Blue Velvet and Quantum Leap actor Dean Stockwell has died; Dave Grohl’s Foo Fighters are making a movie set in a haunted mansion; tips on how to format text messages in a screenplay. All in today’s Movie News Rundown.
Foo Fighters Movie: Dave Grohl and the other five members of Foo Fighters are executive producing and starring in a horror-comedy film called Studio 666, directed by BJ McDonnell, according to Variety. In this movie, ghosts say “Foo!” instead of “Boo!” (Sorry, I totally just made that up). The actual plot, which is based on a story written by Grohl and thickens in a screenplay by Jeff Buhler and Rebecca Hughes, follows the band as they record in a haunted San Fernando Valley mansion, where supernatural forces threaten the completion of their album — and their lives. Sfooky!
King Richard Insights: King Richard, the upcoming Warner Bros. movie starring Will Smith as the father of tennis legends Serena and Venus Williams, steers pretty clear of the voices of sports commentators despite the number of tennis matches in the movie. Here’s why director Reinaldo Marcus Green chose to skip that major sports movie cliché.
RIP: Dean Stockwell, the actor known for David Lynch’s Blue Velvet, the comedy Married to the Mob, and the TV series Quantum Leap, died Sunday at the age of 85. His career began when he appeared as a child in the 1948 antiwar film The Boy With Green Hair, and he eventually earned more than 200 credits. “He’s such a chameleon,” Married to the Mob director Jonathan Demme once said of Stockwell. “That’s what makes him special – he has such mercurial presence.” Stockwell received an Oscar nomination for his Married to the Mob role.
Movies From AFM: MovieMaker moderated a panel Friday at the American Film Market, and this week we’re sharing trailers from some filmmakers we met at the virtual event. Here’s the trailer from Small Group: The Movie, a film from Matt Chatain about a husband and wife who go undercover in a Christian community to expose how they truly live. Things do not go as expected. You can learn more about the film on its website.
Fish & Men: Darby Duff wants YOU to change how you eat seafood (read that in an Uncle Sam voice) with his documentary Fish & Men, which he co-directed and produced with Adam R. Jones. Their award-winning documentary, which was recently released on Apple and Amazon, argues that consumer demand drives an irrational global seafood trade that threatens local fishing communities and public health.
Screenplay Texts: Have you ever wanted to put text messages in a screenplay but not known exactly how to format it? Well, you’re in luck — our own Tim Molloy wrote a very helpful breakdown of exactly how to do it, including excerpts from some of the screenplays that have done it best, including A Promising Young Woman and Spree.
Congrats: To the winners of the 2021 Academy Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting competition. Haley Hope Bartels (Pumping Black), Karin delaPeña Collison (Coming of Age), Byron Hamel (Shade of the Grapefruit Tree), R.J. Daniel Hanna (Shelter Animal), and Laura Kosann (The Ideal Woman) are the screenwriters and scripts chosen as fellows this year chosen by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Each fellow gets a $35,000 prize plus a mentor from the Academy member as they write a feature-length screenplay. Here’s Olivia Wilde, in conversation with Kosann.
By the Way: We know it can be hard to keep track of which screenwriting competitions matter and which ones don’t, but Nicholl is a huge deal, for reasons we explained in our recent list of Submission-Worthy Screenwriting Competitions.
Before You Go: Here’s Dean Stockwell lip-synching “In Dreams” by Roy Orbison in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
Main Image: Dean Stockwell lip-synchs Roy Orbison’s In Dreams in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
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