As many of you know, every Thursday Night, we host a free screenwriting class called Thursday Night Writes. A recent installment with Steve Molton was so groundbreaking that we decided to release it as a podcast for our whole community. Enjoy! Jake: Hello, everybody, welcome to Thursday Night Writes! Our guest tonight is Steve Molton.  Steve is a former HBO and Showtime executive, Columbia film school professor, and Pulitzer nominee. He wrote a movie with Frank Pugliese of House...

This week, we are going to be talking about Poor Things, by Yórgos Lánthimos and Tony McNamara.  You could describe Poor Things as a hyper-sexualized, dark, feminist, Forrest Gump. But what is the movie actually saying?  How does Yórgos Lánthimos get away with such wildness while still telling a story that is both interesting and commercially successful? How does he both break the boundaries of what we typically think a movie or a screenplay could be, but also invite viewers...

This week, we're going to discuss Beef, a fabulous limited series created by Lee Sung Jin.We will use Beef to explore two related and extremely valuable concepts for screenwriters: Game and Escalation.  Game and Escalation are concepts that we're taking from improv. But as we look at the screenplay for Beef, you’ll see that the same tools used for improv can also be hugely valuable for screenwriters. Usually, when we think about Game, we think about it as the funny thing in the...

If you’ve watched the first episode of the Lessons from Sundance podcast, you know that JKS faculty member Christian Lybrook and I recently recorded a series of short form videos for our social media (@thejkstudio) about what you can learn as screenwriters from the films, lectures and documentaries we saw at Sundance. We’ve now compiled them into this two part podcast series, which we think is going to be tremendously valuable for all of you.In this second installment, we’re going to have a...

Jacob Krueger Studio faculty member Christian Lybrook and I attended Sundance 2024 together, leading to this new series of short videos about the films we saw there, and what screenwriters could learn from them. These videos were first released on our social media during the festival (follow @thejkstudio for future updates). The response was so strong, and the lessons so valuable that we’ve compiled them into a two part podcast series, built around common themes. Whether you’ve seen these...

 Past Lives: Genre & Premise This week, we are going to be analyzing the screenplay for Past Lives, written and directed by Celine Song. We'll use Past Lives to explore the intersection of two key concepts: Premise and Genre.  We'll look at the places where premise and genre meet and how they come together. And we’ll use that intersection to help you understand how to develop ideas, how to develop premises, how to develop the thing that's going to differentiate your script...

Dream Scenario: Passive Main Characters This week, we are going to be talking about the new Nicolas Cage movie, Dream Scenario, by writer and director Kristoffer Borgli. This will be a fascinating discussion, because we're going to talk about the strength of the screenplay, as well as the screenplay’s weaknesses.  We’ll use the strengths and weaknesses of Dream Scenario’s screenplay to understand one of the most important concepts in screenwriting: the difference between writing...

5 Simple Steps To Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions as a Writer It’s January 1, which means it’s time to talk about how to keep your New Year’s resolutions as a writer. New Year’s resolutions are one of the places where writers most often go wrong. We set these huge goals for ourselves, and just like everybody setting New Year’s resolutions, we usually fail to keep them..  We believe the reason we’re not keeping these New Year’s resolutions, the reason that we’re procrastinating,...

4th Annual Pitch Festivus! This week, instead of our normal programming, we’re going to be bringing you a replay from our 4th Annual Pitch Festivus! event. We’ll begin with a roundtable where you learn pitching and get answers to common questions from Jacob Krueger and top members of the Jacob Krueger Studio faculty, Steven Bagatourian, Jerome Perzigian and Christian Lybrook. Then you’ll hear a series of pitches from members of our community, and feedback from me and my faculty...

This episode will be a special installment of the podcast, because we are building up to our fourth annual Pitch Festivus! free online pitching event on Dec 7. In years past, when we had a physical location in New York City, we used to have our annual holiday party in our physical location. Having gone online now and becoming fully virtual as a school, we took that party online as well.  So now, instead of a traditional holiday party, you are going to get a three-hour free...

I was lucky enough to see Saltburn by Emerald Fennell at an advance screening at the Austin Film Festival last month. It was a packed house! (And by the way, while we’re talking about Austin Film Festival, a shout-out to our six students who were finalists. Eric Potempa, Jonathan Finnegan, Kelly McAllister and Nancy Safavi were all finalists for the pitch competition with Nancy taking third place overall. Erin Brown Thomas was a finalist for her short film, Subtext. And Meredith Allen,...

This week, we’re going to look at Killers of the Flower Moon, by Martin Scorcese and Eric Roth. We’re going to talk about the art of adaptation: How to adapt a book or a true life story (or in this case both) into a feature film or TV series. We’re going to look at how to develop your “take” on a book or true life story and the many hard decisions you have to make in adapting a prior work.  When you’re adapting material– whether it’s a dream, an idea, a poem, a...

