Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, August 19, 2020,
In :
Books
I finished Beneath the Streets by Adam MacQueen at the start of the month. A murder mystery sent in the 1970s within an alternative history where Jeremy Thorpe's murder bid on his lover had been successful. It was a page turning read, with each chapter ending on a new revelation or predicament.
I've recently got into Lee Child's Jack Reacher novels, and I took on Tripwire this month. This is the third Reacher novel published in 1999. I'm reading a bit out of sequence, having recently complete... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, January 27, 2018,
In :
Writing Process
How do playwrights get ideas? How do they begin writing their plays? What do they do to get the first draft completed? Below are some thoughts from playwrights on how they begin.
Ideas and Getting Started
"I’m a thorough planner. I don’t write from nothing onto the page. There are five stages of the writing process for me. There’s a lengthy period of months and months of mulling. I move from what Peter Brook describes as “a formless hunch” to starting work on a play. I’ve got to go ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, December 30, 2015,
1. The Wild Bunch (1969)
Directed by Sam Peckinpah Written by Sam Peckinpah, Walon Green
Starring: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates
2. The Drop (2014)
Directed by Michaël R. Roskam
Written by Dennis Lehane
Starring: Tom Hardy, Noomi Rapace, James Gandolfini, Matthias Schoenaerts
3. Kill the Messenger (2014)
Directed by Michael Cuesta
Written by Peter Landesman
Starring: Jeremy Renner, Rosemarie DeWitt, Ray Liotta, Tim Blake Nelson, Barry Peppe... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, December 30, 2015,
1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens (UK release date 17th December)
Directed by J. J. Abrams
Written by Lawrence Kasdan, J. J. Abrams, Michael Arndt
Starring: Harrison Ford, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Oscar Isaac, Carrie Fisher, Adam Driver
2. The Lobster (UK release date 16th October)
Directed by Yorgos Lanthimos
Written by Efthimis Filippou, Yorgos Lanthimos
Starring: Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, Léa Seydoux, Ben Whishaw, John C. Reilly, Olivia Colman
I came across this interview with James Kelman while researching old copies of the Clydebank Press. I thought it was worth preserving.
ON THE BUSES with Kelman the young
Drumchapel writer
by JACK HAGGERTY
The Clydebank Press, Friday, January
11, 1974
Jim Kelman is a young Glasgow writer,
presently living in Maryhill, who has just published his first book
of short stories recently, “An Old Pub near the Angel”
(Puckerbush Press, Orono, Maine, U.S.A.). Although born and bred in
Govan, he was ...
I'm producing an evening of short plays at the end of this month. We're on at the Old Hairdressers, 27 Renfield Lane, Glasgow on Tuesday 28th and Wednesday 29th July. Tickets are £5.50 and you can get them from See Tickets. The plays are -
Ava and the Seagull by Róisín Kelly
Ava loves Peter. Colm loves Ava. And Big Bad One. A dark tale of bird love, betrayal and revenge.
Smokers by Julie McDowall
The play is about Julie's favourite topic - the end of the world - and shows two people enjoying ...
With the second half of Mad Men's final season having started this week, The Hollywood Reporter have this great oral history of the show.
Christina Hendricks (Joan Holloway) I was up for another pilot, and I chose Mad Men. The [agency I was with] was like, "It's on AMC, it's a period piece, it's never going to go. Are you crazy? You're not going to make money for us …" I thought it was a little impatient of them. So I moved on. Continue reading ...
This is well worth an hour of your time. At the recent SXSW festival indie filmmaker and actor Mark Duplass gives a keynote speech on how to go about making movies yourself. The first 25 minutes is his step-by-step guide to how you can get short films and low budget features made and seen. The rest of the time is him taking questions and comments from the audience.
I'm doing some research on the history of Clydebank FC at the moment. This newspaper report concerns the first incarnation of the club who went by the name Clydebank, who existed from 1888-1895. From what I've read of football fans of the late 19th and early 20th Century they appeared to be ready to riot at a moment's notice. I've come across numerous stories of punch-ups on the terraces, punch-ups that started on the terrace and ended up on the pitch, and just plain assaults on players by sp... Continue reading ...
