May 13 – Daddio

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on May 13th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay DADDIO.

LOGLINE: During a cab ride, a passenger and her driver have unexpectedly honest conversations about numerous topics, including their past and present relationships, sex and power dynamics, loss, and vulnerability.

ABOUT THE WRITER: Initially conceived as a play, the spec screenplay for Daddio landed writer/director CHRISTY HALL on the 2017 Black List. The following year, Variety included her on their annual list of 10 Screenwriters to Watch, and she co-developed and co-executive produced the Netflix series I Am Not Okay with This and hit the Black List again with Get Home Safe, a thriller about a woman who must get home by herself on Halloween with a dead cell phone. In 2020, Hall was hired to adapt Stephen King’s novel, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon, for the screen. Other upcoming adaptations the scribe has been attached to include an English-language remake of the 2017 Norwegian thriller Thelma for director Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya); a Scarlett Johannson-led Amazon limited series remake of the 1995 Sean Connery thriller Just Cause; the YA novel Hold Back the Stars; The Husband’s Secret starring Blake Lively; and It Ends with Us, also starring Lively and scheduled for release in June, one week before Daddio, which is Hall’s first original screenplay credit and marks her directorial debut.

(registration deadline: Friday, May 10)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

Daddio premiered at last year’s Telluride Film Festival and was acquired by Sony Pictures Classics. “Every aspect of Daddio is designed to spark conversation,” according to Variety. Shot in sixteen days, the two-hander stars Dakota Johnson (Fifty Shades trilogy) and Sean Penn (Fast Times at Ridgemont High) and is scheduled to be released on June 28.

Rated R. 112 pages. 101 minutes. Drama.

Brian HerskowitzBRIAN HERSKOWITZ will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. Brian currently holds the title of lead faculty in screenwriting for the prestigious Boston University in Los Angeles – Writer In Hollywood Program, has taught online for UCLA Extension, and spent five years as the sitcom instructor for Writer’s Bootcamp. He has written for such TV shows as Blossom, Hercules: The Legendary Journeys, Acapulco Heat, Dream On, Renegade, and Murder, She Wrote. and in 2014 he released the book Process to Product: From Concept to Script: A Practical Guide for the Screenwriter. His feature screenwriting credits include the horror/thriller Darkroom and the family comedy Tio Papi. Also a talented actor, producer, and director, Brian made the award-winning short film Odessa or Bust starring Jason Alexander, Red Buttons, and Jason Schwartzman, and the domestic abuse documentary 1736: Somewhere To Turn. Find out more about Brian and his projects at brianherskowitz.com.

April 8 – Barbie

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on April 8th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the Oscar-nominated screenplay BARBIE.

LOGLINE: Iconic dolls Barbie and Ken leave their perfect fantasy world to discover the joys and perils of living among humans in the real world.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: Based on the doll created in 1959 by RUTH HANDLER for her toy company, Mattel, and other characters that have appeared in three television specials, three Netflix series, numerous shorts and web series, and 42 direct-to-video computer-animated feature-length films, this live-action smash was adapted by GRETA GERWIG & NOAH BAUMBACH, one of three couples who competed in the two screenplay categories this year at the Academy Awards. Gerwig, who also directed Barbie, began her career as an actress in a series of acclaimed “mumblecore” movies. She has been nominated for Oscars for writing and directing Lady Bird and for her 2019 screenplay adaptation of Little Women. She shares her fourth Oscar nomination, for Barbie‘s screenplay, with her husband, Baumbach, who was previously nominated for his original screenplays Marriage Story and The Squid and the Whale, both of which he directed. Together, the pair had previously collaborated on Frances Ha and Mistress America, both of which Gerwig also starred in and Baumbach directed. They were married last December. Gerwig recently worked on a script for Disney’s upcoming live-action Snow White reboot and is currently working on two Chronicles of Narnia adaptations that she will direct for Netflix.

(registration deadline: Friday, April 5)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

Starring Margot Robbie (I, Tonya), who also produced the blockbuster, Barbie‘s cast includes Ryan Gosling (The Notebook), America Ferrera (Ugly Betty), Kate McKinnon (SNL), Rhea Perlman (Cheers), Will Ferrell (Old School), and Michael Cera (Arrested Development).

