Scripts

THIS is a tale of two scripts, one that sold for a ton of money, one that remains twisting in the wind. Both are beautifully written, but in Hollywood, while scripts are prized for great writing, they must also give a studio chief enough ammunition to comfortably answer the question: If I spend $100 million on this, will I be bankrolling a big hit, not a colossal failure?

Cineastes who enjoy ebooks will want to check out "Inside the Script," a new series of illustrated ebooks from Warner Bros. that focuses on four famous films. They feature shooting scripts, production notes, storyboards, candid photographs and interactive gallery of costumes, stills, movie posters, set designs and behind-the-photographs. Four titles have just been released by Warner Bros. Digital Distribution on iBookstore, Kindle and Nook: "Casablanca," "Ben-Hur," "An American in Paris" and "North by Northwest," with more titles in the series to come.

I am writing in response to the continuing Hollywood lament that there are no good scripts, as echoed again by MGM Chairman Alan Ladd Jr. in "Money Woes Make Script for MGM a Tragedy" (Business, Oct. 27). He says good scripts have dried up throughout the industry, adding that everyone he talks to at the studios agrees that "there seems to be no really good material around right now." Many scripts have journeyed through my word processor, most by well-known career writers. Add to this the number of scripts typed by other services and the number of scripts typed by writers themselves.

Although I never thought I would say these words in this lifetime, what I really missed was Celine Dion. While watching "Titanic," ABC's ill-paced, sanctimonious and overly stuffed four-part miniseries airing this weekend, it is impossible not to compare it with the James Cameron film of the same name. Completely unfair to screenwriter Julian Fellowes (creator of "Downton Abbey") or anyone else associated with ABC's "Titanic," but as the more than 1,500 folks who lost their lives on that fateful night 100 years ago could tell you, life is often completely unfair.

As Hollywood's movie studios cut back on the amount of money they spend to buy scripts and ideas, director Ron Howard is taking a new approach to the development process. Imagine Entertainment, the production company Howard runs with producing partner Brian Grazer, has partnered with Indian media conglomerate Reliance Big Entertainment for a new "writers lab" that makes 10 screenwriters employees for a year. The writers will be paid a salary to work exclusively for Imagine writing scripts and serving as "creative executives" for each other, evaluating and giving notes on their ideas outside of the traditional studio process.

An online catalog to help people locate more than 30,000 motion picture scripts spanning 95 years of filmmaking was launched Thursday by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. The Motion Picture Scripts Database lists scripts from 1910 to the present housed at six Southland libraries -- the Academy's Margaret Herrick Library, American Film Institute's Louis B.

Why is it I think Hal Jepsen (Calendar Letters, July 6) would be a model producer on the order of a Jon "I don't need to read a script" Peters? His theory works great for the car dealer selling those beautiful sleek convertible sports cars that wind up in the shop more days than on the road. However, he would feel differently if he bought one of those lemons (I know several people that have). My guess is he doesn't attend many movies. But he's probably right--I mean "Pulp Fiction" would have been no different written by someone other than Quentin Tarantino.

I didn't move to L.A. to become a screenwriter; I moved out here for love of a woman. And because that woman had needs -- needs that could only be fulfilled by 400-thread-count linens and celebrity facialists -- I wrote a script. And then another.

THE script for the Academy Awards telecast runs about 250 pages. With another 250 pages of ancillary lists -- of phone numbers, nominees, presenters, orchestra breakdowns and schedules -- it weighs, with its official three-ring binder, almost 8 pounds. By the night of the show, it will look something like a rainbow -- every change requires a new color, and changes are made up until the show begins.

Sarah Ruhl, a Santa Monica playwright who received notice last year for her stage version of Virginia Woolf's "Orlando" at the Actors' Gang, has won the $10,000 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize for her unproduced script "The Clean House." The annual prize is for an outstanding new English-language play by a woman. Among the past winners are Caryl Churchill, Marsha Norman, Wendy Wasserstein, Naomi Wallace and Paula Vogel, under whom Ruhl studied while earning a master's at Brown University.

Express Scripts Inc. on Monday completed its acquisition of rival Medco Health Solutions Inc. in a $29.1-billion deal that could have major implications for Walgreen Co. The deal was announced after the Federal Trade Commission gave its formal approval after an eight-month antitrust investigation of whether the merger would hurt competition in the pharmacy benefits management sector. Pharmacy benefits management companies administer prescription-drug insurance coverage for employers and insurers.