The short film Damien Chazelle made as proof of concept for the Oscar winning full-length film 'Whiplash'.
UPDATE: Not surprisingly the short was taken down due to a copyright claim. Instead here's an 'Anatomy of a Scene' from Whiplash on the New York Times.
Simpsons showrunner Al Jean speaks about Leonard Nimoy in this Vulture piece.
"Later, we asked him to play himself in our X-Files parody, and when we asked him to sing "Good Morning Starshine," he knew full well we were having a little fun with the solo album he released (and I loved), but again, he could not have been a better sport." Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Friday, February 27, 2015,
We've started rehearsals for Bossnappers this week. Should you wish you can buy tickets from See Tickets. Below are some photographs from the first couple of nights.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, February 26, 2015,
I'm away to see The Slab Boys at the Citizens Theatre tonight, so here's an article in Rolling Stone from 1983 on Sean Penn. The then 22 year old had just finished a Broadway run of the Paisley set play.
"I think a movie, like Raiders of the Lost Ark is just like taking drugs," snarls the man who claims he has never touched recreational chemicals. "I'm against the whole idea of 'Oh, it's good entertainment.'
“My dream," he says, is to play Phil Ochs. I have a recording of him speaking in hi... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Sunday, February 22, 2015,
The Kids in the Hall are probably my favourite sketch troupe, and their five seasons my favourite sketch show. Rolling Stone have a reprint of the feature they ran on them in 1988 when they first came to attention.
The article came as a PDF extra on the season one DVD. Another extra from that DVD is the oral history video below.
Like Monty Python's, the Kids' sketches begin with an absurd premise, but they're not outrageous for outrageousness' sake; they craft provocative, lyrical performance p...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, February 21, 2015,
Comedian, writer and occasional actor Harris Wittels died on Thursday at the tragically young age of 30. I was a fan of his writing and his podcast appearances. I particularly enjoyed his appearances on Parks and Recreation, where along with Coltin Dunne he formed Pawnee's Animal Control division. I always hoped for a spin-off and was actually quite disappointed when the two characters were sacked for gross incompetence and April took over.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, February 18, 2015,
Another interview with Larry David, this time from the New York Times, on his Broadway play 'Fish in the Dark'.
“Curb” is improvised, but this play is not. Is it more of a challenge to be scripted?
It’s one of the reasons I didn’t like acting. I don’t like not being able to interject. I don’t like waiting to talk. You have to wait for the other person to finish with his lines. But I have to say the rehearsal process, much to my amazement, has been fun. I enjoyed it. I didn’t expe...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, February 18, 2015,
From the New York Times five graduates of Brooklyn College’s master of fine arts programme in playwriting describe what they've learned from course leader Mac Wellman.
“When I was struggling to write my first play, he told me to write the worst play I could, and that had a huge impact on every play I’ve written since. Mac taught me how to defeat my inner critic and just write.”
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, February 17, 2015,
Larry David talks to Playbill about his Broadway play 'Fish in the Dark'.
"They had a couple show albums in the house," he says of his parents. "They had My Fair Lady and Oklahoma! and Flower Drum Song. They were in the stereo cabinet. We never saw a show. We never went once. I don't think I saw a show until I was 20 or 21. I think it was Hair."
Okay. So the theatre bug never bit young Larry. Then why a play now, at the ripe age of 67? Credit the late Nora Ephron.
I started to build lists over time. I researched theatre companies in my region. I signed-up to mailing lists and received information on current and upcoming seasons. I looked up the actors, directors and writers working with these companies. I read and watched theatre. I followed people on social media and as a result widened the field to producers, artistic directors, literary associates, com...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Monday, February 16, 2015,
I've recently started listening to comedian Jarlath Regan's podcast An Irishman Abroad. The hook is pretty self explanatory. Irish people, or second generation Irish people talk about moving abroad to work. The series started off as comedians and comedy writers, but quickly came to take in footballers, playwrights, boxers and others who moved from Ireland to earn their living in England or other countries.
