The Dialogue: Learning From The Masters - Sheldon Turner

"Be that person who's stubborn enough to look in the face of the hurricane and not blink. "
-Sheldon Turner

Sheldon Turner is the prototype for the smart, brash, ambitious young screenwriter - only he's also got a law degree from NYU and has had his fiction published in the New Yorker. Turner recently broke through with his script for the 2005 remake of The Longest Yard, starring Chris Rock and Adam Sandler, and he has half a dozen other scripts in development.

He's got insane discipline, writes longhand, and boycotts email. He figured out how to work the system, and he's got more witty axioms for how to play the Hollywood game than a Tropicana craps dealer at 3 am. But you'll just have to hear Turner talk to get it - what being the biggest guy in the room can do for you, how to read an audience, and what to say in pitch meetings.

About The Dialogue Series: 

THE DIALOGUE: Learning From the Masters is a groundbreaking interview series that goes behind the scenes of the fascinating craft of screenwriting. In these extensive in-depth discussions with savvy industry interviewers, more than two-dozen of today's most successful screenwriters share their work habits, methods and inspirations, secrets of the trade, business advice, and eye-opening stories from life in the trenches of the film industry. Each screenwriter discusses his or her filmography in great detail and breaks down the mechanics of one favorite scene from their produced work.

The subjects include Oscar® winners and nominees like Paul Haggis (Crash, Million Dollar Baby), Callie Khouri (Thelma and Louise), Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost), and Paul Attanasio (Quiz Show, Donnie Brasco); comedy masters like Peter & Bobby Farrelly (There's Something About Mary, Stuck on You) and Lowell Ganz & Babaloo Mandel (Parenthood, City Slickers, Fever Pitch); big-budget writers like Alex Kurtzman & Roberto Orci (The Legend of Zorro, M:i:III), Scott Rosenberg (Con Air, Beautiful Girls), and Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich, In Her Shoes); and industry mavericks like Jim Uhls (Fight Club) and David S. Goyer (Dark City, Blade, Batman Begins).

These incisive discussions are essential viewing for anyone wanting to learn the screenwriting trade, film lovers of all types, and industry professionals in other fields. The writers' insights about the screenwriting life are rare and indispensable tools for how to make your screenplays better and crack the Hollywood code: the hard-earned practical and tactical wisdom of those already thriving in the industry.

It's powerful knowledge - straight from the source.