Creative Principles

Valerie Armstrong always wanted to be a writer, but quickly discovered there was no clear path to becoming a screenwriter. That said, she knew she had to give it a shot, and she eventually landed a job as a Writer’s Assistant on ‘Masters of Sex.’

These days, she’s known for ‘SEAL Team,’ ‘Lodge 49,’ & ‘Kevin Can F**k Himself,’ where she’s also the Creator for this AMC series. The plot is about “the secret life of a sitcom wife” but the real pitch of the show is within the manipulation of genre.

In this interview, Valerie talks about advice from Michelle Ashford, why females in the industry need to bring others up with them, the truth about “story math,” writing with a singular voice in mind, and the necessity of “discussing moments” in the writer’s room.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

As far back as he can remember, Aaron Augenblick has been obsessed with cartoons and animation. As he pursued his passion, he quickly decided to open his own studio at the age of 22.

Aaron is best known for working on Daria, Ugly Americans, The Jellies!, Death Hacks, Teenage Euthanasia, and The Adventures of Drunky, which stars the voice talents of Sam Rockwell, Jeffrey Tambor, Steve Coogan, and Nina Arianda.

The plot reads, “Drunky is a barfly who finds himself in the middle of a cosmic bet between God and the Devil over the fate of the Earth. With his life destroyed, Drunky must travel through Heaven and Hell to rescue the girl he loves and save the world.”

In this interview, Aaron talks about different animation styles based on comedy and visual language, his appreciation for visual descriptions in screenplays, live action versus animation, his thoughts on creativity within corporations, and secrets to a network pitch.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

Camille Griffin has credits in the Camera and Electrical Department for movies like Layer Cake, Star Wars: Episode 1, and Jojo Rabbit, before making her first film Silent Night. The new film stars Keira Knightley, Matthew Goode, and Roman Griffin Davis.

The plot for her debut reads, "Nell, Simon, and their son Art are ready to welcome friends and family for what promises to be a perfect Christmas gathering. Perfect except for one thing: everyone is going to die."

Warning: there are plot spoilers near the end of this interview.

In this interview, Camille talks about having “misery guts,” advice from Matthew Vaughn, how to deliver on a challenging tone, making movies outside the system, and when it’s time to turn an idea into a spec script.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Join the email list here: www.brockswinson.com

Follow us on Instagram for updates: @brockswinson

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

“From the very first moment I saw Annie, I knew I wanted to do that.” Kourtney Kang got her start acting and singing before moving into screenwriting and playwriting.

Today, she’s best known for creating the Disney Plus reboot ‘Doogie Kamealoha M.D.,’ and writing for major shows like ‘Fresh Off the Boat,’ and ‘How I Met Your Mother.’

In Doogie Kamealoha M.D., the story follows Lahela "Doogie" Kamealoha, “a teenaged wunderkind juggling her high school life with an early medical career.”

In this interview, Kourtney talks about positive limitations in playwriting, why writer’s rooms are sacred, advice from Danny Zuker, writing with the heart in mind, and how she uses notebooks to craft personal stories for the silver screen.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Join the email list here: www.brockswinson.com

Follow us on Instagram for updates: @brockswinson

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

On her first day on set, Danis Goulet knew she wanted to be a filmmaker. As she transitioned from casting to head a film festival in Toronto, she saw a potential path to making her own shorts, like Spin, Divided by Zero, Wapawekka, and Barefoot.

Her first full feature as the writer-director, Night Raiders, the story focuses on a mother who joins an underground band of vigilantes to try to rescue her daughter from a state-run institution.

In this interview, Danis talks about approaching films as experiments, failures and successes making shorts, how she used history to write a futuristic film, and her thoughts on being an indigenous storyteller.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

“It stretches back at least 10 years,” said Edgar Wright about the story idea for Last Night in Soho.

Edgar, who is well known for his musical taste, in movies like Shaun of the Dead, Scott Pilgrim, and Baby Driver, seems to write, direct, and edit with the score or soundtrack in mind.

With this setting in mind, Edgar eventually crafted the character of Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie), an aspiring fashion designer who discovers she can enter the 1960s, essentially through the life of a dazzling wannabe singer named Sandie (Anya Taylor-Joy), until the glamour of this world “splinters into something darker.”

Krysty Wilson-Cairns, who has writing credits for Penny Dreadful and 1917, was introduced to Wright while he was editing Baby Driver by Sam Mendes (Skyfall, 1917). “Sam is a mutual friend and said we should get together.”

