Joe Carnahan and Ben Hernandez Bray Share Their Screenwriting Advice

Hey Jo I’m Kenny Trents ex wife hope you’re Dad Woody is well you certainly have come far

Once more into the fray... into the last good fight I'll ever know --

It's nice to hear "real life" making it into a story, the cliche is "real life won't sell" congratulations.

I love to hear when writers speak about how the Ribert Mckee formula yet useful but can destroy a script.

Does it matter how hard you work if you don’t have talent? Nope, not in this value proposition it doesn’t.

My advice to every new writer is never any different: quit. The hierarchy is too steep to summit: unforgiving in all ways contending. Imagine being a new band and the chances of submitting a chart placing song to a radio station or record company. Now multiply that difficulty by a factor of two. The young grossly overestimate their abilities and have no concept of the spectacular talent they’ll come up against in [all forms of] writing.

Storytelling is a conceptual ability and writing a technical skill. The former was around long before the latter. Shouldn’t that tell you something about where it comes from? Hint: it’s a branch of biology.

These Film Courage uploads and University MFA/Screen classes have damaged more lives than they’ll ever help.

Anyone foolish enough to try their hand at screenwriting needs to dig ink into paper with literary short stories and find out where they place on the hierarchy after submitting them to literary journals, magazines and competitions. If you can’t beat out the amateur competition there—don’t bother with screen writing, novels, other fiction.

As an editor I’ve seen less than 1% success for screens and other fiction. Suicides, mental breakdowns, violence, addiction, commitments...too often amongst the writing crowd—and that’s the good ones—several percentage points above a successful screen.

Do yourself a favor and quit. You have no future in this business. If you’re one-in-a-million that writes well enough for a career in this industry you’ll know it the same way a 7-foot-tall person knows they’re 7-feet-tall.

Thanks boys. Nice to hear your thoughts Joe on screenwriting. Couldn't agree with you more. Uniqueness is the most sought after commodity in the industry in my opinion. Not so unique as to be completely not relatable but unique in voice and heart.

Does anyone know if it's possible to get a link to the background of this movie they said it's based on true story and took 10 yrs to make I'd love to see real history on this movie ....anyone ???