Released by Warner Bros. last July, Barbie went on to become the highest-grossing movie of the year, the highest-grossing live-action comedy ever, and the first film by a solo female director to gross over $1 billion.

It was nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay, and won for Best Original Song (“What Was I Made For?”). Cumulatively, the film has won over 180 awards (including six People’s Choice Awards) and received over 400 nominations, with five BAFTA nominations including Best Original Screenplay, nine Golden Globe nominations including Best Screenplay, and a Best Original Screenplay nod still pending from the Writers Guild of America.

Rated PG-13. 115 pages. 114 minutes. Comedy. Fantasy. Musical.

Melody JacksonMELODY JACKSON will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. Melody completed her Ph.D. in Mythological Studies in 2003 with her dissertation on “The Mythic Impact of Film.” She has been praised by Creative Screenwriting on multiple occasions for her exceptional knowledge of traditional three-act structure and character development. Known for approaching plot and structure through examination of character motivation and relationships, Melody offers consulting and marketing services to screenwriters through Smart Girls, which she founded in 1992. Since then she has helped over 2,500 writers improve their screenplays to get them to 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, CAA, and countless medium-sized and smaller production companies. Visit SmartG.com or follow @smartgirlspr on Twitter.

March 11 – Poor Things

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on March 11th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the Oscar-nominated screenplay POOR THINGS.

LOGLINE: A dead woman, reanimated with a fresh brain by a mad scientist, embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery and sexual liberation in Victorian London.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: Poor Things was adapted from the award-winning 1992 novel by writer and artist ALASDAIR GRAY, who has been called “the father figure of the renaissance in Scottish literature and art.” Director Yorgos Lanthimos (Dogtooth, The Lobster) first approached Gray in 2009 to acquire the rights to the book but was unable to get the film greenlit until his 2018 comedy, The Favourite, had become a major commercial success. Australian playwright and TV writer TONY McNAMARA co-wrote The Favourite, which won the BAFTA award for Best Original Screenplay and was also nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe in the same category. McNamara then co-wrote the Disney hit Cruella and created the series The Great for Hulu before adapting Poor Things for Lanthimos, earning him his second Academy Award nomination.

(registration deadline: Friday, March 8)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

Released last year by Searchlight Pictures on December 8, Poor Things is nominated for eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay, and eleven BAFTA awards, including Best Film and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film also won two Golden Globe awards, including Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) and more than 90 other industry awards (out of nearly 400 total nominations) so far!

Poor Things stars Emma Stone (La La Land, The Amazing Spider-Man), Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man, Aquaman), and Ramy Youssef (Ramy).

Rated R. 97 pages. 141 minutes. Comedy. Science Fiction.

STEVE KAPLAN will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. The industry’s most sought-after expert on comedy, Steve has taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale, and other top universities, and created the HBO Workspace and the HBO New Writers Program. As co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre he developed writers such as Peter Tolan (Analyze This), David Crane (Friends), Tracy Poust (Ugly Betty), Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea), and Mark O’Donnel (Hairspray). Steve teaches a number of different workshops all over the globe, including The Comedy Intensive, a 2-day workshop that covers the fundamental principles of comedy. His new five-part interactive online class, “Write Your Comedy Screenplay,” starts on March 23, 2024. Look for his books The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero’s Journey, learn more about Steve and his workshops at kaplancomedy.com, and follow him on Twitter at @skcomedy where you can tweet quick comedy questions at him with the #AskKaplan hashtag.

March 4 – Special Pre-Oscars Meeting (FREE)

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StoryBoard Development Group Presents

A Special Exclusive StoryBoardDG.com Pre-Oscars Event!

Meet online from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on March 4th (the Monday before the 96th Academy Awards) to discuss this year’s ten Oscar-nominated screenplays!

It’s Awards Season again, which means it’s time for our 2nd Annual FREE pre-Oscars session of StoryBoard! Join us for a casual conversation about each of the ten nominated screenplays and discuss their chances of winning the industry’s top prize.