Regan also writes about the people he interviews in the Irish Post. This is his interv... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Sunday, February 15, 2015,
Scottish Labour announced recently that they are holding a consultation into the reintroduction of alcohol to Scottish football grounds.
I'm happy to agree that Jim Murphy is using this debate as a tool to win back voters that Scottish Labour betrayed during the Referendum. I dare say there's been long talks on what issue would get lapsed Labour supporters back behind them, and this is what they've come up with. I think they've badly misjudged that. There are far more important issues around ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Friday, February 13, 2015,
With Saturday Night Live approaching its 40th birthday celebration this weekend former producer Mike Shoemaker looked through his archive of photos and posted many of them to Twitter.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, February 12, 2015,
With Saturday Night Live's 40th Anniversary coming up Alan Sepinwall at HitFix picks 21 sketches to illustrate the show's history. However, all of the video links in the article don't allow the sketches to be played outside of the United States. Some of the sketches, like White Like Me below, can be found on YouTube.
The write-up itself is worthy of a read.
"You can look at the sixth season of "SNL" — the first made without any of the original actors, and without Lorne Michaels himself — ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, February 11, 2015,
I was in a production of The Slab Boys in 2010. As such it's a play I've read multiple times, and I've been to see other productions of it. I'm going along to see the latest production at the Citizens next week.
In this video by Urbancroft Productions writer John Byrne and director David Hayman talk about the history of the play and what to expect from the latest show.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, February 11, 2015,
Playwright, attorney, new media journalist and consultant Wajahat Ali writes in The Atlantic about his experiences of writing a Muslim-American cop show for HBO alongside Dave Eggers.
"In hindsight, we believe HBO wanted MJ to be “Homeland–meets-The Cosby Show,” but we can’t be sure. They definitely didn’t want “The Wire with Muslims” and they told us that from the beginning. They had no interest in re-treading old ground and we had no interest in duplicating someone else’s nar... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, February 10, 2015,
There's quite an extensive interview with playwright and artist John Byrne in the latest edition of Highland Life. The tabloids have picked up on his comments about Glasgow School of Art, but the interview cover a lot more topics. You can read the whole thing, and indeed the whole magazine, at this link.
"When I won my first Bafta [For 1987's BBC TV series Tutti Frutti, which scooped six] I'd never heard of the awards. I went into the BBC to talk about the upcoming one, which would be Your Che... Continue reading ...
Bill Morris in The Millions looks at the Best Adapted Screenplay race at this year's Oscars. He makes the observation that only one script is based on a novel.
"But the novel is now in retreat — and not only in Hollywood — as screenwriters and moviegoers turn their gaze to movies based on established franchises, comic books, graphic novels, musicals, non-fiction books and magazine articles, TV shows, memoirs, and biographies. There’s nothing inherently wrong, or particularly new, about ... Continue reading ...
Max Frye (“Foxcatcher”) likes to take an old-fashioned route via yellow legal pad and felt pen. But when he takes it to the computer, the transcript is, in essence, already a rewrite. The blend of old and modern writing tools seems effective, though Frye admitted that procrastination was still... Continue reading ...
Following on from my post on Wednesday about Scarecrow Video, the BBC website today has a video feature on 20th Century Flicks, a video shop from Bristol. They still rent VHS tapes and have 18,000 titles on video and DVD. Here it is.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, February 4, 2015,
When I lived in Edinburgh I used to go to Alphabet Video. Here you could find all kinds of obscure or out-of-print videos. I remember renting 'Bang The Drum Slowly' from there. Those types of video shops are all but extinct these days. Scarecrow Video in Seattle, Washington is one of those video shops, and appears to be fully operational.
Dave Chen of Slash Film made this entertaining short film about the shop.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, February 3, 2015,
One of my favourite films of last year was The Skeleton Twins. I watched it again the other night. What's now become one of my favourite scenes of all time is the scene where Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig lip-sync to Starship's 1987 hit single 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now'. That's the scene below, but you really should watch it within the movie itself.
