Here's one to start an argument: feature writing and short film writing are two totally different disciplines, and just because you can do one, doesn't mean you should be able to do the other.

and here's something else: you will all, at sometime in your careers, come up against the film geek - and he's often a producer or a financier. He or she is the type or person who will casually drop into the conversation a series of obscure, low-budget eastern European or south Korean films, or will ask if you’re familiar with the work of some emerging new Iranian director, or will raise an eyebrow when you say no, you’ve not seen one of Bergman’s films the whole way through… (we’re talking Ingmar here, not Ingrid).

So here’s the fiftymilliondollar question: is it important for us, as storytellers, to have an in-depth knowledge of the film world? Are we better to spend our precious moments of life on this earth slumped in dark rooms watching movies, or are we better to get out into the maelstrom of life and live it and learn and maybe then have something worth writing about?

consider and discuss....

By the way, anyone out there working on a screenplay about a screenwriter….?