PEOPLE & NEWS
The Buzz
AAA contest winner Suzanne Witter, holiday dead zone: fact or fiction, holiday remakes

Anatomy of a Spec Sale
Joe Gazzam's script scares Hollywood straight into a spec sale.

Production Co. Spotlight

Breaking In
Nancy Jack, Eric Heisserer

People
Jim Troesh, David Lee Fisher

Lost Scenes: The Graduate
A look at Buck Henry's 176-page draft shows what he cut, and how less dialogue helped create a modern classic.

Why I Write
Craig Lucas tries a different angle on The Dying Gaul.

The Final Scene
All the King's Men
By Steve Zaillian


Coming Soon...
Brokeback Mountain
The hardest thing about Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana adapting E. Annie Proulx's short story was showing people that it's more than just cowboys in love. By David Michael Wharton

Rent
Chris Columbus moves from mainstream to musical when he brings Jonathan Larson's award-winning play to the big screen. By Yon Motskin

Jarhead
How do you adapt Anthony Swofford's fractured-time ""anti-movie"" Desert Storm memoir? Vietnam vet and Apollo 13 scripter Bill Broyles explains. By Jeremy Smith

Zathura
War of the Worlds writer David Koepp collaborates bicoastally with high school friend John Kamps to rescue two young brothers from Chris Van Allsburg's dangerous board game. By Peter Clines

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Writer/director Andrew Adamson and Emmy-nominated writers Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely combine forces to bring C.S. Lewis's classic to life...and resurrection. By Sean Kennelly

King Kong
Oscar-winner Philippa Boyens tells how she and her Lord of the Rings co-writers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh tackle the great ape. By Jeff Goldsmith

Walk the Line
Former teacher and student Gill Dennis and james Mangold came together to script Johnny Cash's life of pain and perseverance. By Jeff Goldsmith

Get Rich or Die Tryin'
What's a fortysomething white guy doing writing a fictionalized 50 Cent biopic for the rapper's bigscreen debut? By Yon Motskin

Columns
The Busine$$ of Screenwriting
Writing Reality TV
Reality television offers unique storytelling opportunities. By Ron Suppa

Writer Beware!
The Manager From Hell
The tale of a buding scribe who discovered too late that he'd signed with the devil himself. By Steve Ryfle

Agent's Hot Sheet
In Search of the Gooey Center
Wedding Crashers and The 40 Year-Old Virgin made this the summer of comedy. What lessons can you learn from this? By Jim Cirile

Our Craft
Moment-to-Moment Desire
By creating desire on every page of your script, you'll create in the reader a desire to keep reading. By Karl Iglesias

The Contest Beat
Say Amen to these Contests
These two values-based contests will make you say, ""Thank God!"" By Patricia B. Smith

You've Got to Produce
Donny Asks: Why Not You?
The passionate ideals that made Donny Deutsch $280 million and earned him his own TV show can move your career forward. By Catherine Clinch

Features
Four Years at Hogwarts: Steve Kloves on Harry Potter, Procrastination, and Wrestling the Book onto Paper The Muggle who brought J.K. Rowling's first four Harry Potter novels to the screen talks about how Harry is growing up on screen. And yes, Steve tells us if he's coming back for The Half-Blood Price. By Peter N. Chumo II

All the King's Men: Steven Zaillian on Everything from Absolute Power to His Writing Process
The Academy Award-winning scripter talks about the ""tough moral landscape"" of Robert Penn Warren's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. But he's not cowed by retelling the Best Picture winner -- he's never seen it. By Jeff Goldsmith

Hollywood Roundtable: Comedy
What are the essential elements for a comedy these days, and what's the market like? We talk to the writers and suits behind Wedding Crashers, Old School, Just Like Heaven, Dodgeball, and many more to find out what makes buyers laugh all the way to the bank. By Tom Matthews

Finding Freedomland: Richard Price on Adaptation, Social Realism, and Hollywood's Unrealistic Happy Endings
America's preeminent master of streetwise urban fiction with a social conscience on shoehorning his most ambitious book into 120 tight pages, and why he can't adapt his own work anymore. By Steve Ryfle

An Affair to Remember: Buck Henry on Writing The Graduate -- PLUS: Script Review of Rumor Has It
Buck Henry looks back at adapting CHarles Webb's novel into a film revered by generations. Also, how does the unofficial sequel to The Graduate measure up to the original? By Peter N. Chumo II