Vulture has some behind-the-scenes at Saturday Night Live insight. This is a feature on how the many sets are built for the show.
According to designer Joe DeTullio, this week has been less impossible than most.
“We’ve built a lot of castles over the years,” he says. Castles are nothing compared to, say, the exploding whale built for a show in May. (“I was really worried about that one,” says Raywood. “There was going to be guts flying all over the place. But it worked out.”) Continue reading ...
I've long considered myself a fan of The Hold Steady. I've even seen them live, but it's only in recent weeks that I've properly listened to their back catalogue at length. This is the one song I've been playing repeatedly. 'Slapped Actress' from 2008's 'Stay Positive'.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, January 31, 2015,
I'm always interested in where a writer writes. If it's a coffee shop or a garden shed I'm always intrigued by where writers settle down to get something done. I think my favourite spaces are the ones like David Hare's above. To promote the Bruntswood Prize the BBC website has a nice collection of pictures of playwrights in their spaces. The photos, taken by Simon Annand, are part of an exhibition at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester in April.
“I’ve seen so many people sitting at coffee shops in L.A. reading ‘Save the Cat’ or Robert McKee’s ‘Story,’ ” he says, “And those are classic books. But they make you think only one thing is commercial, and commerce creates barriers. They think this ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, January 29, 2015,
The AV Club do a good feature called Random Roles where actors who've got a large body of work behind them talk honestly about the parts they've done. The latest one is Martin Starr, who you may have seen in Silicon Valley, Freaks and Geeks or Knocked Up. My favourite series he was a big part of was the cancelled well before its time Party Down.
"It was such a fun, inviting group that we really—I mean, that was as fun as it could’ve been, and every job should be that enjoyable, and everybo... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, January 28, 2015,
Over on Twitter a while ago Chris Ward tweeted that Gene Hackman should be as much loved by the internet as Bill Murray. Grantland has a profile of Hackman looking at some of his 79 films and reminding us that while he may be retired he's still one of the greatest living actors.
"He couldn’t have planned it this way, but Hackman had aged into a screen persona — he looked like he had spent years driving a truck or working as a doorman before lucking into the movies, because that’s basical... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, January 27, 2015,
For my money Our Friends in the North is one of the best things that's ever been on British television. Broadcast in 1996 it tells the story of a group of friends in a changing Britain over a period of nearly 30 years. As part of The Guardian's 'How We Made' series, actor Christopher Eccleston and writer Peter Flannery talk about putting it on screen.
"It was hard. It took nine months to film and one of the directors left a few months after we started shooting in 1995. The very first episode... Continue reading ...
I wrote an obituary for my Uncle Chic, who died last week, that was published in today's Herald. A professional boxer he won Scottish titles at two different weights in the 1950s.
Bobcat Goldthwait has been one of my favourite filmmakers of the last few years. World's Greatest Dad and God Bless America in particular have become two of my favourite ever films.
His new film, which is at Sundance, is a documentary.
'Call Me Lucky' tells the story of Barry Crimmins, a comedian from San Francisco. Boing Boing has an interview with Goldthwait and Crimmins.
"Goldthwait: It’s been a really strange year for me, probably the roughest year of my life. Divorce, then my best frie... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, January 24, 2015,
I've been enjoying season 10 of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Two episodes in and both of them have been laugh out loud funny. This is from the extras on the season 4 DVD. It's the live performance of The Nightman Cometh.
I've been slowly making my way through Annie Baker's Vermont plays. A collection of four plays all set in the same small town in Vermont. So far I've only finished the first one, The Aliens.