In this interview, the writers talk about their detailed outlining process, stories that haunt you, how soundtracks can change the writing process, and how to write surgical bits of dialogue.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

“I had a story I wanted to tell,” said Eleanor Coppola, filmmaker and wife of Francis Ford Coppola. “Some of it was a little bit personal and I didn’t want to make a documentary out of it, so I made a fiction piece.”

Prior to her fiction features Paris Can Wait and Love Is Love Is Love, Eleanor made documentaries such as Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, A Visit to China’s Miao Country, and Making of ‘The Virgin Suicides’ about her daughter Sofia’s film.

In this interview, Eleanor talks about writing for underserved audiences, how she crafts personal stories, her writing process with Karen Leigh Hopkins, and advice for being diligent and creative at any age.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

Cousins Ryan Firpo and Kaz Firpo both felt a deep connection to storytelling, but it wasn’t until they formed a partnership that they were able to break into the industry.

Their script Ruin, about a nameless ex-Nazi captain after WWII who hunts down the surviving members of the SS Death Squad, actually won the 2017 Black List (and is now listed as pre-production with Margot Robbie attached and Justin Kurzel set to direct).

Originally, Eternals was going to be the first film of Marvel’s Phase Four (before Black Widow and Shang-Chi), but quarantine scheduling pushed back the release date. Regardless of the release date (originally November 2020) which pushed the movie to be the 26th Marvel movie, the screenwriters had a truly unique situation when writing the film.

Basically, they had to craft an Avengers-like movie without the benefit of having ten other movies to develop characters. Rather than getting to Tony Stark and Steve Rogers over time, we were introduced to Sersi, Ikaris, Thena, Ajak, Kingo, Sprite, Phastos, Druig, Makkari, Gilgamesh, Karun, and Dane Whitman all at once.

In this interview, the Firpo Cousins talk about how Hollywood bleeds into creative pursuits, Marvel’s Phase Four, how screenwriting emerges the creative mind with the engineering mind, and when to cross boundaries as a writer.

There are some partial spoilers in this interview if you haven’t seen Eternals and you can also find the print version on Creative Screenwriting’s website.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

As an actress, Justine Bateman is best known for her early television role as Mallory Keaton on Family Ties, but she also starred on Lois & Clark, Men Behaving Badly, Still Standing, Desperate Housewives, and Arrested Development, alongside her brother Jason Bateman.

But, since the age of 19, she’s wanted to be a director. After graduating from UCLA a few years ago, she made two shorts - Five Minutes and PUSH - before raising the money to make Violet.

Bateman’s debut film stars Olivia Munn and Luke Bracey, where Justin Theroux guest stars as “The Voice.” The plot reads, “Violet realizes that her entire life is built on fear-based decisions, and must do everything differently to become her true self.”

In this interview, Bateman talks about directing as a visual collage, how she created an in-depth character piece, why the viewer is the most important character, and how her stories “bake” over time.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!

Actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt is best known for his role as Tommy on 3rd Rock from the Sun and for movies like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, 50/50, The Dark Knight Rises, Looper, Lincoln, and Snowden. In this interview, we discuss Joseph’s work as a writer-director, for the film Don Jon and the new series Mr. Corman.

In the 2013 film that co-stars Scarlett Johansson, “A New Jersey guy dedicated to his family, friends, and church, develops unrealistic expectations from watching porn and works to find happiness and intimacy with his potential true love.”

In Mr. Corman, the story follows the life of a public school teacher in San Fernando Valley. In addition to creating the series for Apple, Joseph also stars as Josh Corman. Debra Winger plays his mother. Juno Temple plays his ex. Arturo Castro plays his roommate.

During this interview, Joseph talks about how underlying themes create characters, luck versus hard work, adapting stories to include real-world events, balancing a multitude of creative urges with Hit Record, and how to write dialogue actors want to read.

If it’s your first time listening, make sure to subscribe and visit my new website for information on the YouTube channel, the blog, this podcast, and my new book ‘Ink by the Barrel’ which takes advice from these 200+ interviews at the link below…

Follow us on Instagram: @creativeprinciples

If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts? It only takes about 60-seconds and it really helps convince some of the hard-to-get guests to sit down and have a chat (simply scroll to the bottom on your iTunes Podcast app and click “Write Review"). Enjoy the show!