As a writer of both novels and screenplays, I can say that screenwriting is a vastly rewarding creative life - if you fight hard enough to do it on your own terms. Whether I write books or not, my screenwriting life has been creatively rewarding and remains so.
From John Fusco
If you understand the importance of developing a relationship with the director and making that director see that you're the best technical adviser and resource in the world on your subject, you'll be invited on set as a respected and integral part of the process.
I have seen too many screenwriters of promise become formula addicts and slaves to stop watch structure. Spend that time watching movies, reading screenplays, reading plays, and most importantly - write from your gut.
In many ways, it's easier to write a book. You have more latitude with structure, and you have the freedom to luxuriate within the internal lives and musings of your characters. But where a screenplay does not always demand great prose, a novel lives or dies by it.
I feel that Marco Polo has really been misrepresented - has never really gotten his due.
We're not just making 'Marco Polo,' we're living it. Because we traveled to Venice... Kazakhstan... into the jungles of Malaysia.
Twelve years ago, when I was on the Pine Ridge Reservation for 'Thunderheart,' I was dong research into Native American horses that had come into extinction. I was tracing certain Lakota bloodlines, and it became an obsession.
I was interviewing an elder, Chief Fool's Crow, who was the ceremonial chief. He was 103 years old. I was getting his information on the history of Lakota horses. He told me the story of Hidalgo and Frank Hopkins.
I started looking into horse history books and came across the actual story of this half-breed endurance horseman and his painted mustang Hidalgo. I wasn't really sure if I was going to do the movie at that point.
I grew up in the unlikely place of Connecticut. The Eastern Woodlands. It was semi-rural where I grew up. I was fascinated by the Piqua and the Mohegan Indians of that area.
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