This is Annie Baker interviewed in Elle. ...Baker will gorge on reading for months before she even starts to write; then she tries to escape any "ideas" she has acquired in favor of building a world within an imagined physical space—the dueling theaters of The Flick, for example, or the fluorescent-lit c... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, January 22, 2015,
Jay Leno has some interesting comments on the Bill Cosby saga. Quoted in the Hollywood Reporter he talks about how the nature of how we get the news has changed. "I think this whole Cosby thing, Hannibal Buress started it. He's a stand-up comedian and he made a flat-out statement that reverberated around the world. If that had been on television, it would have been edited. But because somebody would put the news out raw and unfiltered — which I think is fantastic — it was a great thing."
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, January 21, 2015,
I've slowly become a fan of Simon Rich. I think his writing is among the most original, clever and funny stuff around. You can read his great short story 'Unprotected' on the New Yorker's website. A live version, read by Wyatt Cenac, is available as part of a collection to buy from the Selected Shorts website.
He has a new sitcom called 'Man Seeking Woman' starting. He speaks to Splitsider about it and his writing career.
"In the writer’s room, I would say we’re less influenced by tradition... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, January 20, 2015,
This is a really good write-up, by playwright Nicola Todd, of a recent workshop run by Cora Bissett at the Tron.
"Ms Bissett also spoke about creating rounded characters - there are no such things as good guys vs bad guys, people are complex and multi-dimensional, and we have to portray that or no one is likely to care about them. She told us that she hadn't wanted to set the show in a traditional theatre, where the audience are removed from the action and viewing the character from a distance... Continue reading ...
With a new season of 'Louie' being announced by FX Louis CK spoke with reporters yesterday to discuss season four of his show.
For me it's been a show like nothing else on television. One week it's sitcom(although very rarely), the next it's a surrealist short film, then it's a drama, then there's lengthy stand-up sections. It's always watchable, even when he doesn't quite pull it off. But a few episodes from the last couple of seasons have been up there with the best television of all time i... Continue reading ...
I saw American Sniper last night. I'm generally a fan of Clint Eastwood's work as a director and I think this is up there with the best of his films. In Fast Company screenwriter Jason Hall talks about gaining the trust of the film's subject Chris Kyle, and how he went from a struggling actor to a screenwriter.
Below is an interview with Chris Kyle from Time magazine.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, January 17, 2015,
There's a new book on Saturday Night Live coming out to join the others already on the shelves. Taschen have a coffee table style book by Alison Castle, created during the series' 39th season. Castle previously edited the Stanley Kubrick Archives book for Taschen.
This is footage from a 1974 Canadian documentary on the National Lampoon magazine. It features John Belushi, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and Gilda Radner in rehearsal.
UPDATE: The video I posted here changed its settings to 'Private' a day or two after I linked to it. Instead here's a link to an archive of National Lampoon magazines.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, January 15, 2015,
The AV Club has a feature on one of my favourite podcasts - How Did This Get Made? To celebrate their 100th episode Paul Scheer and Jason Mantzoukas talk about how they came up with the idea for the show and what they plan to do with it next.
AVC: If Nic Cage came on for an episode of the podcast, would he actually make a great guest, or would it just be awkward?
PS: Depends on the Nic Cage you got. I actually think he’s a very interesting, surprisingly quiet guy. Very serious and not bonkers...
In their Arts section of their website The New York Times run a great section called 'In Performance'. Here they showcase a short scene from a play currently in production in New York. The scenes usually run from about a minute to three minutes.
On his website Steven Soderbergh has posted his record of 2014, the films, TV shows and plays he saw that year, along with the books he read. He even has a system for it.
All caps, bold: MOVIE
All caps: TV SERIES
All italics: Book
Quotation marks: "Play"
Italics, Quotation marks: "Short Story"
I do something similar but it's not as well organised.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, January 10, 2015,
In :
Writing Process
When you start out writing, or bing creative in any way you have a lot of self doubt. You have to work through that doubt in order to get good. One of my favourite pieces of advice on starting out and the problems you find yourself facing comes from Ira Glass.
Oscar winning screenwriter of 'The Departed' William Monahan spoke to Fast Company magazine on how to write convincing dialogue. He shares some good tips.
