Friday, April 27, 2007

John Wells and Bradley Whitford Podcast Notes

It was a short and sweet podcast and one of these days I might be able to post more of the full Writer's Guild Foundation event which had Bradley Whitford interviewing John Wells. Whitford did a great job as moderator. I barely scratch the surface with Wells in this brief episode, but decided to make sure to ask him a question I know a lot of our podcast listeners would want to hear more about - submitting TV specs and what Wells looks for in material submitted when considering new writers.

John Wells has made a great contribution to the craft of TV writing and I hope to be able to interview him again another time and also bring more to light about his latest "writer's collective" project that involves other produced writers banded together to make writer-centric studio films on smaller budgets.

Here's some more photos from this event. Of course remember to turn on your "Show Album Artwork" setting in Itunes and you'll always see a pic of myself and the guest - so - a JG & John Wells pic has already been embedded into the podcast.


John Wells interviewed by Bradley Whitford




JG interviewing Bradley Whitford for the podcast

Saturday, April 21, 2007

Thoughts on my 'Dark Matter' LA Times Article

I was as appalled as everyone else this week by the Virginia Tech Massacre. Yet, as I thought about it I was reminded of a film from the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, Dark Matter, which concerns an Asian foreign exchange student murdering fellow students and professors at a college campus. Inspired by a real incident - I was surprised this film which stars Adian Quinn and Meryl Streep wasn't picked up for distribution especially since it also won the Alfred P. Sloan award at Sundance.

After the VT incident - I was simply waiting to see which outlet would put together a story about Dark Matter because I was interested to hear what the principal creative team thought about the VT incident. By Wednesday when no one had come up with a story - I pitched mine to the LA Times who quickly greenlit the story and gave me about 24 hours to turn it around.

I'm pretty happy with the way the story turned out and while Dark Matter certainly won't provide any answers regarding the VT incident - I feel that in a time when people are taking a new interest in academic violence, the film is quite relevant and definitely deserves both a release and closer look.

Here's a link to the article which appears in print on Sat., 4/21/07 in the Calendar section of the LA Times.


Read My Article By Clicking Here