***HOW TO REGISTER*** If you wish to participate in this free pre-Oscars event, please send an email to StoryBoardDG@gmail.com prior to March 4 and you will receive an email with login instructions on the day of the event.

Don’t worry about reading the scripts. Just try to see as many of the films as you can before the meeting.

BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY

American Fiction
Cord Jefferson

Barbie
Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach

Oppenheimer
Christopher Nolan

Poor Things
Tony McNamara

The Zone of Interest
Jonathan Glazer

BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY

Anatomy of a Fall
Justine Triet

The Holdovers
David Hemingson

Maestro
Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer

May December
Samy Burch

Past Lives
Celine Strong

DANNY HERCULES will lead the not-so-in-depth discussion. Danny is the creator, publisher, and one of the authors of ScripTipps, a line of inexpensive ebooks on screenwriting conceived in part by his participation in StoryBoard. An award-winning filmmaker, Danny was co-founder and president of San Diego Filmmakers and sat on the board of directors of Scriptwriters Network where he ran their writers groups and staged readings programs. In 2012 he published the popular young adult Christmas novel North Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus and later adapted it into a musical through the Academy of New Musical Theatre, where he also wrote the book for Chaturbate: The Musical, which premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2017. A member of StoryBoard’s Screenplay Discussion Group since November 2009, Danny has never missed a meeting.

Note: StoryBoard will also hold our regular Screenplay Development Group meeting on Monday, March 11, when comedy writer Steve Kaplan will lead an in-depth analysis and discussion of Poor Things.

February 12 – American Fiction

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on February 12th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay AMERICAN FICTION.

LOGLINE: A novelist writes an outlandishly stereotypical “Black” book under a pseudonym to make a point about offensive tropes, but the book’s surprise success propels him to the heart of the hypocrisy and madness he claims to disdain.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: American Fiction was adapted from the 2001 novel Erasure by PERCIVAL EVERETT, a Distinguished Professor of English at USC, best known for his 2009 novel I Am Not Sidney Poitier. Everett won the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction in 2023. Erasure is his first novel to hit the big screen. Former Gawker editor CORD JEFFERSON wrote the screenplay. When Gawker shut down in 2015, Jefferson began writing for such television shows as The Good Place and Master of None. In 2020, he won a WGA award and a Primetime Emmy for his writing on HBO’s Watchmen. American Fiction is both his first produced feature screenplay and his directorial debut.

(registration deadline: Friday, February 9)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

American Fiction stars Emmy and Tony Award winner Jeffrey Wright (Angels in America, The Batman), Tracee Ellis Ross (Black-ish, The High Note), Issa Rae (Barbie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse), Sterling K. Brown (The People v. O.J. Simpson), John Ortiz (Fast & Furious), Erika Alexander (The Cosby Show), and the legendary Leslie Uggams (Roots, Deadpool 1-3).

The movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September where it won the the festival’s People’s Choice Award. The film is nominated for five Independent Spirit Awards including Best Screenplay and Best Feature and has accumulated more than thirty awards and 140 nominations so far. It is currently playing only in theaters.

Rated R. 110 pages. 117 minutes. Comedy.

Diana LesmezDIANA LESMEZ will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. A produced feature-film screenwriter and an award-winning filmmaker, Diana is a Jane-of-all-trades with vast industry experience in production, development, acquisitions, distribution, physical production, film finance, business and legal affairs, as well as new media. She wrote the adapted screenplay for the feature film The Journey Ahead starring Michael Madsen, and produced the feature film Culture Class in AmeriCCA directed by Emilio Estevez. Previously, she served as President of Production at a mini-studio, Arenas Entertainment in partnership with Universal Pictures, and was the Head of Development for a production entity, Patriot Pictures, and the industry liaison for Banque Paribas, a film financing institution, and has taught at the New York Film Academy. Via her banner company, Bumptious Media Consulting, Diana offers screenwriting and producing one-on-one coaching, workshops, and master classes, with a specialty in pitching and mastering communication skills. Follow her on Twitter (@DianaLesmez) and visit her website, dianalesmez.com, for more information.

