𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝙿𝚎𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝙱𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚐𝚜 🖊️ 🎥 #𝕎𝔾𝔸𝕨

Hi, #Scriptsky. I'm Peter Briggs: I sold my first spec to Fox in '92. I'm credited co-writer on the 2004 movie "Hellboy"; past 30 years I've been hired-by or sold specs to all the major studios. My side hustle: I provide consultancy to emerging screenwriters serious about their craft. Links above!

Active demonstration of the 4 kinds of Bluesky Users going to the polling stations in the next week.

Happy #LetterboxdFriday! Time to post your #LastFourWatched 👀🩸 • Intriguing Rossellini "Marriage Foundering" Drama. • Least of Linklater's trio, still great. • Hugely entertaining @joannechocolat.bsky.social adaption. • Excellent Christine Jeffs directed biopic. #letterboxd #FilmSky #Films #Movies

The Enterprise has lost its course. Walter Koenig, the Russian Crewman Chekov on ‘Star Trek,’ Dies at 90 www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/w... via @thr

The Creative Process. Courtesy Jon Van Vliet. #screenwriting

While the 97th Academy Awards were a tough lineup for Best Actor, it's incredible Billy Zane wasn't up for it for "Waltzing With Brando". I loved the movie...who knew I needed porky, older Jon Heder? It's a bonkers film, and just the head-filtering I needed this week. Charming. #filmsky

@tomgauld.bsky.social as featured in @theguardian.com

Hitler's Eagles Nest goes flambé. The one hand, I always wanted to visit. Historic, for all the wrong reasons. "Should it be refurbished", is being floated. Another thought: maybe symbolically it was the appropriate time to go poof, given current world events? Maybe raze it, put a small plaque.

Great thread on crazy Collancz book cover blurb. You should check it out. I couldn't quite read the blurb here on this famous Flying Saucer tome, so tried to find a clearer version.

That is genuinely shameless blurb, and insanely clever. I can see the lightbulb going on in every self-published writer's head right now...

I've got a "1 Degree Trump", "1 Degree Boris Johnson", "2 Degrees Putin"...but I'm pretty damned gutted that I can't think of a workable "Degrees of Obama." Dammit.

@tomgauld.bsky.social @theguardian.com

When I last saw "Exorcist 2: The Heretic", it got my "1977 Worst Movie" ranking. Decided a rewatch decades later. Yep. Still there. Richard Burton and Kitty Winn act their socks off as the rest of the cast are on tranquilizers. Hilariously-bad long before Reagan becomes Beauty Pageant Amy Schumer.

A "nope" for me on "Hereditary". That and "The Conjuring" (one good gag), "The Sixth Sense", "The Others" (a big yawn), and "Paranormal Activity". I'm amazed these lists never have "The Woman In Black". The Station Scene's a bit "eh", but it scared the bejabbers out of me in places. #filmsky

During the 70s and 80s, I was excited any time a movie transmitted on 4:3 TV in widescreen. When TV translated to 16:9 screens, I was ecstatic. People pushing vertical filmmaking are fucking nuts. Fuck every one of them. They deserve eye and neck strain. youtu.be/lCCa5ntnfAo?... via @YouTube

First film you saw at the cinema. The real first one, not the pretend one you tell people! Mine: "2001: A Space Odyssey". Abbey Cinerama, Wavertree. Guess I was 2 or 3. I can only remember the Stargate, and a brief black and a white image of an Apollo capsule from something that played before it.

Happy #LetterboxdFriday! Time to post your #LastFourWatched 👀🩸 • Intriguing Rossellini "Marriage Foundering" Drama. • Least of Linklater's trio, still great. • Hugely entertaining @joannechocolat.bsky.social adaption. • Excellent Christine Jeffs directed biopic. #letterboxd #FilmSky #Films #Movies

"You get what you're contracted for, like everybody else." Dammit, 2026. I was not contracted for this. One day after I say "Alien" was my favourite 1970s movie...Tom Skerrit goes to the great cooling duct in the sky. bsky.app/profile/thep...

From bad to worse

With a few caveats, I was really enjoying the first seven episodes of the Japanese Netflix "Human Vapor" show, which improved on the old 1960 Japanese movie (terrible plot, great atmosphere.) But then...Episode 8. Oh, brother. It's like the writing staff died, and the intern had to finish it.

"Name your fave '70s film." Anyone who knows me, knows it's going to be "Star Wars", right? Nope. Sorry...

That Jim Hammond/Human Torch reference in this week's Visionquest? Here he is way back in "Captain America" in 2011, at the Expo that Steve Rogers and Bucky come visit, right before Steve is enlisted into the Supersoldier program.

Just a reminder for everyone mourning the death of Electronic Arts and wanting to point the finger at someone for the potential loss of the nascent next Mass Effect game...just remember which ghoul now holds the purse strings. observer.co.uk/news/busines...

