Happy 10th anniversary to me! Lessons learned from the last decade.

Ten years, man! TEN YEARS!

If you told me when I started this that I'd still be making (irregular) updates to this blog ten years later, I'd have thought you were nuts.

I'm trying to think how much I'd have believed if you told me this blog would eventually lead to some of the best friendships of my life, several jobs, my first manager, my first pitch, and professional connections beyond anything I would have achieved on my own. It all probably would have sounded pretty good then.

It's funny to look at the last ten years with that perspective. I've come a long way, but with so many goals still unfulfilled, it's easy to miss and appreciate so many other professional milestones. I've come tantalizingly close to some of the others - my first script assignment, chief among them - and sometimes it's easy to get lost in the misses rather than appreciating the hits.

That's good general advice for all of you. You don't have to have a blog in order to take stock of how far you've come on your journey.

Ten years ago I thought I was ready to break in. Now I look at some of what I wrote then and cringe at how much better it could be if I wrote it today. Then I reflect on how I'd probably never write something like that today because I've grown beyond the subject matter itself. Five years from now, I'll probably look back at my latest scripts today and go, "Ugh."

That is EXACTLY the way it should be.

Ten years ago I couldn't have imagined the ways that this blog and especially Twitter would open a line of communication between me and once-untouchable professionals, as well as give me insight into other struggling amateurs. I already knew you could learn a lot from bad scripts - I just didn't realize how much you could learn from bad script WRITERS.

The Hack sees no room for improvement. They value quantity over quality. If you offered to read something of theirs, they'd present you with ten scripts - unable to choose a sample from that pile because they're ALL good. The Hack is terrible at accepting notes. They seek affirmation of their brilliance, not mentorship. Introspection is not something they're capable of.

The Hack cultivates access but not relationships. To them, the people they know in the business are resources to be exploited, not emotional touchstones to be maintained. When they meet you, their first thought is, "What can you do for me and why are you not already doing it?" They will never see past themselves and their own goals. Every achievement someone else gets is something that they feel entitled to.

I've seen the Hack so many times in the last decade. They're the person who won't take no for an answer when you decline to read their script, the Jekyll and Hyde who go from praising your blog or Twitter as genius, to saying "What the fuck do you know anyway?" the moment you offer a critical thought.

There's a Hack inside each of us and your eventual success will depend on how good you are at resisting its impulses. This isn't limited to just the poor social skills of a Hack, but also their ability to separate criticism of the work from personal criticism. One thing putting yourself out there on a blog does is that it makes you vulnerable to criticism. Every day you're putting something out into the world and there's a chance it'll make you look stupid.

That's the Fear. To be a good writer, you have to overcome the Fear. You cannot self-censor out of fear of someone not liking something. There's a moment in ED WOOD where the eponymous is told that his film is the worst that someone has ever seen. Without missing a beat, he cheerfully responds, "Well, my next one will be better."

To be a good writer, you need that attitude while also NOT being dismissive of criticism. "My next one will be better." And it will be better only if you MAKE it better. Seek out reaction. Learn from it. Adapt. Every reaction is a valid reaction. No one's making you respond to every critique. I've ignore entire write-ups that my friends have given me on scripts because I've felt they came at the writing from the wrong angle. Despite that, my blood pressure didn't race as I heard any of these "It's not for me" speeches.

If someone's telling you something doesn't work, your impulse is going to be to stop the flow of criticism. Resist that impulse. Keep asking questions: "Why didn't it work? What specifically provoked this reaction? Do you know what specifically provoked you?" Dig into the reactions. It's as close as you'll get to an unbiased read.

This isn't the only lesson of the last ten years, but it's an important one - you've gotta grow beyond your pond. Take chances. Write something that scares you. Ignore the voice in your head that says you'll make a fool of yourself writing a particular script and just write it. You can't know the confines of your comfort zone until you've actively pushed against it.