January 8 – Saltburn

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on January 8th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay SALTBURN.

LOGLINE: An Oxford student is invited to the sprawling estate of a charming and aristocratic classmate for a summer never to be forgotten.

ABOUT THE WRITER: EMERALD FENNELL won the Academy Award three years ago for Best Original Screenplay for her feature writing and directing debut, Promising Young Woman, which also won writing awards from BAFTA, WGA, and Film Independent among many other accolades. Previously, her short film Careful How You Go had played at Sundance, and she’s been nominated for primetime Emmys for her writing and acting on the BBC series Killing Eve and her acting in the Netflix series The Crown. Fennell is also a novelist, having authored the children’s book series Shiverton Hall as well as the 2015 adult horror novel Monsters. In 2021, she wrote the book for the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical Cinderella, a reimagining of the classic fairy tale with an LGBTQ+ twist.

(registration deadline: Friday, January 5)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

Saltburn stars Academy Award nominee Barry Keoghan (The Banshees of Inisherin, The Batman), Jacob Elordi (The Kissing Booth trilogy, Priscilla), Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, Die Another Day), Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?), and Carey Mulligan (An Education, Maestro). The Amazon MGM Studios film premiered last August at the Telluride Film Festival and was released theatrically in November. It has been nominated for two Golden Globe awards and more than forty other industry accolades so far and is currently available to stream on Amazon Prime.

Rated R. 124 pages. 131 minutes. Drama.

Donna Michelle Anderson, will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. “DMA,” as she is professionally known, is a story analyst, development executive, and the author of Write It, Pitch It, Sell Your Screenplay: A Hollywood Buyer’s Insider Guide to Getting Your Script Past the Gatekeepers, an update of her 1-3-5 Story Structure Made Simple System: The Nine Essential Elements of a Sellable Screenplay, which was the first story structure system integrated into Final Draft. She has helmed top-rated programming for CBS, Bravo, BET, A&E, TLC and more. Visit her at PlanetDMA.com.

December 11 – Ferrari

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on December 11th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay for Michael Mann’s FERRARI.

LOGLINE: With his auto empire in crisis and his marriage in shambles, ex-racer Enzo Ferrari enters the 1957 Mille Miglia, a treacherous thousand-mile race across Italy.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: Ferrari is based on the 1991 book Enzo Ferrari: The Man and the Machine by BROCK YATES, executive editor of Car and Driver magazine. Yates, who died in 2016, co-conceived and drove in the non-stop Cannonball Run cross-country race and co-wrote the screenplay for the film of the same name as well as the screenplay for Smokey and the Bandit II. The book was adapted by British screenwriter TROY KENNEDY MARTIN, who began writing for the BBC in 1958, creating the six-part 1961 anthology miniseries Storyboard. His first and best-known feature film screenplay was the original 1969 version of The Italian Job starring Michael Caine. Martin died in 2009 while Ferrari was still in development. Director MICHAEL MANN, who first became interested in making this film in 2000, did an uncredited rewrite. (We will be reading and discussing his 2015 draft.) Mann’s other credits as writer and director include Thief (1981) starring James Caan, Heat (1995) starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, and Miami Vice (2006), based on the 1980s TV series he produced.

(registration deadline: Friday, December 8)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

Ferrari stars two-time Academy Award nominee Adam Driver (Star Wars sequel trilogy) as Enzo Ferrari, with Pelope Cruz (Vanilla Sky) as his wife, Shailene Woodley (The Fault in Our Stars) as his mistress, and Patrick Dempsey (Grey’s Anatomy). The biopic, which received a seven-minute standing ovation at its premiere at the Venice Film Festival in August, opens wide on Christmas Day.

Rated R. 131 pages. 130 minutes. Drama. Biopic. Sports.

JAMES ‘DOC’ MASON will provide in-depth script analysis and lead our discussion. Doc is a screenwriter, producer, consultant, and father of four. His book, Mastering the Logline: How to Excite Hollywood With a Single Sentence, with a foreword by WME story editor Christopher Lockhart, is available on Amazon. Doc is currently in pre-production on a drama feature Journey to Now, and is co-writer of the 2021 thriller feature Caged starring Edi Gathegi and Melora Hardin.

