Or is it as simple as having a tremendous way with language, writing for the joy of it? How do we decide what constitutes ‘greatness’? Is it something tangible like having sold multiple spec scripts or winning an Academy Award or two? Is it keeping the industry afloat with consistent box office success or being the go-to writer for a particular genre.
We could all name our top 10 favourite screenwriters, or even our top 10 favourite British screenwriters, but ‘…of all time.”? That’s tough. Nowadays British screenwriters are at the top of their game, ranging from Dominic Minghella to Jed Mercurio, however this hasn’t been always the case Jim has a BA in philosophy from Princeton and an MFA in fiction from the Writing Program at Sarah Lawrence College.Well, there’s one word for this article: contentious. His novel, Tales Of The Patriarchs, is available on . His acting credits include Broadway, off-Broadway and regional theaters, including The Dorset Theatre Festival, Florida Stage, New Jersey Rep and Playhouse on Park. Schreiber Studio and Sleep With Me staged reading at Emerging Artists.
Luke In The Fields (2018 New York International Fringe Festival) Heartless Bastard (HERE) Billy And The Killers, an alt-rock musical with Peter Stopschinksi (HERE) The Screenwriter Dies Of His Own Free Will (Best Playwriting Award in the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival and Blank Slate Theatre) Kiss Your Brutal Hands (2014 New York International Fringe Festival and Best Actor Award at 2013 United Solo Festival) Suicide Math (2013 New York International Fringe Festival) Alien Child staged reading at New Group, workshop production at T. His plays have been developed at The New Group, Emerging Artists Theatre, Abingdon Theatre, New Jersey Rep, Penguin Rep, Michael Howard Studios, and the T. Jim Shankman is a playwright, actor, and novelist. In this case I hope that God knows where is somewhere that will make people laugh at the undignified farce of death and dying, and the lengths to which we will go to leave something behind when we have passed through this place. It is very rewarding when a play develops a life of its own and leads the playwright God knows where. As it happened, it took itself to the ultimate fate of the screenwriter and his screenplay and to some more meta-fictional fun for the playwright. I decided to extend the play from 40 minutes to a full-length format and see where the play would take itself. The play was very well received at the 2015 New York International Fringe Festival, where it won an Award For Outstanding Excellence in Playwriting. The next step was to allow his adversary, the producer Gabe, to speak to the audience, and that is where my taste for meta-fictional playfulness joined the party. This is a problematic thing to say in the theater where the mantra is “Only action reveals character.” But I don’t like rules. When I turned the story into a play, I realized I had to do something with the narration, so I allowed the screenwriter to address the audience at length because, forgive me for saying this, the character’s interior life interests me as much as his outward actions. A professor I had at Sarah Lawrence told me a story about a famous screenwriter who was teaching at Sundance while fighting cancer, a story about fighting on despite the indignities of the disease and its treatment. That was my starting point: a story narrated by the dying screenwriter. In its earliest incarnation, the play was a short story called The Pitch. The Screenwriter Dies Of His Own Free Will is a two-character play about a dying screenwriter who has one last screenplay he must pitch to the man who is his oldest friend and toughest adversary in Hollywood. Can he pitch to his old nemesis, Gabe Weiner, and maintain his self-respect? Can he remember his own name in spite of the medical marijuana? Playwright Perspective But late-stage cancer has graced him with a new vision of art and cinema and a screenplay to go with it. Producers kill for his stylish violence and ironic sci-fi. Willy Shotz is a brilliant and successful Hollywood screenwriter.