“It is festival season. And today’s podcast is going to be about how to get the most out of film festivals. But first, let’s start with a congratulations to the extraordinary success of our students at Austin Film Festival. We had four winners in three different categories!Jessica Sieff, a Workshop student of Stephen Molton,  who won the Josephson Entertainment TV Fellowship Award. Joshua Logan, a Workshop student of Steven Bagatourian, won the TV Comedy Fellowship...

“...Erin Morgenstern begins her novel The Starless Sea with these words: There is a pirate in the basement. (The pirate is a metaphor, but also still a person.) In addition to being one of the most brilliant opening lines of a book I've read in a long time, these words also constitute one of the great writing lessons for writers of all genres. Every single character you write is both a person and a metaphor. Every single thing that happens in your plot is also a...

“...Traditionally, when we build even the most independent character driven screenplay, and certainly any Hollywood film, the action of the movie is driven by the desire of the main character.  Usually it is their wish, their dream, their need, their choices, their actions that are driving the movie forward and around which the structure is built.  In fact, when this doesn't happen, there's even a name for it:  When your main character, like Jason Schwartzman’s Ben...

“...Primary structure is the way that the character experiences the movie or the TV show or the play or the novel. Primary structure is watching the movie through the eyes of your characters. In primary structure, we're not setting anything up. We're not paying anything off. We're not establishing anything for the audience. We are simply connected to the character and going through the journey through our character's eyes. But there’s another layer of structure going on in Strange...

“This week, we are going to be looking at The Bear, Season 3, and comparing it with potentially the most unlikely movie: Mad Max: Furiosa.This might seem like an odd pairing, but actually both of these sequels are struggling with the same problem. Both of these sequels are living in the past. Screenplays for the most successful movies and TV shows don’t live in the past. They live in the present.That’s what made Mad Max, Fury Road so successful, and that’s what made The Bear, Seasons 1...

“…Action movies are actually built like musicals. They are built to serve the “arias” of the action sequences in the same way a musical is built to serve the musical numbers.  And just like the songs in a successful musical, what’s happening during the best action sequences is not just a bunch of spectacle taking place within a really cool set piece. Rather, just like the songs of a musical, the action sequences of your action movie must drive the story forward. That means when...

“...If Season 1 of The Boys is about the corporatization of America and the effect of misinformation on our society, and Season 2 is about the resurgence of white nationalism, and Season 3 is about the de-mythologization of America’s past, then what is Season 4 going to be about? When he gets to Season 4 of The Boys, there's not a lot left in showrunner Eric Kripke's pocket. We've been through three seasons, we know exactly who Homelander is, at least as Eric Kripke sees him. As...

In this episode of the Write Your Screenplay podcast, we compare and contrast two spine-chilling hits: Oz Perkins' Longlegs and Ari Aster's Hereditary. We’ll start by dissecting the power of a great first image. You’ll learn how both Longlegs and Hereditary use framing techniques to immediately set the tone and play with our perceptions.  It's not just about what we see, but what we don't see that keeps us on the edge of our seats. We’ll dive deep into the psychological...

If you’re a screenwriter there’s a good chance this extremely unhelpful question is probably on your mind most of the time. Is it time to quit?  Is it time to quit? This incredibly unhelpful question has a nasty little stepbrother that runs around with it: Am I good enough?  In fact the inside the minds of most screenwriters is a constant litany of these kinds of questions: Should I quit? Am I good enough? Am I ever going to make it? What if I don’t have what it...

This episode, we are going to be continuing our discussion of The Fall Guy (check out Part 1 of The Fall Guy Podcast). Now, you're probably wondering, why does this silly blockbuster movie get a two-part podcast installment? There are a couple of reasons for that: First, if you remember from last week, we're in a pretty interesting conversation about subtext. We talked about the three different levels of subtext and how that related to metafilm, which is a concept that we haven't...

Hello, I'm Jacob Krueger, and this is the Write Your Screenplay Podcast. This week, we're going to be talking about The Fall Guy by Drew Pearce. This is a remarkably silly movie based on the old, equally silly '80s TV show. At the center of the film are two scenes that we're going to look at over the course of two podcast episodes. We’ll explore some interesting concepts you don't expect to see in an action-comedy like The Fall Guy. By analyzing two of the most...

This week, we're going to be talking about Baby Reindeer, the hit limited series on Netflix, written, created by and starring Richard Gadd.  We're going to use Baby Reindeer to talk about how to adapt a true story into a limited series, into a feature film, or into a TV show.  You would think that we fully understand our own stories better than anybody else’s. But the truth is you are the hardest person to write because you are the hardest person to see.  You can...

This week we're going to be studying Monkey Man, the new Dev Patel movie. With a screenplay by Paul Angunawela and John Collee, story by Dev Patel.  This is a special film for me because one of our students, Joseph J.U. Taylor, has a wonderful small role in the piece. We're really proud of you, Joseph. I do want to warn you that there will be some moderate spoilers in the first half of the movie. We're definitely going to spoil the sea change (the midpoint of the film), but I'll...

Hello, I'm Jacob Krueger, and this is the Write Your Screenplay podcast. This week, we are going to be looking at Alex Garland's new film, Civil War. Civil War explores what happens when we become polarized, stop looking at each other as human beings and instead view one another as enemies. Structurally, Alex Garland’s Civil War is essentially built like Apocalypse Now, with a touch of The Last of Us.  But in the case of Civil War, the characters’ journey into the...

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...