Sure, know the craft. Read everything you can about the three act structure. Be aware of the tropes inherent to the genre you're writing in and see which you can ignore, which you can use and which you want to subvert. The last month's sampler platter of writing is entirely made up of insight that can help you. Filling your head with the nonsense and insight of others is only part of it, though.

And know yourself. You have to understand the machine you're operating to get those words on the page. I leveled up numerous times in the last ten years, but the one that really left an impression was my 16 Great TV Shows series. With age and insight, I was better able to see why specific shows fed my imagination the way they did. Without the pressure to pump out new content, I might never have done something like that.

I can't really say what the next ten years hold. Looking back demonstrated to me I'd lost the zest for quick, basic tips. I enjoy doing the deeper dives, talking about what a film or a TV show means to me. If nothing else, it often makes for more interesting conversation than debating if sluglines should be bolded and how to use "we see." Engaging the substance of the work is so much more rewarding. Taking an unusual point of view, as I did with MICHAEL F-ING BAY, and exploring it fully was a similarly high-risk, high-return experiment.

I've always said I didn't want this blog to become so consuming that it was impeding my work as a writer. I'm not here to be a blogger, I'm here to be a TV and film writer. For a long time, my mistake was thinking that there was a clear line of demarcation between the two. "Bitter" gave this writer access to people he'd never have met otherwise. It allowed me to befriend several professional writers and other non-pros at about my level and led to numerous instances of them evaluating my work. It raised the bar for me, being out in a much larger pond. "Bitter" taught me as much about my own work and he hopefully taught you about yours.

So thank all of you. Thank you for coming back here for ten years. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you to those who took a chance on me, as a writer, a client, an employee. I had two hopes when I started this blog: that I'd be able to help other developing writers and that I might build my own calling card. On my better days, I'd like to think I've achieved both.

Thank you, Bitter. And thank you all.

10 Years of Bitter Posts - Pilot Live Tweets

While I was working on a new TV pilot, I did something that really should be required for anyone doing the same - I reviewed the pilots of some of my favorite shows, as well as some shows with similar genres as the one I was writing.

You shouldn't just passively watch these introductory episodes. You study them - observe how they establish characters and plotlines. Take note of how efficiently a character is established in their first scene. Scrutinize how scenes are written to showcase multiple dynamics at once, all while advancing the story and establishing a complete world.

Pilots are some of the hardest things to write. They're full of exposition, but shouldn't FEEL expository. There's limited space to establish seven or eight characters to a strong enough degree that the audience feels a connection with them AND they have to tell a compelling story while providing a model that shows this world can sustain dozens more stories in the same location with the same people.

There are a thousand ways a well-intentioned pilot can go bad. Just look at the pilots that made it on-air and marvel that there were probably six times as many that didn't get to that stage.

But a great pilot? It's like watching a goddamn symphony.

So for several weeks, I did live-tweet breakdowns of classic pilot eps, covering several different genres and styles. While I watched each ep, I broke down scene-by-scene what was going on, how it served a function in the pilot and highlighted writing techniques that it's useful to know. After the fact, I archived these live-tweets on the blog, converting them into an easier to read paragraph form.

I did my best to make sure these made sense even if you didn't have the show on a TV in front of you. Take a look at these six livetweets.


Pilot Breakdowns:
Veronica Mars
Alias
The Office
Homicide: Life on the Street
Everwood
Revenge

10 Years of Bitter Posts - How I Write a Spec Episode

I continued my introspective streak with a series doing something I've wanted to do ever since I started the blog - take the reader through my process of developing, breaking and writing a script. The challenge I faced was that I didn't want to do that with anything I was actually going to put out there under my name and it seemed to draining to invest all that time into a script written specifically to be thrown away.

A few years ago I briefly considered writing about how to break a spec episode. That at least would slightly mitigate the intellectual property issue, as stealing a spec script would be useless unless the thief intended to pass it off as their own. Then, last year I hit on a way that seemed likely to bear results.

