Jaime Klein: Photographer (still), producer of marketing & distribution and screenwriter in Los Angeles, California.

Yeah, although DePalma was a visual virtuoso in a way. The museum scene is purposely filled with modern art because DePalma is influenced by how much painters accomplish without words. More recently Stephen Soderbergh has written about his need to get away from narrative storylines and go back to a more purely visual art form. However, he seemed to have reconsidered this line -- he's producing/directing an interesting new series called The Knick on Cinemax starting August 8th. As for me, I love story more than dialog or visuals. I write plot-strong mystery/thrillers and I'd love to hear more about your scripts. If you want to share ideas, send me a private message. Lee.

Three that I can never get out of my head because of the very smart dialogue: Tombstone (favorite actors: Powers Boothe, Dana Delany, Val Kilmer, Michael Biehn), The Shootist (John Wayne, Lauren Bacall, Ron Howard), Big Jake (John Wayne, Maureen O'Hara)

Yeah, Tombstone is classic. "I'm your huckleberry." My favorite western. One of my new favorites is LOCKOUT, 2012, by Luc Besson, with Stephen St. Leger and James Mather. Guy Pearce plays the protag and every line out of his mouth cracks me up. He talks trash the entire movie. That's my type of dialogue!

I look forward to being part of this community, but as with a lot of sharing online I am protective of my coterie of friends and won't tell them about new things or invite them to join sites until I am sure it's worth their while. This appears to be a top flight site, filled with wonderful creatives and enthusiastic members. Once I am confident that this site is all it promises, I will be happy to pass along the info to my cohorts.

Absolutely no problem, Jaime. Take your time. It's been a remarkable 3 years around these parts. Think you will find this community to be talented, selfless, and overwhelmingly positive.

I'm on my tenth (book or screenplay) and some of the "boring" ideas now get filtered pre-typing. Not to say there aren't any boring ideas in a first draft, but I'm getting a little bit better at excluding them before they get past my fingers. It helps that I plot in advance, so I've got a pretty good idea what a scene needs to do. But you're right. There are a multitude of ways to achieve what a scene needs to achieve. The key is to find an interesting way of achieving that goal. I've just (today) finished the first draft of a screenplay. After I let it sit for a couple of weeks, as an exercise (prompted by your post) I think I'll go through it scene by scene and see which can be implemented in a more interesting way.

You need to FEEL it. No one else can tell you. Tell your story.

To me it's not just writing that matters, but re-writing. I've never rewritten or changed something in my scripts that didn't make it better. Read movie reviews (Roger Ebert) to learn what to do and what not to do; don't just watch the best movies, but read books about the making of those movies to see how those films turned out as good as they did (Scenes From A Revolution, Mad as Hell: The Making of Network, Live Fast, Die Young: The Making of Rebel Without a Cause, The Nashville Chronicles, Easy Riders Raging Bulls, and Vanity Fair's Tales of Hollywood, just to name a few of the best)

You stop writing after you have sent it out to friends in the industry and a script doctor (me) and they say it is terrific. Although everyone will have a different opinion. Everyone! SO you have to be the final judge. DerynWarren.com

What I'm doing currently is rewriting a script as I finish the current draft. With Celtx, I can make a copy of a script, and work on both separately. So while I'm very happy with the current draft, I have alternate ideas, which I like as well. So I'm essentially working on two drafts at once to decide which one world better when all's said and done.

So my guess is Alle the only one talent you don't have is drawing! hahahaha!!!

Respect to that, Dan. My ethos is similar. "Offer to sweep the floors for free and make yourself indispensable."

I believe your scripts make your connections. So, I seem to have just sold a spec about an hour ago (contracts going to my lawyer) and that came about due to something of mine the producer read about a decade ago which lead to a meeting, then some more meetings a couple years later, then some more meetings and an assignment that never went to screen a couple of years after that, and then last year I told him about this spec script I'd just finished which was not in his genre and not anything he'd want to read... and he said send it, and then we had some more meetings and now we seem to have a deal (well, lawyers and contracts are involved). But I did not know this guy before someone passed him whatever he read initially. That script opened the door. Obviously, great to make connections. You want to do something that gets you close to producers or directors or stars. I know a guy who was a star's personal assistant and walked his dog and took his clothes to the cleaners... and that got him his first screenwriting gig. Another guy was an entertainment journalist for a magazine and interviewed directors and stars, and that lead to his first screenwriting deal. There are a million ways in...