big fish
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John August on “Scriptnotes” (the Book)
After Syd Field’s Screenplay was published in 1979, an entire cottage industry sprung up in Hollywood. Screenwriting manuals and classes, overnight gurus and other (often predatory) enterprises promised impressionable aspirants a breakthrough if they just practiced a particular architecture of rules to write their dream spec feature. The next migration happened to the blogosphere in the Aughts, and in the teens, a plethora of screenwriting podcasts blossomed. Few voices have proven trustworthy, though. Cutting through the clutter in 2011, John August (Big Fish, Corpse Bride) and Craig Mazin’s (Chernobyl, The Last of Us) “Scriptnotes”’s podcast has developed a formidable following […]
by Ritesh Mehta on Dec 10, 2025 -
JOHN AUGUST’S WORST WORKING HABIT
From “10 Things I Hate About Me” posted on the great blog by the screenwriter of Go, Big Fish, and Corpse Bride, among others: Particularly when I’m re-writing a script, I suffer from what my friend John Gatins refers to as the line-painter dilemma. Here’s the short version: A guy is hired to paint the yellow line down the middle of a country road. The first day, he paints five miles. His supervisor is impressed. The second day, he only paints two miles. His supervisor thinks, “Well, maybe he had a bad day.” But the third day, the guy only […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2006
