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Capote screenwriter Dan Futterman obviously took very detailed notes at the Humbled By Success Soundbite Seminar at last week's Oscar luncheon. In an interview with the AP, he candidly explains how he made the impressive transition from actor to award-nominated scribe on his very first screenplay: by writing a bunch of disconnected stuff, then getting his wife to bail him out:

I was lost at the beginning of it, Futterman matter-of-factly conceded.


But I had no idea how to get into it. I had never written a script before, and I had started writing sort of random scenes with Truman and Perry talking about what I considered to be interesting things in the jail cell. But it was not going anywhere; there was no narrative drive. And [his wife, TV writer-producer Anya Epstein] was extremely clear with me about the fact that I needed to have a narrative drive, I needed to have an outline where one scene led to another ... And that was a revelation to me. It s probably perfectly obvious to anybody who s written a screenplay before, but I hadn t. I think had I not met her at the beginning of this process, it would never have gotten done.

Actually, it's pretty sweet that Futterman recognized his wife's contribution to his accomplishments, especially in a town where many would have their spouse quietly drowned in the Pacific before admitting every ounce of genius wasn't completely self-generated. And all of the unproduced writers out there ready to blow out the part of their brains that convinced them to spend hundreds of dollars on yearly trips to Robert McKee's Story Seminar should take heart, realizing that if they invest some of their frustrated creative energy in revamping their J-date profiles, they could be well on their way to finding that special someone with a strong grasp of narrative structure.