M. Sartre goes to Hollywood. In 1958, John Huston asked Jean-Paul Sartre to write a biopic of Sigmund Freud. "The Huston-Sartre collaboration fell apart in 1959, when Sartre travelled to Huston's home in Ireland to work on the script. The two didn't work well together. 'There was no such thing as a conversation with him,' Huston later recalled. 'He talked incessantly, and there was no interrupting him. You'd wait for him to catch his breath, but he wouldn't.' Meanwhile Sartre, in his letters to Simone de Beauvoir, described Huston as 'perfectly vacant, literally incapable of speaking to those whom he has invited.'" [via Bookslut] [more inside]
posted by Paragon on Mar 1, 2010 - 27 comments

In a very unusual move, 20th Century Fox has decided to release James Cameron’s entire screenplay for AVATAR online. Read the script as a PDF.
posted by twoleftfeet on Jan 11, 2010 - 230 comments

7 scripts you gotta read [more inside]
posted by philip-random on Nov 13, 2009 - 60 comments

ScriptShadow reviews the latest screenplays from Hollywood, usually with links to the screenplays themselves.
posted by alby on Jul 7, 2009 - 13 comments

The Wire - David Simon's original pitch and series bible. "At the end of thirteen episodes, the viewer - who has been lured all this way by a well-constructed police show - is not the simple gratification of hearing handcuffs click. Instead the conclusion is something Euripides or O'Neill might recognize: an America at every level at war with itself." [Previously.] (via)
posted by Electric Dragon on Apr 17, 2009 - 42 comments

Jane Espenson is a tv writer you might have heard of if you've been watching few science fiction and related genre shows in recent years. For awhile now she's been answering questions about script writing from readers of her blog and gracing the blogosphere with her insights into the craft of writing a good story for tv and movies. Today she announced that she's taking a break from advice blogging because she's running out of new ideas for topics to cover.
posted by Tehanu on Dec 9, 2008 - 9 comments

Mortified is a group in various cities that allows people to "share their own adolescent journals, letters, poems, lyrics, home movies, stories and more." It's embarrassing, to be sure, but it's frequently also hilarious (NSFW). Recently they've set up a page to share videos of live performances, and the latest is my favorite so far. "500 Miles To Hollywood" features Elijah Wood, James Denton (Desperate Housewives), Busy Phillips (Freaks & Geeks), Kevin McDonald (Kids in the Hall) and Curtis Armstrong (Revenge of the Nerds) "helping Jason Smith fulfill his dream and bring a 2-decade-old screenplay to life."
posted by ktoad on Apr 10, 2008 - 20 comments

Plotbot is a web-based collaborative screenwriting application where you can write a screenplay with as many or as few people as you like. Adopting the wiki approach to screenwriting, each element is editable by any member of a project. You can also comment on, delete or restore any element. For all of the "filmic storytellers" on MeFi.
posted by ColdChef on Jul 30, 2007 - 18 comments

You may know that November is NaNoWriMo, but did you know that this June is the first annual Script Frenzy?
posted by brundlefly on May 15, 2007 - 20 comments

Without doing any work of your own, now you can make a movie about a few conspiracies to murder the exiled premier of Nigeria. Was it the cowboy, the wizard, or the well-endowed humanoid animal creature in the corner? Or was it an entirely different story altogether?
posted by Subcommandante Cheese on Dec 6, 2006 - 4 comments

"he's making this ARRROOOOOOOOO noise...it's awesome." The story of Lance Bearworthy and the Ursine Shaft of Doom.
posted by ryoshu on Jul 12, 2006 - 30 comments

"Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she had to walk into mine." Casablanca tops the Writers Guild of America's inaugural list of the 101 Greatest Screenplays (full list pdf) of all time, as voted on by members of the guild. Rounding out the top five: Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather; Robert Towne's Chinatown; Orson Welles and Herman Mankiewicz's Citizen Kane; and Joseph Mankiewicz's All About Eve.
posted by soiled cowboy on Apr 8, 2006 - 41 comments

The ultimate spoiler! Download the complete, illustrated screenplay for "Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith" here for $4.99. completely legal.
posted by JPowers on Apr 18, 2005 - 28 comments

Everything you need to know about screenwriting. From John August, writer of Go, Big Fish, Titan A.E.,the upcoming Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the Charlie's Angels movies (ok, we'll forgive him that last one). Very helpful, very down to earth advice.
posted by braun_richard on Jan 8, 2005 - 17 comments

Check that random selection of classic screenplays. I'd like to thank that other girl.
posted by Pretty_Generic on Aug 7, 2004 - 6 comments

Metafilter as a screenplay.
posted by Vidiot on Dec 3, 2003 - 21 comments

"Theft in Hollywood"... I'm strangely fascinated by this insane site. This gentleman believes that innovative ideas like "cloud", "corridor", and "storm" were stolen from his unproduced screenplay, and used in countless movies and commercials. And that's only the surface weirdness. There's much more where that came from, including secret coded messages in fortune cookies from the FBI...
posted by wiremommy on May 3, 2000 - 1 comment