Film Strategy

On Jan. 11, 2015, we watched 3 men join  Alejandro González Iñárritu  to receive their Golden Globe awards for the best screenplay , Birdman . One of these men was Alexander Dinelaris Jr ., a multi-hyphenate New Yorker. A.B. Lugo was prescient enough to interview Mr. Dinelaris in December, 2014 for El Blog de HOLA , a blog that supports, promotes and informs the Latino acting community. During the interview, Mr. Dinelaris discusses his background and how it inspired his writing, how he writes, how his success in playwriting opened the doors to screenwriting and how important it is to stay true to your voice and learn your craft. Reposted with permission. Original posting: El Blog de HOLA - Dec. 11, 2014  by A.B. Lugo Alexander Dinelaris  is a man of many talents– what we call in Spanish " polifacético "– he is a playwright, screenwriter, director, producer. He has worked with some of the giants in this industry, from filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu to music ico

Before starting to direct a new play or movie, Elia Kazan would purchase a little school notebook and, as rehearsals and early performances proceeded, fill it with his thoughts. Taken together, these notebooks constitute a unique (and as far as I know unparalleled) record of an uncommonly passionate and acute directorial mind at work and, in edited form, they are the fascinating and unsparing core of "Kazan on Directing." These notes are very writerly. They may sometimes have been scribbled in haste, after a hard day on set or stage, but they are not fragmentary. They are often written in the second person, with Kazan addressing himself as "you." His main idea, restated in several ways, is that "Directing finally consists of turning Psychology into Behavior" and, in a sense, that's what happens in this book. Kazan consults his psyche and turns what he finds into insight by writing down his thoughts. His effort was always to find what he like

So you're a producer with a hot property optioned from a novelist who gave you the right to shoot a film based on her novel.  You have all your agreements signed by your above-the-line and below-the-line people and your production is ready to start.  During the development of your film, you choose to make major changes to the story that you think will make it more engaging, more artistic and/or more marketable.  Then your phone is blowing up with calls from the original author on which your production is based.  She's pissed off with the changes but you're not worried because she signed your contract and she can't do anything to stop you.  Or so you think. You and your lawyer look at the contract and he notices the following: that while you did obtain the right to represent the work, you DIDN'T obtain the right to make alterations, changes or modifications to the characters, stories or text created by the original author in the first place. As Gordon P. Fi