Last episode, we talked about the two different forms of writer’s block. The first kind is the obvious kind of writer’s block– you’re just not writing. And this is actually the easier form of writer’s block to solve.  The second, much more insidious, form of writer’s block exists where you might be writing a lot, but your writing is flat.  We also talked about the confidence game of writing, about doubt, and how to overcome doubt.  This episode we’re going to be...

For the last couple of episodes we have been talking about Talk to Me, a fabulous little horror movie. (Check out Part 1 and Part 2 of the Talk to Me Podcast) We’ve looked at this little horror movie from every different angle. We’ve looked at the first 10 pages. We’ve looked at mirrors and foils. We’ve looked at the genre elements. We’ve looked at world building. We’ve looked at theme. We’ve looked at a character’s journey and structure. We’ve dissected it and pulled it apart...

In Part One of the Talk to Me Podcast, we talked about the first 10 pages of Talk to Me and how the first 10 pages of your script work on three different levels.  On the writing level, they allow you to find your voice and the images that you’re going to build from. On the structural level, they allow you to have a strong foundation that you’re going to “yes, and…” as you build your character’s journey.  And finally on the commercial level, they grab your audience right...

This week, we are going to be discussing Talk to Me, a sweet little independent horror movie written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman based on an idea by Daley Pearson. There is so much that we’re going to learn from Talk to Me and not just about making horror movies.  We’re going to be using Talk to Me as a model to understand the vital role of the first image of your screenplay, the first page of your screenplay, and the first 10 pages of your screenplay on both a...

There’s a scene in the very last episode of The Bear, Season 2 – the episode titled “The Bear” — where Carmy is stuck inside of the walk-in refrigerator at the restaurant. Outside the walk-in refrigerator, all of Carmy’s dreams are actually coming true. His restaurant is actually a success. His team has actually come together against tremendous odds. Everybody has actually stepped up and bought in and everything is actually working. But inside of the fridge Carmy cannot see it. Carmy...

This week, we’re going to be talking about “Barbenheimer.” That’s right, Barbie and Oppenheimer in the same podcast. And not just because you probably saw the two movies back to back.  We’re going to be talking about “Barbenheimer”–Barbie and Oppenheimer–together because there is so much we can learn about screenwriting by looking at these movies in the same podcast. These are two groundbreaking political movies. These are two groundbreaking structural movies....

This episode we’re going to be looking at Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 by James Gunn, and we’re going to be talking about flashbacks and exposition. Using Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 as a model, you’re going to learn how to use flashbacks, and how to bury exposition in your screenplay.  The interesting thing about Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 is that it’s not just one story. It’s actually two stories taking place in two different time periods that are juxtaposed together,...

Shrinking Part 2: Five Tips For Writing Better Dialogue and Exploding Cliché In Part 1 of my Shrinking podcast, we got really deep into the link between screenwriting and therapy, as well as the challenges of writing therapy scenes and scenes with therapists as characters. This episode, we’re going to get really crunchy with 5 hugely helpful craft techniques you can learn from Shrinking to write better dialogue in your screenplay. Then we’ll do a deep analysis of a pivotal scene from Episode...

This episode, we’re gonna be talking about Shrinking by Brett Goldstein, Bill Lawrence and Jason Segel. In Part 1 of this podcast, we’re going to be exploring the links between therapy and writing, the challenges of writing therapists as characters, as well as some helpful craft techniques from Shrinking that you can apply to your dialogue when writing challenging scenes. Then, in Part 2, we’re going to do a deep analysis of a scene from Shrinking that will teach you how to explode cliché in...

This episode, we’re going to be talking about A Man Called Otto and looking at a very important screenwriting topic that we haven’t covered for a while on this podcast: emotional need.  We’re going to be talking about how to get in touch with your own emotional needs and the emotional needs of your characters. We’ll also be talking about a process called meditative writing, through which we can get past our inner censors in order to access those emotional needs in boht our characters and...

Everything Everywhere All at Once PART 2: The Opening Sequence Welcome to Part 2 of my Everything Everywhere All at Once podcast. In Part 1, we talked about how Everything Everywhere All at Once was built, the link between Evelyn’s journey in Everything Everywhere All at Once and the writer’s journey in finding the structure of a screenplay, and the character-driven elements that underlie the structure of nearly every screenplay or TV show, regardless of the genre. In today’s episode,...

Everything Everywhere All At Once: Evelyn’s Journey is the Screenwriter’s Journey Pt.1 In this episode, I’m going to try to do the impossible, and help you understand how the screenplay Everything Everywhere All at Once was built. The truth is, to fully break down the structure of Everything Everywhere All at Once would take me a full day. In fact, it did! Back when the movie first came out, I taught a Master Class during which I broke down the full structure of the movie over an entire...