I made an idle joke about how Season 3 of 13 REASONS WHY should take its cues from the short-lived AWAKE, where a detective found himself shifting between two worlds, one where his son survived a car accident that killed his wife, and another with the victim and survivor reversed. On a lark, I tweeted this pitch.

When I was writing that piece on @dylanminnette, I was reminded he was on the excellent AWAKE which would have been PERFECT for the streaming era. Maybe next season of #13ReasonsWhy can follow 2 timelines: one where Hannah lived and one where she died.

— Bitter Script Reader (@BittrScrptReadr) May 31, 2018

Yet this idea stuck with me more than many of my other one-off jokes. Maybe it was the fact I had just come off writing a legitimate spec episode of the show and was already geared up to be inside the heads of these characters and the rhythm of the show. Or maybe I was just bored and had enough time for my mind to ponder, "Hey, what if I really DID go through with this.

I just was stuck on this image of Clay waking up and Hannah lying beside him. He thinks he's losing his mind until he reaches out to touch her. That's when he confirms she's not only solid, but she still bears the scars on her wrists from her suicide attempt.

That image stuck with me - the visual tell of "She slashed her wrists, everything you know about her happened... but she survived it in this timeline." It stuck with me long enough to ponder the Butterfly Effect of Hannah surviving. That thought exercise more or less led me to the conclusion that there was an interesting story to tell here.

And since this was useless as an original spec for obvious reasons, or as a spec episode for any kind of contest (since this kind of crossover, impossibly out-of-continuity spec is forbidden by most), I'd finally found an idea that I was excited about exploring and was useless enough to become a featured blog series.

Of course, me being me, I went a little overboard. I reasoned that for this episode to truly feel like the first episode of a season, I should have some idea what the overall shape of that season would look like. That way, the first chapter would feel authentic. I started with just a few broadstrokes and bulletpoints, just enough to give a sense of what the running storylines in both timelines would be.

But why not go further? As an intellectual exercise, I started sorting those into 13 chapters, refining the story into an overall three-act structure that somewhat recalled how 13 REASONS WHY broke its story in the first season.

And if I'd come that far, why not flesh it out just a little bit for a few of those episodes? And so bullet points became paragraphs.

Yeah, uh, I kinda broke the whole season. But that's MY craziness. You don't HAVE to do that. My process on this was that it helped to know the ending in order to tell Chapter One. And no, this isn't all prelude to drop an entire season of spec episodes on you. I'm crazy but I'm not insane.

I'll admit, after several friends and strangers all came back to me with reactions in the vein of: "This feels like the show. I wish this WAS what they were doing for season three!" I pondered the viability of assembling a few more like-minded writers and writing an entire spec season. That last about ten seconds, but I still pondered it.

You can download the script here. I'm very flattered by the positive reactions from people, particularly those familiar with the show who felt I nailed the characters' voices.

Spec episodes are a particular kind of writing, some might even call it a lost art. There are showrunners and reps who are only interested in reading original material. I've also talked to a number of showrunners and high-level writers who think that it's an invaluable skill for new writers to practice mimicking the voice of another writer because that's what the job requires when on staff for a TV show. That's all the convincing I need to practice this end of the craft at least once a year.

If you're interested in my process, make your way through this 10-part series.

Part 1: Finding the concept
Part 2: Character
Part 3: Story and Theme Development
Part 4: The Break
Part 5: Act One Scenes
Part 6: Act Two Scenes
Part 7: Act Three Scenes
Part 8: Act Four Scenes
Part 9: When your lead character demands a rewrite
Part 10: Act Five Scenes

10 Years of Bitter Posts - 16 Great TV Shows

As I ran out of topics to explore in screenwriting, I unconsciously started refocusing the blog as a look inward at myself and the kind of writer I am. I suppose that's not a particularly shocking direction for any blog to take, but the early life of the blog didn't have much introspection. There was plenty about my experiences, but little that truly looked deeper.

