"It Starts with the Script" The Writer's Panel at the Santa Barbara Film Festival #book2movies

It starts on the page. Whether it’s an original script or a script based on a book, somewhere a writer sat down in front of a blank page and began. “Once upon a time’’  “On a dark and stormy night.’’ 

IndieWire’s Anne Thompson gathered some of this year’s Oscar-nominated writers at the Santa Barbara Film Festival—the gorgeous seaside city is probably the closest thing we have to Cannes—for a nice long chat about their work. Love writers? You’re going to love this panel.

Her “It Starts with the Script” panel featured director Edgar Wright, who attached a music file to his music-driven screenplay for Baby Driver,Virgil Williams whose script for Mudbound was based on the book by Hilary Jordan, Michael H. Weber (absent his writing partner Scott Neustadter) who talks about taking notes from Tommy Wiseau on The Disaster Artist, Vanessa Taylor, who co-wrote The Shape of Water with Guillermo del Toro, Adrian Molina, who made the transition from storyboard artist to screenwriter on the animated feature Coco, rookie Liz Hannah who sold her spec screenplay The Post before she landed an agent, and Emily V. Gordon, who wrote about her real life relationship with her husband actor/comedian Kumail Nanjiani on The Big Sick.

As I said, it’s a nice long one—almost an hour and a half—so you may want to bookmark this page and come back to watch at your leisure.