Writers Talk

On this week’s episode of 3rd & Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guests are screenwriters Winnie Holzman & Dana Fox who talk about collaborating on the hit film Wicked: For Good, the creative challenges adapting musicals from stage to screen, and much more.

Side Note:  During the 2008 Writers Guild strike, on a picket line, I happened to run into Winnie Holzman.  I wanted to mention to her that back in my dark days of doing movie PR I had written the press kit for a movie she’d been the screenwriter for, ‘Til There Was You.  And also to congratulate her on writing the libretto for the huge hit Broadway musical of Wicked, then in its fifth year in New York.  She was just extremely warm and kind and thoughtful – and wanted more to talk about me and the project I was then working on, which was really only in the “trying to sell” stage, than talk about herself, Wicked and the breadth of all her work (that included writing many episodes for the series Thirtysomething and creating the series My So-Called Life, among many other things).  Her friendliness has always stuck with me.

By the way, she’s done a small bit of acting, but without question what she’s been most seen in is the movie Jerry Maguire, where she plays one of the support group of divorced ladies who regularly meet in Rene Zellwegger’s sister’s house.