Thunderbolt

Last night I saw Martin Scorsese's new motion picture, SILENCE. It's a profound and deeply moving story about one man's struggle with his faith and the power of forgiveness. The cast, led by Andrew Garfield, features Adam Driver, Tadanobu Asano, Yosuke Kubozuka, Shinya Tsukamoto, Issey Ogata and Liam Neeson. Every performance is exceptional and the film is a technical wonder. This may be Scorsese's most restrained movie in his storied career; it is also his most personal. Do not shy away from it because it's rated R. I've seen more violence and senseless death in the Marvel super hero adventures. Likewise, the 2 hour 41 min running time doesn't feel like a slog. The plot and pacing are perfect.

For those of you interested, I thought I’d explain some of the backstory and reasoning that went into the writing and publishing of Legendary on Popdose . While it would be easy to just let the work suddenly appear without any explanation, our era in is an information age and some readers like to get the poop on why some dude from California is posting a serial novel online.   The roots of the novel date back nearly 20 years, back to the first feature-length screenplay I wrote (discounting my college senior film, which began as a feature, but I eventually whittled down to 45 minutes). When Julie and I first moved to Los Angeles, it was the rise of the 90s indie film movement. Directors like Tarantino, Rodriguez and Anders were releasing personal films that didn't adhere to the rules of Hollywood filmmaking. These movies inspired me, much in the same way the great films from the 70s by Scorsese, Lumet and Ashby did. When I sat down to write my first script (that's why we moved ...