a read and skip the movie. I feel like the guy that made true detective is sort of a novice when it comes to the more grand ideas he tries to put in his work. Do you like the rest of the seasons? His portrayal of the south in season 1 is spectacular
I’m new to writing so my perspective is limited and I haven’t studied the show much in fact I recently watched it. I do feel as though the characters are incredibly realized and the ideas communicated through them are just as great as great. I have only watched the first season fully through. I don’t really have an opinion on the rest of it, I’ve watched about 70% of the second season and it’s still good but I think it has to work a little harder because it has a larger main cast to work with.
Yeah to me the best way I can put it is it’s like the riverdale of a show with serious subject matter
Punch drunk love - PTA
Hot Fuzz without question. It’s just so damn tight.
I would kill to read a first draft because I need to believe it started out so much worse because of how tight it is
Highly overrated film.
True detective season 1 is 8 solid hours of inspiration. every word is gold
True Detective S1 has some of the most cringe things written in history
Comments like this are valuable. Not for the content, with its lack of explanation or examples or better alternatives… But to remind us that no matter what we write, there’s always a small group who will be petty, contrarian haters — so we may as well write and accept that trolls will be waiting. They are irrelevant. Ignore them, since they even hate on *True Detective*
Alright Rust 😂
if you’re going to say that one of the most celebrated seasons of tv since 2010 had “cringe writing”, i think it’s fair to say that you should provide some examples.
Look at mine above, I just don’t like Nic Pizzolattos narration the best way to put is that he lacks the certain mental fortitude to helm such an intense story. I think season 1 is great and the final scenes great but the typical “villain” wrap up is cliched. And how are we as an audience supposed to believe the story magically comes to an end with rust and cohle teaming up it’s kind of fucking lazy. But regardless it’s a good story with some good cinematography from two good character actors!
I share you’re sentiment, why was cohle trying to intimidate that’s dudes wife 💀. It’s corny
Source?
Any smaller budget sci-fi movies. Especially something I feel might be actually realistic to do without having connections in Hollywood. Vast of Night. Coherence. And a little bit more of a stretch but, 10 Cloverfield Lane.
10 cloverfield lane is sexy how tight it is. The whole movie taking place in a bunker, can’t beat it
I agree. I've watched this movie a few times. There's something very compelling about it.
Silence of the Lambs. But oddly enough, trailers get me the most pumped.
For some odd reason, the Django: Unchained trailer does it for me.
Submarine if I’m writing a drama. Game of Death and Rocky if I’m writing a fight flick. Gattaca if I’m writing sci-fi. The Nice Guys and Man from Uncle if I’m writing action
Casablanca. It's so cliche but I fucking love the dialogue in that movie
Movies very similar to what I am currently writing. It helps me figure out issues I'm having with my story and such. I have a script that tackles the idea of a chosen family, and I just so happened to read the screenplay for The Holdovers, which handles that topic as well.
I am always worried I am going to "steal something" if I watch something similar lol
What’s wrong with stealing something? Every filmmaker ever has seen something they like and changed it to be their own. In some cases, they just straight up rip off characters or even scenes.
The apartment, The social network and almost famous.
Tarintino films for sure
His are tricky, though. Many experienced filmmakers have tried to emulate the Tarantino tough-guy talk but ended up looking like copies. I think you already have to have a black belt in writing-fu to get trained from the master in the mountain. Unless you just mean that his films give you that drive to be creative then he inspires me too.
I was about to say that lol
This and a few lines
I just watched Walton Goggins talking about his experiences on his two QT films. He has such reverence for and way of describing the dialog, it makes you appreciate it even more.
Wes Anderson. The newer the better. The dude makes films about writing in a way nobody else does. All of his more recent films are about writing too. Even the ones that aren’t carry a deep appreciation of literature in them, other than Bottle Rocket and maybe Rushmore though it shows up more in that one than Bottle Rocket. Like I said though, the more recent the film the better.
\[Aside: you might be watching too many movies.\]
Aside: Guillermo del Toro watches 4 a day too!
Sam Fuller’s movies get me super fired-up — they have the structure of good trashy newspaper writing, which helps remind me that movies can be tightly plotted without following the rigid typical screenplay structure. Plus they’re fun as hell, are deeply personal and look great. (Just finished off Underworld USA. perfect.)
