Screenwriting : I think this is very true. What about you guys, is it like this for you too? by Barak Shavit

I always loves me a David Lynch film. They might not be for everyone....but every single one of his films is beautiful. Nice share, Barak! MAJOR CONGRATS TO ELENA DELLE DONNE!!!!!

Tnx Bill:)

There are and there aren't.

Quoleth said, " There is nothing new under the sun".

The way I see it, in screenplay writing my job as a writer is to reveal the story. Connecting the dots. I don't make the dots. I can't really say I make the story up, I'm just putting it up in a way people can make something with it.

On the positive side, though....there really ARE new ideas. Maybe not NEW STORY MOTIFS, per se, but there certainly are new ideas...and new twists....and new characters in new settings and times. The world....she is always a 'changin....... So David Lynch....we're gonna hit the road....and you're gonna get a LOVE LETTER STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART!!!! You know what a love letter is???? It's a...... God....I love David Lynch.....

There are only eight notes to a scale in music... but many variations on the theme. It's the same in writing... There's only seven sins for conflict and seven virtues to oppose.

Linda: According to the Talmud, there are 248 positive commandments (do's), and 365 negative commandments (do not's). That makes for a lot more conflict and virtuosity than the measly Seven Deadly Sins can muster. No wonder I'm always in so much trouble. Oi vey!

26 letters, and all of those different sentences with different words! This is a business of imagination and creativity. You need to be able to come up with story ideas that are different and interesting and compelling. And then when you write the screenplay - every scene needs to be something unique, every character, every line of dialogue has to be original. That's the biz.

William Martell: hear hear! Just out of curiosity, how many different stories have you written? (I only have 11.)

True. No one idea is original. Each is a variant of another. Most ideas are universal to being a human and human psychology - it's called the monomyth. That there's only one story to being human.

I've written about 150 screenplays, and often get called in to pitch 5 different story ideas in some subgenre or another, often with some actor or other element as part of the story. My BLACK THUNDER movie for Showtime started with me pitching a handful of ideas about helicopters and a handful about stealth fighter planes. The one they liked was about "active stealth" - invisible to the human eye. My quick research found that all of our stealth planes use "passive stealth" (radar absorbing material) and I used the "rule of the logical opposite" - passive becomes active... and what would that be and how would that work? I've done that dozens and dozens of times, and usually only one goes to script (if I'm lucky). For a producer, I mined a studio's library for DVD sequels once and came up with 70 pitches - each with a wild concept in addition to whatever the original film had. Not a single one of those happened! This is a business of ideas, so you'd better have a million of them. Example: TRUE BELIEVER: ALIEN DEFENSE Washed up lawyer Eddie Dodd takes a pro-bono case: a farmer accused of blowing up the headquarters of a Microsoft-like company with a panel van full of fertilizer. The client’s reason: he was captured by aliens, probed and released... and the aliens ordered him to do it. Eddie prepares an insanity defense... until he stumbles on another case where a crazed gunman claims aliens told him to kill... and another case where a lunatic bomber claims he was captured and probed by aliens. Are these cased connected? Are there really aliens? Eddie tracks the alien encounters, discovering a conspiracy to destroy companies for financial gain on the stock market... using a real flying saucer and mind control drugs. But after Eddie is captured by the flying saucer and drugged... who will believe him? There are 69 others, plus a dozen disaster movies for disasters that haven't been used yet, plus...

William: 150 Screenplays? ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY SCREENPLAYS??? Crikey...you just made my monkey faint!!! That's 15,000 feet of scripts. If you laid them out...page by page...down Hollywood Boulevard...they'd begin at Laurel Canyon and go a half-mile past the Fonda Theater...all the way to the 101! William Martell is a WRITING GOD! As an aside....I read one of your scripts a while back....Android Army....that's a very cool script, William! THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS TO THE PEOPLE AND ANIMALS OF UMBRIA, ITALY.

Right, Bill! Not even Mr. S Goyer or Tony Gilroy has written that many scripts. Good for you though, William. You definitely have a lot of experiences by now.

David Lynch is one of my favorite film directors of all time.

We have no idea how many scripts Tony Gilroy has written, we only know what's listed on IMDB (which is likely only a tenth of what he's written, since only about a tenth of what is bought or commissioned goes all the way to film). I've also been doing this for a while - my first produced screenplay was made in 1981 (and there's a screening of it in San Francisco in October!) when I was 20 or 21 and now I'm old.

Here are examples of why David Lynch is right: - Lucas' Star Wars is Kurosawa's "Hidden Fortress" and various samurai films placed together, and he never lied. - Tarantino's "Reservoir Dogs" is Ringo Lam's "City on Fire", and he never lied about it. - "The Hunger Games" is "Battle Royale" though the author Suzanne Collins denied (she lied) that she had never seen the film. It is obvious, BR came out years before she wrote the book. She must've seen it and got the idea from it. Otherwise, why would the two stories have identical scenes and characters. Both story starts with a rebellion, she just changed it from student rebellion to people rebellion. If you watch BR and the first Hunger Games film, you'll see that they are exactly the same movie, scene by scene and characters by characters (Niida as Peeta Mellark, sound identical?), Haymitch as Kawada, the survivor of a previous game who became a guide for the current contestant and etc. She got the idea of the fake romance between Peeta and Katness from the one with Niida and Chigusa in Battle Rayale. - Joss Whedon's "Serenity" and "Firefly" are the "Outlaw Star" anime thought he claimed he's never seen the anime (what liar). - Cameron's "Avatar" is "Princess Monnoke" in space. Man versus nature. Gian animals. Humans greed for Iron Ore as Unobtanium. Iron Town as Hell's Gate in the middle a forest. A ruthless leader. A romance between warrior and a princess. Get it? All these stories are the same. The author/writers just changed and added other things to make their version look different.

I’m at the doctors surgery and it’s been a while since I’ve logged on...was reminded by someone whom wanted to connect so I peruse the site and having noticed this piece from Barak Shavit just had to climb onto the ‘idea’ of commenting...I adore this man and have been without bragging; fortunate enough to have met him following a Q&A at the BAFTA’S of which I am extremely lucky to be a member. The most intelligent sentient being, so chilled and so fourth. The word ‘idea’ came up in the Q&A (I’ve saved this piece on my iPad screen to look at later) so I’m looking forward in viewing it. The chap interviewing Mr Lynch was not to my liking as he was ‘prodding’ him rather than organically conversing with him however mr Lynch being mr Lynch took it in his stride. And yes, for me it stems from an idea then it grows sometimes not always as I have a preference in listening, he calls it idea, I call it the ‘sound’ however with the idea and without the sound adding on top the ‘vision’ there’ll be no cake to bake...! I shall get back on my thoughts regarding the video...many thanks...