November 13 – May December

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on November 13th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay for Todd Haynes’s MAY DECEMBER.

LOGLINE: A movie star researching a role dredges up memories of a decades-old tabloid scandal, threatening the stability of a seemingly happy family.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: May December is the feature screenwriting debut of SAMY BURCH, who shares story credit with ALEX MECHANIK. Before their script put them on the Black List in 2020, the duo had previously co-directed several short films together, including All You Can Eat, which premiered at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2013, and worked together in the casting department for Shane Black’s The Nice Guys starring Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling. Some of Mechanik’s other credits include Iron Man 3 (production assistant) and Ant-Man (casting assistant), while Burch’s additional casting department credits include Iron Man 3 and the first four Hunger Games movies. Burch’s next writing credit will be for her rewrite of James Gunn’s Coyote vs. Acme starring Will Forte as a lawyer hired by Wile E. Coyote to sue the ACME Corporation after their products have consistently failed to help him catch the Road Runner.

(registration deadline: Friday, November 10)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

Partially inspired by the Mary Kay Letourneau scandal of 1997, May December premiered in competition at the Cannes Film Festival in May where it was purchased by Netflix for $11 million, and was the opening night film at the New York Film Festival last month.

Directed by Todd Haynes (Far From Heaven, Carol), the film stars Natalie Portman (Black Swan, Star Wars prequel trilogy, Thor franchise), Julianne Moore (The Hunger Games franchise, The Lost World: Jurassic Park), Charles Melton (Riverdale), and D.W. Moffett (Switched at Birth), and will see a limited theatrical release on November 17 before streaming on Netflix beginning December 1.

Rated R. 100 pages. 117 minutes. Drama.

DANNY HERCULES will provide in-depth script analysis and lead our discussion. Dan is the creator, publisher, and one of the authors of ScripTipps, a line of inexpensive ebooks on screenwriting conceived in part by his participation in StoryBoard. An award-winning filmmaker, Danny was co-founder and president of San Diego Filmmakers and sat on the board of directors of Scriptwriters Network where he ran their writers groups and staged readings programs. In 2012 he published the popular young adult Christmas novel North Pole High: A Rebel Without a Claus and later adapted it into a musical through the Academy of New Musical Theatre, where he also wrote the book for Chaturbate: The Musical, which premiered at the Hollywood Fringe Festival in 2017. A member of StoryBoard’s Screenplay Discussion Group since November 2009, Hercules has never missed a meeting.

October 9 – Killers of the Flower Moon

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on October 9th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the screenplay for Martin Scorsese’s KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON.

LOGLINE: The newly-formed FBI investigates a series of murders after oil is discovered on the Osage tribal lands in 1920s Oklahoma.

ABOUT THE WRITERS: The screenplay was adapted by ERIC ROTH from the non-fiction book Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by DAVID GRANN. Other films that have been adapted from Grann’s books and articles include The Lost City of Z starring Robert Pattinson, Dark Crimes starring Jim Carrey, The Old Man & the Gun starring Robert Redford, and Trial by Fire starring Laura Dern. Screenwriter Eric Roth has six Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay, including Dune and A Star Is Born. He won the Oscar in 1995 for his adaptation of Forrest Gump, which also won Best Picture. Roth spent four or five years writing the Killers of the Flower Moon screenplay. When Leonardo DiCaprio signed on to play the villain’s nephew instead of the FBI hero, the screenplay was contentiously overhauled and the film was put into turnaround. The final screenplay is credited to Roth and the film’s director, MARTIN SCORSESE (Goodfellas). We will be reading and discussing Roth’s original draft.

(registration deadline: Friday, October 6)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

Killers of the Flower Moon stars Leonardo DiCaprio (Titanic), Robert De Niro (Joker), Lily Gladstone (Certain Women), Jesse Plemons (Breaking Bad), Tantoo Cardinal (Legends of the Fall), John Lithgow (3rd Rock from the Sun), Brendan Fraser (The Whale). The film premiered at Cannes, where it received a nine-minute standing ovation. Apple TV+ and Paramount Pictures are currently planning a worldwide theatrical release on October 20, followed by a streaming release on Apple TV+ at a later date.