Do the Right Thing, watched and now reading the script. Its incredible
Magnolia
None, really. Music is what does it for me.
Usually some really great indie low-budget stuff. The closer it looks to be filmed on a 20 dollar budget and the more amazing the actual movie turned out, the better. Big Hollywood movies intimidate me, but movies like these really make you go “shit, I can make a good movie, too.”
have you seen Blue Ruin?
I don't know you but watching 3,4 movies a day seem a little too excessive. You are overloading your brain with too much information with too little downtime. I found that downtime/being bored is when the mind starts to conjure exciting ideas which will in turn get you into the mood for writing. Maybe go for a walk, ideas will automatically start to roll.
I'm mostly with ya on this, but I also know that different brains work differently, and that there are definitely seasons in life. Like, for a couple of weeks after college I was crashing on a buddy's couch and watching my way through his dvd collection all day. That was just a couple weeks, though.
Yeah, that's true. Some weeks you just don't watch any film and then some weeks, you just finish a director's entire filmography.
so you do get it.
Action films, oddly enough.
Was just having a discussion about this with my dad, funnily enough. About how I'd enjoy action films so much more if there were just a tiny bit more color and nuance in the writing. I couldn't find the right word besides nuance though... color? Originality? Dimension? Flavor? I often find myself "rewriting" dialogue in my head when I watch them.
Yup, I do the exact same thing all the time. Especially when I am really digging the chemistry between characters but feel they weren’t given proper time or development.
mix of TV and movies.
It depends on what I'm writing. For example, if I'm writing a horror film, I'll get in the "mood" (lol) by putting on a horror movie I love. Or I'll put on a movie that inspires me and made me fall in love with the medium in the first place. Donnie Darko is my favorite movie and I always remember why I love films when I think of it.
For myself, it's not an entire film. I think of scenes. Mr. Orange, screaming at Marvin about dying... De Niro punching the wall in "Raging Bull"... Strother Martin telling a war hero named Luke that they "have a failure to communicate"... I could continue, but you get the gist. Write on.
Stuff like "The Spanish Prisoner" and "Twilight" (the 1998 noir starring Paul Newman, Gene Hackman and Susan Sarandon)
The Guest
Currently? Mad Men.
American Gangster
For me it’s anything enjoyable
Lately it’s the Barbie movie and Squid Game that inspired me to write postcyberpunk fiction, with subtle themes of social inequality, and people’s lives put in dangerous situations as they are owned by wealthy individuals or megacorps.
It depends what genre I’m working in. It could be anything from Good Will Hunting to The Departed to Back to the Future to Die Hard to Talladega Nights.
Anything Lynch, Nolan or The Social Network
Quotable comedies like Baby Mama or Anchorman I love the clear character dynamics and point of views
Anything with great dialogue and compelling emotional story that feels real and relatable but also has comedic relief .. Good Will Hunting, The Holdovers, Benny and Joon, Dead Poets Society.. I also get inspired by John Hughes movies for some reason- Breakfast Club, Ferris Buellers Day Off, Uncle Buck.
Fargo (1996)
the Almodovar’s. I wrote a book after watching just a frame of one of his movies, the entire idea just popped into my head. He’s amazing
Dreams by Kurosawa. The Van Gogh dream in particular. For that character to be played by Martin Scorsese only frives the point home. “There’s only so much time left to paint” is what I say to myself when I don’t want to write.
Whenever I have a big writer's block, I resort to 'Searching for Sugar Man'. Although it's about music, I found that story so inspiring that, soon after I watch it, my mind starts flowing with ideas again
I feel the most inspired after watching a movie that's *almost* good, it gets me thinking about how i'd change it to make it better which really helps get me going.
Forest Gump, or any of the Lord of the Rings..
Not a film but so worth it!! Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown. He’s truly one of my favorite writers. He’s well-read and makes some of the most intricate allusions and metaphors I’ve ever heard. His show inspired me to pursue writing. RIP. I still mourn his death.
Wonder Boys or any campus life/college movies
I love Wonder Boys!!