Dialogue reveals what characters hide
"Quite decent people often don’t realize that their conversations are not about truth or communication but advancing their own mythologies. Look at what people are trying to conceal, and you’ll see that they’re revealing everything. One of the funniest things in the world these days is that you go... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, January 8, 2015,
In :
Writing Process
Here's some more writers talking about their writing process.
Dave Grohl talked to The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon about how he wrote songs for Foo Fighters' most recent album 'Sonic Highways'.
The band went to eight different cities and eight different studios. After recording instrumentals Grohl would go out to interview someone. Once he had enough interviews he gathered together the transcripts.
"I would pick out words, phrases and sentences from the interviews. Put those on this side ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Wednesday, January 7, 2015,
In :
Writing Process
Script Magazine has an archived article from 2004 with screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga on the process of writing the film '21 Grams'. It covers the initial nugget of the idea, themes, characters and the film's big questions.
"We all know that one scene has a meaning by itself and a completely different one when it is linked to a scene before and a scene after. I wanted to go beyond the conventional, so I went for symbolic choices. I started writing scenes in a contrasting order, so that the str... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, January 6, 2015,
In :
Writing Process
I'm always interested in a writer's process. In fact, I should start a collection of posts with that as a theme. As such the Creative Spark section of the Academy's YouTube page is a goldmine.
They have videos of several screenwriters discussing and showing their various ways of approaching writing.
It's interesting to see how their working methods vary greatly.
My favourite of all the videos is this one from Oscar winning write of 'Milk' Dustin Lance Black. His approach to outlining is in... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Monday, January 5, 2015,
In :
Films
Patton Oswalt again, this time in Rolling Stone talking about ten films that defined him. His new book 'Silver Screen Fiend' about spending his days watching films is now out. Continue reading ...
"For our list of the top 10 title sequences released in 2014, Art of the Title’s editors chose from among film, television, video games, conferences, and whatever category Too Many Cooks fits into."
On the list is the title sequence for possibly my favourite new US TV show of 2014, True Detective.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, January 3, 2015,
Here's a photograph I took at the football this afternoon. Sometimes you can get an interesting image if you turn away from the action on the pitch. I just thought the silhouette looked quite nice here.
Posted by Tom Brogan on Saturday, January 3, 2015,
In :
Podcasts
"Podcasts! There's a million of them and they’re all amazing!" So said Parks and Recreation's Tom Haverford. Here's a round-up of a few podcasts I've been listening to recently.
In Song Exploder songwriters discuss how they wrote a particular song and play some of the individual tracks the songs is made up of.
The latest episode features Matt Berninger and Aaron Dessner of The National discussing 'Sea of Love' from 2013's 'Trouble Will Find Me'. There's also a weekly newslette... Continue reading ...
Patton Oswalt is featured a couple of times on the New York Times website this week. First of all he talks about books. Not just his all time favourite books, although he does that, but also books he hates, “I hate to say it, but “Jaws” is just awful.”
One of his favourite books is also one of my favourite books. “James Ellroy’s 'The Black Dahlia,' only because it was my first plunge into unapologetic historical fiction, and a disgusting portrait of Los Angeles that, weirdly, made ... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, January 1, 2015,
This is a list of films that I saw for the first time in 2014 which weren't released that year.
1. Witchfinder General (1968)
Directed by Michael Reeves
Written by Tom Baker, Michael Reeves, Louis M. Heyward (additional scenes)
Starring: Vincent Price, Ian Ogilvy, Hilary Dwyer
2. Magic Mike (2012)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Reid Carolin
Starring: Channing Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, Cody Horn, Matt Bomer, Olivia Munn, Joe Manganiello and Matthew McConaughey
Posted by Tom Brogan on Thursday, January 1, 2015,
1. Blue Ruin (UK release date 21 February; GFF)
Written and directed by: Jeremy Saulnier
Starring: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Eve Plumb
2. 12 Years a Slave (UK release date 10 January)
Directed by Steve McQueen
Written by John Ridley
Starring: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Michael Fassbender, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Dano and Lupita Nyong'o
3. The Rover (UK release date 15 August)
Written and directed by: David Michôd
Story by: David Michôd and Joel Edgerton
Starring: Guy Pearce, Robert Pattins... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Sunday, September 7, 2014,
During the recent Simpsons marathon on FXX several writers and producers of the show were live tweeting with their behind the scenes stories of how the episodes came into being. Parks and Recreation's Ben Schwartz and Simpsons writer/producer Matt Selman hosted an eight and a half hour viewing which they streamed on YouTube full of insight and trivia.