As an exercise, I tried to compile the most compact list of TV shows that made an impact on me as a writer. To keep it from just becoming a list of favorite shows, I applied the criteria that for a show to make it on the list, it had to have blown my mind or completely changed my way of thinking about a particular kind of show, or television itself. This meant many great shows were left aside, but it resulted in a list that more plainly demonstrated to me what my influences were and what I should be writing towards.

The result was a series called 16 Great TV Shows, and you can find them here:

Part 1: The Wonder Years
Part 2: The Simpsons
Part 3: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Part 4: Seinfeld
Part 5: The John Larroquette Show
Part 6: ER
Part 7: Newsradio
Part 8: The X-Files
Part 9: Law & Order
Part 10: Homicide: Life on the Street
Part 11: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Part 12: Gilmore Girls
Part 13: Everwood
Part 14: The Office
Part 15: Breaking Bad
Part 16: 13 Reasons Why

If you're a writer who dreams of working in TV, I highly recommend figuring out your own list like this. It reminds you of the things you responded to when you were younger, and for me it was something of a compass, showing me where I should go.

I really enjoyed reliving how and why each of these shows made such an impact on me, and it felt more rewarding to talk about something personal beyond just venting about bad things I've seen. This is the kind of project worth doing, because it's one that only YOU can do.

10 Years of Bitter Posts - Michael F-ing Bay

Coming into home stretch of my month-long retrospective/sampler platter, we've finally reached one of my more absurd projects - MICHAEL F-ING BAY: The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films.  Yes, I devoted an entire summer of my life to writing about the hidden genius in Michael Bay's films.

You might be wondering, "What would possess someone to do something like this?" Well, fortunately,  I was invited to write a column for Film School rejects about why I wrote the book in the first place.

The real genesis of the book came Summer 2014, when I saw a lot of people on Twitter talking about going to see the latest Transformers film despite being certain it was terrible. (That’s somewhat amusing when contrasted with the latest Ghostbusters conversation, where you can get into a fight with a Ghost-Bro who hasn’t seen the film and STILL is certain it’s terrible.) Unsurprisingly, these people walked out of the film with their assumptions confirmed and somewhat disingenuously acted shocked at how much they disliked it.

I won’t say I felt bad for Bay, but I briefly considered that perhaps his audience was seeing in his films what they wanted to see. So as an experiment, I resolved to view Transformers: Age of Extinction with not only an open mind, but one that gave him the same benefit of the doubt that Hitchcock and Scorsese are afforded when their films are dissected in film school. 

You can find the rest of "Why I Wrote A Book About The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay's Films" here on Film School Rejects.

If you want a taste of the book, read the chapters on TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION and THE ROCK for free at their respective posts.

Self-publishing has made it almost too easy to write a book. Even though I'd toyed with a couple book ideas before this one, you only get to make one debut and I didn't want to put something out there until I had something interesting to say. Though the book never became the huge best-seller I dreamed it might be, I don't regret a minute I spent working on it.

The only downside of the book is that it set the bar pretty high as far as coming up with a "book-worthy" idea. I don't have any interest in repeating the Michael Bay thesis on another filmmaker and if I ever do write another book as The Bitter Script Reader, I want it to be something memorable and the kind of thing no one else would write.

So yes, if you were holding out on me doing a greatest hits kind of book, featuring the best of my blog posts, I'm going to have to disappoint you. I just don't see the appeal in being just another screenwriting advice book out there. Maybe some day I'll compile all my interview transcripts into a book, or do a new book of interviews, though.

The original announcement of the book can be found here.
All related MICHAEL F-ING BAY posts can be found here.

Why not check out the appearances from my "media tour?"

My interview with Scott Myers on Go Into The Story:
Part 1 - Michael Bay's JUNO.
Part 2 - "Michael Bay is the Tyler Perry of China."

My interview with Amanda Pendolino.

My interview on the Broken Projector podcast:
You can find the episode embedded at Film School Rejects here.
Download the episode directly here.

My interview on the Draft Zero Podcast
Go to the episode's page here.
Download the episode in mp3 form here.