This top gun was supposed to be a wingman. Instead, Novak Djokovic became an interloper. Three or four years ago, the men's game was clearly the property of Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal. They were the royalty. Federer had served his time on the throne majestically, and the younger Nadal, all power and spunk and sex appeal and charm, was tugging on the royal robe. The ascension seemed scripted, established, kind of like with English kings. The Johns and the Henrys were established.

She feared the worst at first. What if she tripped? What if she fell? What if she ran head-on into a wall? Blind for 16 years, Maria Perez still struggled getting around in her Santa Clarita home. And then someone came along and dared her to take the stage as an actress, under the lights, under the gaze of an audience. VIDEO: Blind theater troupe "There's no way," she thought. "No way I can do it. " That was two years ago, when she first joined Theater by the Blind, a troupe of actors who put on a show despite their disability.

After Benedict Freedman and his wife, Nancy, turned the true-life adventure of a teenager who married a Canadian Mountie into the bestselling 1947 novel "Mrs. Mike," one reviewer theorized that the couple partly based the book's happy marriage on their own. The Freedmans collaborated well into their 80s, writing 10 books that included two late-in-life sequels to "Mrs. Mike," which is still in print. It has appeared in 27 foreign editions and received the Hollywood treatment in a 1949 film of the same name starring Evelyn Keyes and Dick Powell.

Even as Tyler Perry the industry grows more and more stable and certain, reliably putting out cost-effective cultural products across a number of platforms, Tyler Perry the filmmaker remains a work in progress. There is still something both oddly thrilling and endlessly frustrating about his work as writer, director and performer. When Perry sets films within the universe of broad tones steered by his signature character of Madea, veering madly from comedy to melodrama, he seems more sure-footed than when he makes films set ostensibly in the genuine contemporary here and now. In "Tyler Perry's Good Deeds" he plays, indeed, a character named Wesley Deeds III who learns how to be genuinely good.

When Kristen Wiig says that she and her writing partner, Annie Mumolo, knew next to nothing about what they were doing when they tackled the Oscar-nominated script for "Bridesmaids," it's tempting to chalk the outcome up to beginner's luck. As Wiig tells it, it all began when producer Judd Apatow asked whether she had any movie ideas of her own after she'd appeared in his hit comedy "Knocked Up. " Says Wiig: "We knocked out a first draft in six days and handed it to him, and we were like, 'We're done!

Onward, Christian writers. Fade In. Culled from 100 applicants, 30 aspiring screenwriters are about to hit the books, so to speak, on the campus of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. On Aug. 2, they will begin a monthlong course, spending 12 hours a week in class with professional writers and producers whose credits range from "MASH" to "Cagney & Lacey." Although not by design, the student body is divided equally by gender. Twenty percent represent minorities.

Director Steven Spielberg, star Harrison Ford and executive producer George Lucas have signed off on David Koepp's script for a fourth "Indiana Jones" movie, representatives for Paramount Pictures and Spielberg confirmed Tuesday. Koepp's credits include "Spider-Man," "Jurassic Park" and "War of the Worlds."

Everybody has them — waiters, bus drivers, lawyers: a bad day. For a filmmaker with a hundred-strong crew in the wings and millions of dollars on the line, the stakes can be considerably higher when things go off the rails. In this edited excerpt from the third annual Envelope Directors' Roundtable, the filmmakers behind some of this season's most talked about movies — Martin Scorsese ("Hugo"), Michel Hazanavicius ("The Artist"), Alexander Payne ("The Descendants"), George Clooney ("The Ides of March")

Director Jason Reitman is promising some colorful stage directions when he and a group of actors perform a live, onstage reading of "Shampoo," the 1975 film that starred Warren Beatty as a promiscuous Beverly Hills hairdresser, on Thursday. "That will be the funny part. I will be reading all the sex scenes," Reitman laughs. "So I will be announcing every thrust. " Reitman's "Live Read" program has had instant sellouts since the series began last October as part of the new Film Independent program of classic and contemporary film at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Once a month, Reitman presents a cinema favorite with a different cast of actors cold-reading the famous scripts.