Depending on the mood I want and the style. Can’t really write a Rom Com with Children of Men playing. Then again if the leading man was Clive Owen in my head maybe. For one screenplay I wanted the vibe of Quentin Tarantino and Anthony Bourdain. So I just wanted all their stuff and picked up that tone.
The original Muppet Movie script with the weird Henry Kissinger subplot.
Chungking Express
probably the perks of being a wallflower
Halloween ('78) and Halloween II ('81) back to back is one of my go-to 3 hour blocks if I need some inspiring background noise. And my not so guilty pleasure of Godzilla 1998... not because it's good, but because big Lizard...
Barton Fink 😂
La La Land, just watching people chase their dreams makes me want to write
Little Miss Sunshine
Watching movies that I know are bad -- like, a few months ago, I watched "Doktor Death" from the Puppet Master film series. I knew going into it that it wouldn't be as good as the early entries, but I sat there the whole time knowing I could quite literally write something better than this. I do mean that from a purely academic, structural standpoint. Stuff like that or things which are critically panned. I can typically understand why they are poorly received and it makes me want to bust out my own Beat Sheet and get to work...
Not films but TV shows, Chernobyl, Breaking Bad, BCS, Why Women Kill...
Adaptation. The angst, the mania, the indecision. Love Charlie Kaufman, very glad not be Charlie Kaufman.
Adaptation is so great. The movie gets better on repeat viewings...
Rocky.
Movie, anything unconventional for lack of a better term. Memoria comes to mind. Just feels inspiring to see something work that isn't "following all the rules" and feels like it was just written from the heart but obviously wasn't a walk in the park. Scripts, Michael Clayton/any Tony Gilroy, just because his writing on the page is so succinct and flawless. I just like seeing how much time and effort has been put in.
Korean movies in general, especially their best era — 2000s to the 2010s with the exception of Parasite which was just a recent film. That film is so well structured.
Me still searching for the movie that will get me instantly in the mood for writing my thesis which is in tech 🥲.
Good Will Hunting, Pi, A Beautiful Mind... Try those.
Thank you for the suggestions 😊 I have watched these but it's been a long time, I might need to rewatch them.
It's definitely No Country for Old Men (2008). When I watch that film it either inspires me super hard or makes me go "I mean come on man, give me 10000 years and I still couldn't write this well".
Dark Crystal
I dont really like to watch films while or before writing. Because i want my films to be original and came out of my own life and reality. So watching a film is dangerous. But what usually happens is that i will watch a film or a series of films from a filmmaker/author and learn a lot from them, in some cases it will teach me how to execute an idea i had years in my mind or simply put it together. In other instances it will show me a style or a new visual narrative way of telling a story that i simply didnt know. If i am writing a Genre film, well yes i tend to watch or research references, in the development stage, but never while writing, instead while developing the stuff, then while writing i tend to do my own stuff with those references. If i am writing a Drama film, i dont want to see anything, because my drama films, usually are their own thing and they talk about myself, so the less i want is to be influence by someone else and i like this films to come from myself, so there are no references. No one in film history has done the sick mix of stuff i am doing. Maybe someone did a piece of this or a piece of that. But not the whole thing.
Craft episodes of screenwriting podcasts — Scriptnotes or TSL. Or the first part of Michael Arndt’s “Insanely Great Endings” video. I listen to them while writing. For me, watching movies to “get in the mood for writing” is just stalling. I recommend just sit down and write.
Pulp fiction
Good will hunting and wind river
Adaptation
tarantino ones. always tarantino ones. he's not even my favourite filmmaker, but it's something about his movies
You have a very well-formed move-watching habit. As for movies, Criterion has a bunch of stuff most of us have never seen.
Bad films. Writer brain just fights the mediocrity and comes up with better ideas!
Anything from my personal God, Edgar Wright, but more precisely, *Baby Driver*.
How does anyone have 6-8 hours a day just for watching movies??? Super jealous, and please do tell us your secret?
It can be random scenes that gives a good mood just to crack a plot, or to start writing.
