What goes into writing a great movie script?

Get up there yourself. Be in a movie. Take some acting (not writing) classes. Learn how a trained actor approaches a text. Learn why actors take roles. They do as much if not more than the writer does.

Learn to tell a story orally and not through writing. Try telling your story to a friend.

Research the facts and then throw away the research.

How do I cut off friends that don't contribute to my life?

Cut everything that is not a payoff, or a setup for a specific payoff. “Omit needless words.” Think about the sparseness of joke telling, or Grimm Brothers.

Outline everything. Use story beats. Keep character’s mouths taped up, until they absolutely MUST speak. Write the script and the dialogue at the last minute, after you’ve revised the hell out of the outline.

Use status to help drive conflict. King Lear/fool. Upstairs/downstairs.

Is it possible for creatures with intelligence more advanced than humans to evolve naturally in the universe?

Leave holes. Write and unwrite. Put it in, take it out.

Make sure to pack enough explosives into the rocket.

The DSM 5 is a wonderful character compendium.

What's your review of the movie Poor Things?

A critical function of storytelling is wish fulfillment. This is why video games are so popular. “That protagonist is JUST LIKE ME.”

Audiences are smarter than you think. Something about turning down the house lights makes their IQs go up.

Your primary job is to create situations. Modern actors will fuck up your dialogue, despite whatever your contract says.

How can you know if they are your twin flame and not limerence or obsession?

Only God gets it right the first time. Rewrite everything.

A scene should change valence from beginning to end. Up to down, down to up.

Primary characters must change polarities. Secondary characters can change less.

What do you think of the Black history lessons in the PBS documentary about jazz pianist-singer Hazel Scott?

Actors give better feedback than writers do.

Maintain a slush pile/idea file. When you are ready to write, choose the best seeds to plant.

To develop a unique voice for each character, try interviewing your characters.

How exactly do things get smuggled into prison? Does the sender hide it inside something else very well? Does someone put it in their butt? Do the prisoners make deals with the officers?

Don’t direct from the page. Everyone, from the director on down, wants to be part of the process of making movies. Let them do their work.

All rules are made to be broken, but you damn well better know WHY you’re breaking them.

People choose what to see based on the high concept. Make sure to deliver an ending consistent with the high concept -- it is what the audience paid for.

What are the methods used for preserving rice straw in China?

What you leave unwritten is as important as what you write. SUBTEXT.

Write in reverse time. Major characters need to change polarity; minor characters may remain the same at the end.

Conflict is your power source; without it you have no drama and hence no script.

Why do some women alter their faces by so-called cosmetic surgeries (on their eyes, cheeks, lips, chin, jaw) that making them look like Donald Duck or puffy aliens, while for most men these unnatural facial changes are ridiculous or even disgusting?