Have you ever had a significant event in your life that inspired you to write a screenplay? Last year, I wrote a script that was largely based on a summer I spent playing rock and roll in LA night clubs.
What about you?
Screenwriting : What inspired you to write that? by Phillip E. Hardy, "The Real Deal"
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I recently started a treatment based loosely on my childhood through college years. I was at an event where a woman shared her story that I thought would make a compelling script but wasn’t sure how to approach her about it. As I thought about it, I realized the parts that I connected with most were similar to my own story. The hard part now is narrowing doesn’t what I want to tell.
I also have a short that I just came back to that’s based on an experience I had at a concert a few years ago.
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What inspired me to write "Really Old School" was my wanting to build a movie around modern-day teens playing ragtime. I'd competed alongside (or against, depending on your point of view) lots of them- and lots of adults, too- at an event called the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival. Takes place every Memorial Day weekend in Oxford, Mississippi (its home since 2016; before that, it took place in a succession of Illinois cities, starting with the inaugural contest...in 1975).
I competed from 1993 to 2015; never won the thing...but I had a lot of fun.
It was also cool to watch the Junior Division contestants (18 years of age and under) outplay many of us adults in the Regular Division.
Some years, I wasn't able to make the trip to Illinois for the contest. One of those years was 2007...when I first thought of writing "ROS."
And the script wouldn't have come to pass if Nick Holle (one of the directors of "The Entertainers," the very documentary about the OTPP Contest) hadn't given me his Power Mac.
Nick, thanks!
Everybody here at Stage 32, thanks!
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My first script, that started me on this journey, actually came from a very personal place. It was originally a novel I began writing years ago sparked by an event in my life but realized while I could write poetry, I sucked at crafting a novel lol. Few years later I picked it back up and decided to turn it into a script. I didn't write the real life story that influenced it, but it's like a memento to the person and event that inspired it. Anyone who knows of that particular event can easily see it's influence in the script.
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Back when I started writing scripts, I took the saying "write what you know" literally. So, I wrote a short film while at USC (no dialogue allowed) that encapsulated the moment my mom took my sister and me and left my dad. The great feedback I got from that film made me realize that what I had really done was write the emotions that I knew, more than the event. It was later that I learned that "write what you know" meant precisely that. Phew! Beginner's luck!
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My script is loosely based on on my daughter's interaction with horses. She lived, are and slept horses up to her accident.
I'm busy with one now, inspired by her organ donation
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My first script was based on my life growing up during the drug and alcohol fueled 1980s in Alaska, and how Black Monday essentially eradicated those excessive lifestyles for most of us.
All my stories are some true event I took and turned into a story.