Eureka Writers Pay It Forward

EurekaWhat better way to kick off the new and improved website than with a little touch of Eureka!

Thanks to the efforts of Eureka‘s Executive Producer Jaime Paglia, Co-Exec Bruce Miller and staff writers Eric Wallace (the definite shining hero who made this all possible – check out his blog when you get a moment!) and Nick Wauters, I was able to bring a little bit of Hollywood to my screenwriting students.

On April 2nd, we each hunkered around our ‘puters to gleam a bit of wisdom from this team of whimsical writers. A great experience for all those involved. Its amazing how much of writing translates to whatever medium you work in. The talk about B story and how it needs to eventually connect to and shore up the A plot. They talked about daring to suck. They talked about doing most of your writing AWAY from the computer… in your head as you do other things so that when you sit down at the computer, it just spills out on to the page already thought out.

If you’re interested in listening to the audio file (thanks to an audio patch between my IPhone, a cheap PC microphone and Adobe Connect), I’ve uploaded it as a zipped MP3 file. Thanks to Brendan Schmidt (one of my students), I’ve also uploaded a page that’s not an actual literal transcript – more a piecing together of the different discussion threads explored during the chat.

Bonus: The Eureka gang posted pix of themselves ‘chatting’ on their blog, Eureka Unscripted. Look in their archives for ‘A LITTLE BIT OF “EUREKA” IN… SPRINGFIELD, MISSOURI.’

For those not familiar with the series, think Northern Exposure meets X-Files. I show the pilot each semester in my Teleplay Writing class as an example of how pilots get made. As I usually show it in the first few weeks of the semester, inevitably two or three students always pick the series for their spec script. The third season of Eureka starts back up this July (this ‘waiting between seasons’ thing can make you crazy if you’re a fan of the show). Funny, witty, oftentimes poignant, Eureka is definitely one of the better series around right now. It’s not often you get a show that not only encourages you to think, but allows you to actually care about its characters.

Plus, who can’t admire a group of writers so willing to reach out to students all over?