But what if you don't have a Kindle or a tablet with a Kindle app? Good news, you can still read MICHAEL F-ING BAY! Go here and download the Kindle reading app for your computer.

Here are the instructions for the Kindle for PC program.
Here's where you go for Kindle for Windows 8.
Here's the site for you Kindle for Mac people.

Link roundup:
Amazon Author Page here.
$4.99 Kindle version of the book here.
$10.99 Paperback edition here.

10 Years of Bitter Posts - Inside baseball about studio development from Eric Heisserer and a WGA arbiter on the WGA credits process

One of the later joys of this blog was when I got to deal with some inside baseball stuff. In 2014, I recruited Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Eric Heisserer (ARRIVAL, LIGHTS OUT, BIRD BOX) to peel back the curtain on the studio development process. Here's a taste of what he had to say:

You are brought in to pitch on a big studio project. It is most likely a remake, adaptation, or sequel. The studios have property and rights, and the way for them to hold onto those rights or to do something corporate-like and “leverage intellectual assets” is to dig into their own libraries. These are the jobs.

Your agent tells you this is a great opportunity to get in good with a major studio. This is where the money is. This is how you will pay rent without taking a day job. In other words, don’t screw this up.

The good news is: You’ve been brought in because someone already loves your writing. Maybe it’s the production company set to make the movie. Maybe it’s someone among the top brass at the studio. Whatever the case, you feel good—someone’s read and loved your script. Your voice is what they want.

You pitch your take on their project, and it’s one you really want to write. You’re passionate and invested. Later you’ll realize that passion and excitement will often count more than story logic and in-depth character work. You get hired, and sent off to write your first draft with a few notes from the studio based on your pitch and/or outline.

You can find the rest of it here.

And then after that, I got to demystify the WGA arbitration process with this talk with a screenwriter who has been a WGA arbiter about how screenplay credits are determined:

As an arbiter, it's your job to determine the appropriate screen credit, so does this mean you have to read every single draft ever written for that project, even drafts that were completely abandoned by their producers?

If writer A wrote 10 drafts for the project, and writer B wrote 6 drafts, the arbiter does not read 16 drafts. Each participating writer picks one draft they feel best represents their work, in terms of how much of it is reflected in the final shooting script. So, in that case, the arbiter is reading 2 drafts. But if there was a writer hired for that project, and the producer "abandoned" the draft as you say, the arbiter would still read it. All participating writers are included in the arbitration, whether the producer "used" their draft or not. It is up to the Guild to determine who gets credit, not producers, not the studio, etc.

There are some notorious examples of films with an excessive number of writers. THE FLINTSTONES, for instance, had about 60 writers. In a case like that, does it mean the arbiter had to read at least 60 drafts? How does one keep straight what came from which writer and then somehow decide which three writers deserve the credit? And what is the largest number of drafts you personally have read for an arbitration?

In that case, then the arbiter would read 60 drafts. Each writer is assigned a letter, based on the order in which they were hired for the project. Once I read 12 screenplays for an arbitration. They arrived on my doorstep in a very large box :)

You can find the rest of it here.

10 Years of Bitter Posts - All of my posts for Film School Rejects

When I started writing my blog, I never even considered the possibility that it might lead to writing for other outlets. I certainly hoped it would boost the profile of my writing, but I had no ambitions of making a career out of it.

It was Scott Beggs who invited me to write something for Film School Rejects, and if I'm being honest, my first inclination was to politely decline. Then, what usually happens happened - I started getting ideas. To my delight, Scott liked my idea - a weird take exploring how one might apply the nitpicking of the modern STAR TREK films to WRATH OF KHAN, which is generally acknowledged as one of the stronger TREK movies. It was fun to kind of poke the bear of fandom.

So every now and then when I had a more pop-culture-y idea that seemed like it would stir up a reaction with FSR's reader base, I'd pitch it. At the time, my blog audience was pretty decent, but FSR seemed to have a wider reach and it was fun having my stuff read by people less familiar to me.