But my favourite little inside story was from the years old DVD commentary of the season 6 episode 'Lisa on Ice'. David Mirkin reveals that Moe'... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, February 4, 2014,
Thinking about my (needlessly complicated) process in writing my play 'Good Times Never Seemed So Good' for this year's Glasgow Comedy Festival, I thought this article by artist Adrian Tomine explaining how he came to draw his first cover for the New Yorker was of interest. Below is one quote.
"But I do think that getting those bad ideas down on paper, in a sense, clears the way for better ones."
I relate to this, as looking back through my early notes I can see a lot of plot points or characte...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Sunday, November 17, 2013,
In :
Theatre
I went to see True West at the Citizen's Theatre on Saturday night, for the second time during its run. I had also seen it on the third night and I really enjoyed it. The set looked amazing and the two leads, Alex Ferns and Eugene O'Hare, seemed like they were having a lot of fun, especially in the later scenes. I had made a note to myself to go back to see it a second time, but I was only propelled to get another ticket when the Citz announced that the last performance would be followed by a...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Sunday, November 17, 2013,
In :
Films
Nightwatch was a film I saw
when it first came out on video in about 1995. A Danish thriller it centres around a student taking a night watchman job in a morgue. I remember really enjoying it at
that time. I also watched the 1997 remake starring Ewan McGregor. I always felt
due to the casting that the identity of the killer was heavily signposted in
that one. I decided to get a copy of the original on DVD and watch it again when I
realised that I'm now much more familiar with the three leads....
Posted by Tom Brogan on Friday, November 15, 2013,
In :
Books
I had the opportunity to go
along to the launch of Shades by Colin Leslie last night. The book is a
biography of Hibs legend Erich Schaedler. A few years ago I wrote an article on
Erich for a football blog called State of the Game. You can read it on the Writing
page. I wanted to write about a player who made an impact on the game, but was
not someone who was widely known. What I discovered when the article went
online was that Schaedler was loved by all who came in contact with him or even
j...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Tuesday, November 12, 2013,
In :
Television
The latest season of HBO's Eastbound and Down has been a real revelation for me. It's a comedy that sprinkles in drama so well. Kenny Powers is a far more complex character than he appears from the off. One week I find myself really rooting for him and the following week I'm thoroughly appalled by his behaviour.
It's Stevie though who has made me laugh the most. The changes in his looks and attitudes have had me near crying the last few weeks. Ken Marino also has me in awe of his acting abilit... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Sunday, November 10, 2013,
In :
Books
Another film covered by How Did This Get Made? is The Room. Commonly accepted as the worst bad film of all time (although I think Birdemic has now inherited that title) The Room is the vision of writer/actor/producer Tommy Wiseau. The new book The Disaster Artist by Greg Sestero and Tom Bissell is the inside story of how the film came to be.
Sestero was one of the leads of the film, and by his own admission 'The Tommy Whisperer', the one man who was at Tommy Wiseau's side throughout the durat... Continue reading ...
Posted by Tom Brogan on Sunday, November 3, 2013,
In :
Podcasts
One of the best things I've stumbled upon this year is the podcast How Did This Get Made? Presented by Paul Scheer, Jason Mantzoukas and June Diane Raphael, every fortnight they watch a film that's so bad it's amazing and then discuss the various plot holes, bad acting and general oddball film-making techniques. The best way, I find, to listen to it is to watch the film first.
It's through this show that I've discovered some eye-popping films that I wouldn't have bothered to watch otherwise. S... Continue reading ...
