Led by Ethan Hawke, 'Born to Be Blue' is trying to expand beyond the limitations of past music biopics. The film opens with legendary producer Dino De Laurentiis approaching musician Chet Baker to develop a film about Baker’s life. At the time, the jazz musician was down on his luck in Europe and jumped at the opportunity. Using a film-within-a-film style of storytelling, writer and director Robert Budreau invites audiences to watch a black-and-white documentary-style performance before cutting away to reveal a scene within a scene.

The Hollars screenwriter Jim Strouse is a storyteller who collects life’s intimate moments, weaving his films from the fabric of the everyday: the way a wife speaks to her husband, a simple haircut, a tire swing. The resulting films 'New York, I Love You,' 'The Winning Season,' and 'People Places Things,' can almost be said resemble family photo albums brought to life. In 'The Hollars,' directed by and starring John Krasinkski (The Office), John Hollar is forced to return to his hometown after news of his mother’s illness, and there reconnects with his dysfunctional family.

In this interview, screenwriter Andrew Bergman talks about how ‘Blazing Saddles’ got made and what led to his Criterion Collection film, ‘The In-Laws.’ Bergman describes working with iconic director Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor, along with what happened when Marlon Brando called him about a bizarre Michael Jackson movie idea that never got made. Make sure to also check out our print interview with Mel Brooks over at the Creative Principles website.

http://creativeprinciples.live/

Writer-Director Michel Franco penned the script for ‘Chronic’ after his grandmother got terribly ill. In the film, Tim Roth’s character David is a home care nurse who works with terminally ill patients. When Franco and Roth met at Cannes, it was clear that the actor wanted to be involved with the director’s next project. For this collaboration, the duo wanted to talk about end of life.

Jonathan Tropper started writing books, but after several of his novels were optioned for films, he got into screenwriting. In this interview, Tropper discusses ‘This Is Where I Leave You’ and the Showtime series, ‘Banshee.’ He dives in to the differences between prose and film, writing for actors portrayals versus your own character descriptions, and why he loves ‘The Count of Monte Cristo.’

Pamela Romanowsky is a writer-director who fell in love with film and even left medical school to pursue it. In this interview, Pamela tells us about her start in documentary film, how she made friends with actor James Franco, the importance of satellite relationships in film, and the intense psychology behind her adaptation, ‘The Adderall Diaries.’

In ‘The Hero,’ actor Sam Elliott plays a heightened version of his cowboy persona. The story follows “an ailing movie star comes to terms with his past and mortality.” In the interview, writer-director Brett Haley discusses the disposability of actors, the difficulty of working a creative profession, and why he chose to use dream sequences around a cautious, closed-off character.

Gloria Calderon Kellett started writing material for herself in a non-Latino Hollywood. In this interview, the writer-creator talks about working as Cameron Crowe’s (Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky) second assistant, moving from plays to television, self-studying television pilots at the Paley Center, writing for ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and working with the iconic Norman Lear (All In The Family, The Jeffersons).

In ‘Day of the Dead: Bloodline,’ “A small group of military personnel and survivalists dwell in an underground bunker as they seek to find a cure in a world overrun by zombies.” In this interview, Director Hector Hernandez Vicens discusses the masters of suspense, his love for George Romero, what makes a film truly scary, and the importance of character.

Duncan Falconer talks about his life as an author and as the man they send into conflict zones and hostile environments. In the interview, he discusses how he got the British Ministry of Defense approval to write his life stories, how he made friends with Superman actor Henry Cavill, how he finally got ‘Stratton’ on the big screen and he leaks some info on the new Stratton book trilogy.