Rated R. 153 pages. 206 minutes. Historical Crime Drama. Western.

WENDELL WELLMAN will provide in-depth script analysis and lead our discussion. Wendell WellmanScreenwriter, actor, playwright, teacher, and author of A Writer’s Roadmap, Wendell has taught screenwriting at UCLA and UWV and has been a frequent guest moderator at StoryBoardDG.com’s Screenplay Development Group. As an actor, Wendell studied under Lee Strasberg and Peggy Feury at the Strasberg Institute and has appeared in episodic television, theater, and motion pictures, including prominent roles in the films The Klansman starring Lee Marvin and Richard Burton, Sudden Impact, Sommersby, and Street of Dreams. As a writer, he teamed up with Alex Lasker to adapt the novel Firefox for director Clint Eastwood, which Quentin Tarantino praised on his podcast for its “fantastic use of exposition.” Wendell also did additional work for Eastwood on the screenplay for Sudden Impact and wrote a final Dirty Harry project. Wendell also worked with the West End Theatre Group as co-founder and artistic director while continuing to alternate between acting and writing assignments. He is currently writing and producing original feature scripts.

September 11 – The Holdovers

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Meet ONLINE from 7:00-10:00 PM Pacific Time on September 11th for an in-depth analysis and discussion of the comedy screenplay THE HOLDOVERS.

LOGLINE: An unpopular teacher, a rebellious student, and a school cafeteria cook are the only ones left at a boarding school over Christmas break in 1970.

ABOUT THE WRITER: According to Deadline, director Alexander Payne came up with the story idea but had no experience with boarding schools, so he hired DAVID HEMINGSON to write the screenplay after reading his writing sample for a TV pilot set in a prep school. Hemingson cut his teeth in children’s TV writing for Nickelodeon’s The Adventures of Pete & Pete and Disney’s 101 Dalmatians: The Series and Hercules: The Animated Series. He went on to write and produce for such sitcoms as Just Shoot Me, How I Met Your Mother, and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23 and created Kitchen Confidential, based on Anthony Bourdain’s book of the same name and starring Bradley Cooper as a fictional version of Bourdain, for which Hemingson was nominated for a WGA Award. Moving into drama, Hemingson created the sexy spy thriller series Whiskey Cavalier, which premiered after the Oscars in 2019. The Holdovers is his first theatrical feature film writing credit.

(registration deadline: Friday, September 8)

Registration in advance is required to attend the discussion, and includes a copy of the script sent to you in advance.

Single Meeting Fee: $45
SPECIAL OFFER – ONLY $150 FOR A 6-MONTH MEMBERSHIP OR RENEWAL!

Click the Register Now button for instructions.
(Email StoryBoardDG@gmail.com if you have any questions.)

The Holdovers stars Paul Giamati (Sideways), Da’Vine Joy Randolph (Only Murders in the Building), Carrie Preston (True Blood), Tate Donovan (The O.C.), and newcomer Dominic Sessa. The film is scheduled to premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in October. Focus Features is planning a limited theatrical release on October 27, followed by a wide theatrical release on November 10.

Rated R. 117 pages. 133 minutes. Comedy.

STEVE KAPLAN will provide in-depth analysis and lead our discussion. The industry’s most sought-after expert on comedy, Steve has taught at UCLA, NYU, Yale, and other top universities, and created the HBO Workspace and the HBO New Writers Program. As co-founder and Artistic Director of Manhattan Punch Line Theatre he developed writers such as Peter Tolan (Analyze This), David Crane (Friends), Tracy Poust (Ugly Betty), Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea), and Mark O’Donnel (Hairspray). Steve teaches a number of different workshops all over the globe, including The Comedy Intensive, a 2-day workshop that covers the fundamental principles of comedy. Look for his books The Hidden Tools of Comedy and The Comic Hero’s Journey, learn more about Steve and his workshops at kaplancomedy.com, and follow him on Twitter at @skcomedy where you can tweet quick comedy questions at him with the #AskKaplan hashtag.