Syd Field
American authorWikipedia
14
MENTIONS
7
EPISODES
7
PODCASTS
Search complete. 14 mentions across 7 episodes found for "Syd Field".
Sep 25, 2026
Scott MyersGUEST
When I wrote my first script, the extent of my film school education, It was three screenplays that eventually my writing partner, he gave to me, was Witness, Back to the Future, and Breaking Away.
Scott MyersGUEST
And Sid Field's book, Screenplays, The Foundation of Screenwriting.
Scott MyersGUEST
That was it.
Scott MyersGUEST
And the third script I wrote was Canine, and that sold.
Chip ConleyHOST
My dad is 89 years old.
Chip ConleyHOST
And if I had an alternative dad, it would be this guy.
Chip ConleyHOST
Jim Flaherty is sort of the father of MEA in the sense that he's been to seven workshops.
Chip ConleyHOST
He first came to a workshop when he was 87 years old.
James FlahertyGUEST
Come on, kids, help me.
James FlahertyGUEST
No, no, no, no, no.
James FlahertyGUEST
I never have that feeling of, gosh, I'm the old guy in the room.
James FlahertyGUEST
I better be careful.
Jake BrennanHOST
He retreated into himself to pass the time.
Jake BrennanHOST
23 hours a day in solitary, he read Maya Angelou, Sun Tzu, Syd Field's book on how to write screenplays.
Jake BrennanHOST
He wrote one himself entitled Live to Tell, and she couldn't help but think that her influence had a little something to do with that.
Jake BrennanHOST
She put the ugly trial behind her and tried to think about the man she knew.
John YorkeGUEST
Something really important happens in the middle of every archetypal story, which has taken screenwriters and screenwriting gurus quite a long time to make sense of.
John YorkeGUEST
So if you read Sid Field, you won't get any real sense of it.
John YorkeGUEST
If you read Robert McKee, there's almost nothing there.
John YorkeGUEST
But around the time of Save the Cat, onwards, there's a real growing sense that the middle is quite important there.
6 MINS LATER
John YorkeGUEST
I mean, that's what, so first year I formed the BBC Writers Academy in 2005.
John YorkeGUEST
The first year or two, I didn't know what midpoints were.
John YorkeGUEST
I was just using Sid Field and Robert McKee and the writers were really good.
John YorkeGUEST
I wasn't teaching them properly, but they were really good because they just were following an innate pattern that was central to them.
speaker_4HOST
It feels like studios are utterly terrified that the audience will just walk out of the theater if there isn't an explosion or a kidnapping in the first 10 minutes, you know, at the sheer expense of the story.
speaker_5HOST
It's driven by decades of screenwriting theory, heavily influenced by people like Syd Field.
speaker_5HOST
who codified the three-act structure.
speaker_4HOST
Right, the gurus.
Harrison SmithGUEST
I'm kind of assuming he was OK.
Dave BullisHOST
So, you know, when you went about writing this film, you know, actually, you know, your process of writing, I wanted to ask, you know, do you subscribe to any method? I always ask this to screenwriters, you know, meaning like, you know, there's Save the Cat and there's a Sid Field method.
Dave BullisHOST
So do you write like a heavy outline or treatment though before you begin?
Harrison SmithGUEST
I mean, sometimes I outline it.
Harrison SmithGUEST
I'll get through the first act and the second act.
Harrison SmithGUEST
Yeah.
Harrison SmithGUEST
An outline, you know, Sid Fieldway, sometimes you need to make sure your beats all hit.
Harrison SmithGUEST
Yeah.
Jim O'KaneHOST
well it seems to be working out pretty good so far so good there yeah yeah I was going to ask something similar to what Brian said.
Jim O'KaneHOST
If you were doing all this nature poetry, did your instructor just hand you a copy of Sid Field and say, hey, try this? I mean, I just was wondering.
Christopher MarkusGUEST
No, we handed ourselves a copy of Sid Field.
Jim O'KaneHOST
Okay.
Christopher MarkusGUEST
But