I've gone back and linked to ALL of my Film School Rejects posts, along with some reflections on each one. The posts in bold are some of my favorite ones, and also some of the more unique ones.


If The Internet Had Existed When ‘Wrath of Khan’ Hit Theaters - My first FSR piece remains my favorite, particularly for the reaction it stirred up. Alas, the original comments section was the casualty of at least two server moves for the site, but it was GLORIOUS to see half the comments on this piece come from anti-JJ TREK fans who used this to attack the new films while the other half of the commenters kept trying to explain, "You don't get it! YOU are what this article is mocking and you're doing it right now!"

Why The World Needs ‘Superman Returns’ - I am the internet's official defender of SUPERMAN RETURNS. I loved it when it came out, I felt it deserved a sequel then and will still argue that the only post-Nolan DC film that can hold a candle to it is WONDER WOMAN. I love this movie, and this piece explains why. I also tell you why most arguments against it aren't intellectually honest.

The Biggest Challenges Facing a ‘Wonder Woman’ Movie - This is a fun one to look back on now that we actually have a WW film. I think that Patty Jenkins deftly navigated every minefield I foresaw here, which is quite the feat because I KNOW other filmmakers would have faltered.

Must There Be a Wonder Woman Movie? - Do we "need" a WONDER WOMAN movie, I asked? Is it about a love for the character or is all this chatter coming from the perspective that she's just so big as a licensing icon that it's her time. After having seen and heard of some takes that were all wrong, I started to wonder if no WW movie was better than a bad WW movie.

The Long, Troubled Future History of ‘Back to the Future Part IV’ - Another early favorite, where I imagined the future production path of BACK TO THE FUTURE PART IV.

Why Isn’t There a Solo Black Widow Movie? I make the case that CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER created the moment where it was inexplicable that we hadn't seen evidence of a Black Widow solo film, while defending that her supporting role in THE WINTER SOLDIER shouldn't be treated like a demotion.

Badly Written Spin-offs (Not Gender) Killed Female Superhero Movies - The lie has persisted for decades that no one wants to see female superhero movies. I reexamined SUPERGIRL, CATWOMAN and ELEKTRA to see if that reputation is warrented and if those films should be our baseline.

Bombs Away: Enjoying ‘Batman & Robin’ on Its Own Campy Terms - What if, hear me out, what if BATMAN & ROBIN wasn't as bad as we've all claimed for 20 years?

5 Modern Gems Released During the Dumping Ground That is the Last Half of August

When The Smartest Version of Freddy Krueger Invaded Our World - I stan for the under-rated WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE.

Spare Us Your 90-Minute Video Takedown of The Force Awakens - I hate Red Letter Media's overblown takedowns of the Star Wars films almost as much as the critical culture it spawned. This was my appeal for sanity ahead of THE FORCE AWAKENS.

Why I Wrote a Book About The Unheralded Genius in Michael Bay’s Films - The origins of my Michael Bay book, revealed!

Mark Hamill’s Comic Book: The Movie Shows That Luke Skywalker is One of Us - I reviewed Mark Hamill's directorial debut.

A Look Ahead to What The Next 15 Years Holds for the Lights Out Franchise - using prior horror franchises as a guide, I prognosticate what's in store for LIGHTS OUT.

6 Films That Are Waiting for Their Legacy Sequels - What other franchises are ready for THE FORCE AWAKENS treatment?

An Appreciation of That Thing You Do on its 20th Anniversary  - I celebrate one of my favorite films by looking at the Extended Cut as a teaching tool for how strategic editing can shift the entire feeling of a film.

Reclaiming The Fun Side of Batman - Adam West and Burt Ward return to the roles that made them iconic and I celebrate the need for Batman to get a little silly now and then.

Gilmore Girls “Final Four Words” Leave the Most Important Conversation Unsaid - I give high marks to the GILMORE GIRLS revival on Netflix.

How The Flash and Supergirl became my wife’s gateway drug to superhero fandom - Learn how the biggest fight my wife and I ever had was about if the time-travel in season one of THE FLASH made sense.

