Fungi & Other Stories for the Screen - Tom Sturges

"A tip from Lubitsch... Let the audience add up two plus two. They'll love you forever."

Billy Wilder in The Book of Lists

"Nobody knows anything. Not one person in the entire motion picture field knows for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess..."

William Goldman in Adventures in the Screen Trade

"As important as premise, character, and even dialog - is the subject matter. Voltaire himself, the French wit and satirist, said that the success or failure of any dramatic work depends entirely on the choice of the subject. I agree. It is very difficult to write a really bad screenplay about a subject that is rich...and meaty." 

Preston Sturges in Last Night at the Algonquin

Long before someone shouts, "Lights, camera...Action!" some other someone has to grind out several hundred pages (at least!) of scenes, stage directions, descriptions and dialogue in the hope of telling a compelling and remarkable story. Which must be full of characters rich with grit and purpose and foibles, who've set out on a journey certain to be waylaid by any number of dragons and pitfalls and unexpected interactions with fate. All this in pursuit of a truth, a speck of knowledge, a bit of learning known only to the writers and their secret hearts. The result is a screenplay.

Tom Sturges