If this is set in 1977, and it doesn't have Cliff Booth taking on three guys around the back of Mann's Chinese as the opening night of "Star Wars" happens one street over, I'm going to be very disappointed.

"Name your fave '80s film." It's gotta be this...

This. It's insanity. Your response to anyone who suggest you pay them to print your work, is 100% to laugh in their face, and tell them to go fuck themselves.

"The vibe I bring to your function:" #filmsky

I was rewatching "The Great Dictator", and happened to notice Chaplin's prison number (7397) is the same as Roberto Benigni's (07397) in "Life Is Beautiful". #filmsky

"Name your fave '90s film." "The Matrix" (looking through my lists, much to my surprise.)

I learnt typing in the good old days of typewriters, still doublespace my pages. Aside from Courier being a Monospaced Font, I feel there's a psychological effect to double-spacing (which I do) after a period. Here's the "Red Shoes" #screenplay ...with yesteryear format and crazy TRIPLE spacing!

So, that opening to "Visionquest". That whole catalogue of people crucial to Vision's creation? Where was Doctor Cho? And more crucially...Thor? I mean, he DID give Vision the actual spark of life...

Happy #LetterboxdFriday! Time to post your #LastFourWatched 👀 • Complex human emotions forensic-classic. • Surprisingly racy (but fun!) for the 80s. • "Paprika" guy's insanely-great mindfuck killer anime. • Rewatchable Sturges social-comedy perennial. #letterboxd #FilmSky #MovieSky #Films #Movies

I have a fondness for the kitschy cinema adverts of years gone by, and - thanks to YouTube and elsewhere - have assembled reels that played before the Odeon and ABC movies of my youth. Rank Screen Advertising 1977-1988 logo HD reconstruction youtu.be/5rj9v7nIaMY?... via @YouTube

"Go to your camera roll and search "boat" and then post a picture of a boat you like." This one made me grin. You know the Universal "Jaws" tram ride, where the shark comes clunkily up from the Amity lake (appearing in a million episodes of "Murder She Wrote")? Here's me sitting in a boat there.

"What's a movie you've seen a commendable amount of times?" Is "commendable" the correct phrase? "Unfathomably bonkers"? I have many, many films I've seen way-too-many times. But "The Empire Strikes Back"...I've lost count. Several hundred times.

"Drop a film you saw on a first date." "Robocop", on the Odeon Marble Arch in London. Her name was Anne-Grethe. She was Norwegian, blonde, beautiful, and gentle, and into art galleries and long walks. She was so traumatised by the film, she declined to give me a second date...

The worst thing about the 21st Century Internet is all of your "Secret Films" - films you discovered and nurtured in your heart when you were younger, that nobody else knew about - are suddenly trotted out as "Friday Must See!" "The Duellists", "Night Of The Demon"...and now, "The Devils". Le Sigh.

Why, it seems like only fifty million years ago since New Line paid me to write a "Freddy vs Jason", and I explained why Pamela Voorhees and Jason moved to Crystal Lake...from Elm Street. I'm curious to watch it, to see if my head canon still holds-up!

Courtesy @tomgauld.bsky.social at @theguardian.com

"Drop a film you saw on a first date." "Robocop", on the Odeon Marble Arch in London. Her name was Anne-Grethe. She was Norwegian, blonde, beautiful, and gentle, and into art galleries and long walks. She was so traumatised by the film, she declined to give me a second date...

Courtesy @tomgauld.bsky.social at @theguardian.com

Disney flew me London to LA to meet with a (woman, gay) Studio Exec for an In-House Screenwriters position in the '90s. Call at the hotel that evening: I've got it! Back to London next day. Arrive home...to be told that the offer was withdrawn and given...to a female writer. Can't imagine why...

I know it's the run-up to Halloween. And I like a good monster movie (I like WRITING a good monster movie!) But, Jesus Christ, people. Looking at a lot of your #LastFourWatched lists, it'd do a lot of you, a lot of good to take a break and watch an actually-GOOD movie in there, too...

Happy #LetterboxdFriday! Time to post your #LastFourWatched 👀 • Complex human emotions forensic-classic. • Surprisingly racy (but fun!) for the 80s. • "Paprika" guy's insanely-great mindfuck killer anime. • Rewatchable Sturges social-comedy perennial. #letterboxd #FilmSky #MovieSky #Films #Movies

"What's a movie you've seen a commendable amount of times?" Is "commendable" the correct phrase? "Unfathomably bonkers"? I have many, many films I've seen way-too-many times. But "The Empire Strikes Back"...I've lost count. Several hundred times.

Why, it seems like only fifty million years ago since New Line paid me to write a "Freddy vs Jason", and I explained why Pamela Voorhees and Jason moved to Crystal Lake...from Elm Street. I'm curious to watch it, to see if my head canon still holds-up!

"Add “for Tax Purposes” to a movie" "Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb For Tax Purposes".