The Known Unknowns of Star Wars - The Star Wars franchise has an entire galaxy to play with and the first announced spinoffs were all built around familiar characters. I talk a little bit about why that is disappointing

7 Films That Could Be Headlined by Creepy Dead CGI Actors - ROGUE ONE's Peter Cushing resurrection inspired this piece.

The Passengers Dilemma - if you've seen PASSENGERS, you know the end of the film has the two main characters stranded on a spaceship that will take 89 years to reach their destination, but only one working hibernation pod. They decide that each can't condemn the other to lonliness so they live together. Here, I work out the math that has them splitting time in the pod and time awake so that they could both live to reach the destination, albeit at an advanced age.

A Brutally Honest Razzie Ballot - One of my all-time favorite posts, inspired by THR's "Brutally Honest Oscar Ballots," I imagine a Razzie voter doing the same for their ballot.

The Films of Frank Capra III, Ranked - A slightly tongue-in-cheek piece ranking the films of First Assistant Director Frank Capra III.

Why Are We Compelled to Rank Movies in a Series with Each New Release? - Film culture sites love to rank every new Marvel movie, Tarantino movie, or anything else in a series when the latest one comes out. But does it really mean anything?

An Aggregated Oral History of 2009 Films Ruined By the Last WGA Strike - Compiling quotes from the makers of TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN, QUANTUM OF SOLICE, G.I. JOE, STAR TREK, and WOLVERINE, I give a sense of how the 2007-08 WGA strike really screwed up the films of 2009.

Ten Years Later, THE HOAX is Even More Timely In The Trump Era - a salute to one of my favorite underrated films, THE HOAX. Richard Gere plays Clifford Irving, a failing writer who fakes a biography of Howard Hughes after claiming to have been personally selected by the recluse. As one lie piles upon another, Clifford keeps building the con into an unstable house of cards. If you liked CAN YOU EVER FORGIVE ME, this 2007 film will probably scratch a similar itch for you.

Consider With Reservations: The Stars of Quantity Over Quality Cinema - I look at the direct-to-video output of such reliable talents in that area like John Cusack, Bruce Willis, Pierce Brosnan and Nicolas Cage.

How Movies Like 'King Ralph' Condition Audiences to Give Ill-Prepared Leaders a Chance - I blame Trump on one of his closest filmic counterparts - King Ralph

'Justice League' and the Fetishizing of Longer Cuts - Is longer actually better when it comes to films? This is a contemplation of how rarer, less-polished cuts can take on a myth of their own.

News from Earth-2: The Never-Seen Zack Snyder Cut of 'Batman v Superman' - one of the trippier posts I've written, wherein I posit that Joss Whedon had been brought in to save BvS instead of JUSTICE LEAGUE and that only now are we seeing "The Snyder Cut" of BvS. This article catalogues the differences between the Whedon Cut and the Snyder Cut.

The Morality of Erasing Content Made By Sexual Predators - As MeToo continues, what do we do when men we're now supposed to hate were responsible for art that was incredibly popular?

In Defense of Luke Skywalker - I make it clear where I stand on THE LAST JEDI as I debate the claims that it presents an implausible version of Luke Skywalker

An Ode to the Past and Future Films of Dawson Leery - on the 20th anniversary of Dawson's Creek - I went through Dawson Leery's filmography and tried to figure out if his movies would have been any good.

In the Aftermath of Tragedy, Generation Rey is Showing Why It's Their Time to Lead - As the Parkland survivors became gun advocates, I drew a parallel between them fixing what the Columbine generation couldn't and Rey fixing the sins of Luke Skywalker.

If You Want To Make a Superman Show, Make a Superman Show! - I took a look at how KRYPTON appeared to bend over backwards to introduce Superman elements in a show that takes place pre-Superman and decried prequels that want to have it both ways. I might have been a little hasty in this because KRYPTON was generally pretty deft in how it mined the mythos.