I've never been one to have the patience for movies about people. You know the ones I'm talking about: no action or no real plot... just all character development.
When you're 35, you need to figure out what kind of 50-year-old you want to be. Now that I'm 50, I'm thinking about what kind of 70-year-old I want to be.
I had never experienced "writer's block" in my entire life. If an idea -- screenplay or novel -- wasn't working, I just abandoned it and started on something else.
I have made a couple horrible, irremediable decisions in my life, but this decision to accept the writing of The Road Back for Knopf would go down as the worst I have ever made.
Bryan Cranston tried out for a role in Alexander Payne's next project, the road-trip movie "Nebraska," but probably won't get the role, the director t...
I started to believe I had written a dreadful book, that Sideways was unpublishable. Then I got a call informing me that St. Martin's Press had offered $5,000.
The Academy Awards hold a special place in my heart. I'm somehow miraculously behind two Oscars: the Best Adapted Screenplay for Sideways (based on my novel of the same title) and the writer of the 2000 Oscar for Best Live Action Short.
A year after Sideways had been pulled for submission, and the film industry had turned a deaf ear to two guys who go wine tasting in then little known Santa Ynez Valley, my life was in tatters.
In this post I will be specifically addressing what happened Sideways in the publishing world. My story, especially for aspiring authors, is not for the faint of heart.
You would think with a publishing contract, a high-powered agent, a movie in the works, that I was the most grateful writer on the planet. I was... and then I wasn't.
As one of the character puts it, "This is a unique and dramatic situation." But to the audience, The Descendants is simply about saying good-bye.
I'll say it flat out -- Alexander Payne's new film, The Descendants, is my favorite of the year, a movie that manages to be heart-breaking and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.
My hunch about skipping the opening weekend of this year's Toronto International Film Festival has paid off, in more ways than one. Mostly, however, ...
Movies, in many ways, are about fulfilling our wishes and seeing our fantasies lived out on screen. Sometimes, it's being a sports hero or brave soldi...
Digital technology has brought about a whole new world for book publishing and magazine publishers. Some say it is a world of trouble, others say a wo...
I thought of this old joke: This guy goes to a psychiatrist and says, "Doc, my brother's crazy; he thinks he's a chicken." And, the doctor says, "Well, why don't you turn him in?" The guy says, "I would, but I need the eggs." Well, I guess that's pretty much how I feel about relationships; they're totally irrational, and crazy, and absurd, but I guess we keep going through it because most of us... need the eggs.
The book is so much better than the movie. We've all said it, we've all heard it. And we all think it's always true, that the book is better than the ...
Thomas Haden Church is one of those under-utilized treasures of cinema who only recently has started to get the kinds of roles he deserves.
The most important moment in the episode, for me, also involved Kate, but in the Island world.
Since July, the world has been watching with delicious delight as Michael Cyril Creighton stuffs his face with Bakeway cupcakes on Jack in a Box, the comedy series he created for YouTube.
A month after the election, there's still an overwhelming sense of novelty when I flip a channel and see Obama at a news conference.
We in the U.S. don't love stinky. We grew up on too-sweet soda, Hawaiian punch and Yoo -Hoo, and we want our Pinot Noirs to taste like cherry cola (not that there's anything wrong with that).
Lately here has been a great deal of bitching and moaning about restaurant waitstaff and wine service. Having been on both ends of the wine bottle, I can tell you that the feeling is often mutual.