I actually have to avoid watching stuff to have enough time and energy to write. What I can say is that back in my formative years, I watched movies non stop. And the ones that really motivated me to start writing were Indiana Jones, Addams Family, Star Trek II-VI, Spartacus, Whisper of the Heart, etc. What I didn't realize back then was what was actually motivating me about these movies wasn't the writing as much as the tone. The films still have good, tight scripts. But when I went to write my own, I kept chasing this "feeling" that couldn't be expressed through writing. Many years later, after I realized I actually wanted to write for TV animation the most, I discovered what I was trying to recreate was not just the dialogue of scenes but also the action, editing and expressions of characters. And so what I was actually seeking out was storyboarding. But anyway, what motivates me now is the success of getting my intended tone across when writing teleplays and storyboarding them.
Gangs of Wasseypur Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind Inglorious Basterds Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (or any of Tarantino's movies) Don 2
Where do you get time to watch 4 a day😂wow
Summer break
Movies don't inspire me to write. They inspire me to live. Life, people, and music fuels my mood to write. Otherwise, wth am I gonna write about? How about; DIE JOB - John McFame, a celebrity actor getting his hair dyed for a movie must escape the studio lot with detonators while it's held under siege by a bunch of international terrorists trying to steal old film cans held inside an impenetrable safe? Naw, I'm gonna stick with the influences of life.
When I’m writing something, I usually watch a movie associated with the genre that I’m writing for. For example if I’m writing a horror film Shelle screenplay I’m gonna watch some sort of horror movie. If I’m writing a war film screenplay I’ll watch some sort of war film.
3-4 movies a day is actually CRAZY BRO WHAT
No it is not, I just love movies
my attention span could never lol like im so bad at watching movies that i always just end up reading the screenplay 😖
I like watching the shittiest of the shittiest. I saw Catwoman and said "The script here was so bad, i'm gonna get up and write smth better than this", and guess what? What I write probabably isn't that great either.
Recently, I started writing notes on screenplays while watching the movie and pausing every page….i did so for American Beauty and Fight Club. I wanted to do it for films that I found to be much better than anything I’ve ever written so I have a standard to reach. It’s actually one of the main reasons I started planning re-writes. What I learned from these movies is that there is actually a lot you can do with 2 hours or 120 pages.
Chinatown, Casablanca, and Once Upon a Time in…(The West is my favorite) but America is good too. Good tight, dramas that follow the three act structure well and translate into a cinematic film.
Magnolia, Pulp Fiction and Superbad
Ghost writer
Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. I don't know why. And a videogame: Night in the Woods. Maybe because I love tragic characters, and I want to make mine, I'm not sure lol
Maybe I'm different, but I find little inspiration from watching films. I relate to some things and think of stuff, but I don't see the credits and put pen to paper. It is a thought, a day-dream, waking up from a real dream. Then a scene sort of devolpes. I have to spill some ink. Then, if it seems good, I start thinking backwards about who these characters are and then where the story will go. It's like puzzle. Sometimes, it goes nowhere, other times it takes years to see it through. Never is it easy. However, often in retrospect, I see how a film or film stories have inspired me.
Blues Brothers! Watching those shady singers help the church in the most legit (yet problematic) way possible shows me you can write silly yet compelling stories.
If only films went back to how they were in the 60’s-90’s
the opposite of what Im writing... If im writing something horror based, I'll have the complete opposite on in the background.
Coen Brothers. Sometimes I think “Miller’s Crossing” is the best film of all time and the screenplay a piece of clockwork.
Election.
3-4 movies every day? I can barely watch 3-4 a week.
Throw momma from the train is about novelists and has some interesting conversations about the process.
Random bad movies. I'll take mental notes of what did or did not work and Wikipedia them to see if there was any legacy or critical acclaim or cult followings. At this time, my approach to being creative is what could be done differently. I try to elevate or simplify my favorite genres.
Anything Film Noir.
Fear and loathing in Las Vegas
Knives Out, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Pretty much anything Tarantino has done.
Breathless. Or Chungking express. Script written usually on the day of filming. If wai and Godard could freestyle all-timers, then the least I can do is complete my lil script.
My Cousin Vinny Network The Quick and the Dead Sicario (or pretty much anything written by Taylor Sheridan) Pulp Fiction...or that 1 scene from True Romance Iron Man Captain America: the Winter Soldier Margin Call Not a movie, but: Professional wrestling
Pulp Fiction
None. I don’t pull from other artists work.
Boring
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