Screenmaster Consulting

Paul Guay

SCREENWRITER - SCREENWRITING TEACHER - SCRIPT CONSULTANT
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Credentials

Paul Guay’s movies have grossed over half a billion dollars.

Paul Guay’s movies have grossed over half a billion dollars. He conceived and co-wrote Liar, Liar, at the time of its release the sixth-highest-grossing comedy in history, the fourth-highest-grossing film of the year, the second-highest-grossing film of Jim Carrey's career, and Imagine's highest-grossing film ever. The screenplay received an Honorable Mention (along with Fargo, Million Dollar Baby, The Full Monty and Catch Me If You Can) in Scr(i)pt magazine’s list of the Best Scripts of the Past 10 Years. William C. Martell published Secrets of Story: Liar, Liar, a step-by-step guide to solving screenwriting problems using Liar, Liar as a model. Two drafts of the screenplay were published by Harvest Moon. Paul co-wrote The Little Rascals, Universal's second-highest-grossing film of the year. He co-wrote Heartbreakers, starring Sigourney Weaver, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Gene Hackman, and Jason Lee, which opened #1 at the box office. Paul polished The NeverEnding Story, the beloved children’s fantasy which spawned two sequels, two TV series, three computer games, a stage play, a ballet, and an opera. He co-polished Mouse Hunt, starring Nathan Lane, Lee Evans, and Christopher Walken, directed by Gore Verbinski, which was the highest-grossing of DreamWorks’ first five films and was nominated for a Saturn Award. Paul is a talking head in Dreams on Spec, the feature documentary that interviews such A-list writers as James L. Brooks, Nora Ephron, Gary Ross, Carrie Fisher and Ed Solomon. He began his career in the entertainment industry in marketing, advertising and publicity, where his clients included Buena Vista, Carolco, Columbia, Daily Variety, Fox Broadcasting Company, Morgan Creek, William Morris, NBC, New Line, Playboy, TriStar, Twentieth Century Fox, United Artists, Warner Bros., Michael Jackson and Madonna. Paul graduated Cum Laude from Pomona College with a double major in English and philosophy, figuring if the career in writing didn’t work out, he always had philosophy to fall back on.

Current Projects

He is negotiating with a prominent theatre and indie-film producer to turn one of Paul’s films into a stage musical. (This hasn’t been announced yet.) Paul just finished co-writing Jitters, a hard PG-13 horror comedy. He is now co-writing The Affordable [Redacted], a crime comedy inspired by an outrageous true story that fascinated and entertained people around the world. After directing the most successful comedy (or for that matter, drama) in the history of Santa Monica’s Morgan-Wixson Theatre (founded in 1946), Paul made his movie-directing debut with three short comedy films he wrote. The Vampyre was an official selection of Comic-Con, the Hollywood Comedy Shorts Film Festival, the Die Laughing Film Festival, the Awesome Con Short Film Festival, and the Anthem Film Festival, where it won the Best Short Comedy award. The Godfather and Who Guardeth the Guards? will be unleashed on the festival world soon. Recently Paul wrote Audition Notes, a chapter for an upcoming anthology of acting essays and exercises tentatively titled Now Act! The editor is Laurie Lamson, who previously published Paul’s Hurt Me, Hurt Me! (Oh, and Help Me Make My Script Better) as a chapter in her anthology titled Now Write! Paul at IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0345488/

Teacher / Mentor / Script Consultant

Paul is an Associate Professor at ArtCenter College of Design, where he teaches “Screenwriting: What’s the Story?” and “Screenwriting: Adventures in Shorts” to graduate students and undergrads. He was the commencement speaker at ArtCenter in 2019 and was given the Great Teacher Award (Part-Time Faculty) (http://www.artcenter.edu/about/get-to-know-artcenter/people/detail.html?breadcrumb=568efa8c4d9b6f0a2af3e24d&accdID=0255301). Paul has been a Screenwriting Mentor at Film Connection (http://www.recordingconnection.com/blog/2014/04/28/film-connection-welcomes-paul-guay-sandy-stern-new-screenwriting-mentors/); Has been an Academic Advisory Board Member at the Annapurna International School of Film and Media; Has been a Screenwriting Mentor at Taliesin Nexus’ Scripted Film Lab (https://www.facebook.com/TaliesinNexus/); and Is a sought-after Script Consultant.

Speaker / Workshop Leader

Paul has three talks and runs three workshops.

The Talks

1) “Overnight Success,” a 10-minute talk he gave as the Commencement Address at ArtCenter College of Design about how he broke into the business. (Paul was not an overnight success.) 2) “The Art and Craft and Business of Screenwriting,” a one- to two-hour talk followed by Q&A. The introductory talk Paul gives to all his students and mentees, partly written, partly improvised. He tackles the what-to-do, and more importantly the what-not-to-do, in the insanely competitive but potentially highly rewarding art and craft and business of screenwriting. 3) “A Few Words About Writing and Discipline and Breaking In,” a 20-minute talk followed by Q&A. It’s a shorter, tighter version of “The Art and Craft and Business of Screenwriting” (above).

The Workshops

4) “Screenwriting: What’s the Story?”, a one- or two- or three-hour outline workshop followed by Q&A. This intensive workshop is a professional approach to story and structure for feature-length narrative film. Paul teaches this class at ArtCenter College of Design, where he received the Great Teacher Award. There are three stages of writing a movie: creating a premise that is at a professional level; developing it in a way that ensures the story lives up to the promise of the premise via an outline; and turning the outline into a screenplay. In this workshop, participants focus on the second stage. Paul invites participants to submit outlines in advance. He chooses as many of the outlines as time permits and gives detailed and honest feedback on the work. Participants can learn a lot from the outline workshop. They can learn even more if they hear “The Art and Craft and Business of Screenwriting” first, because then they’ll have a chance in the workshop to see Paul put the principles from the talk into practice. 5) “Screenwriting: Adventures in Shorts,” a one- or two- or three-hour short-film screenplay workshop followed by Q&A. This intensive workshop focuses on screenplays for short narrative films. Paul teaches this class at ArtCenter College of Design, where he received the Great Teacher Award. Paul invites participants to submit screenplays for short narrative films with emotional impact that are both ends in themselves and calling cards for the feature and television and streaming community. He chooses as many of the screenplays as time permits and gives detailed and honest feedback on the work. Participants can learn a lot from the screenplay workshop, and can also acquire or enhance skills essential to writing in longer forms. They can learn even more if they hear “The Art and Craft and Business of Screenwriting” first, because then they’ll have a chance in the workshop to see Paul put the principles from the talk into practice. 6) “Pitching: What They’re Looking For and How to Give It to Them,” a one- or two-hour workshop followed by Q&A. Paul invites participants to pitch their projects and gives detailed and honest feedback. Participants can learn a lot from the pitching workshop. Again, they can learn even more if they hear “The Art and Craft and Business of Screenwriting” first. Paul has taught writing at, mentored writers at, spoken on writing at, judged competitions for, or been interviewed by, among others: Absolute Write Newsletter
AFI
AMC’s Story Notes
The American Film Renaissance Institute
The Apollo Workshop
APS Entertainment & Hollywood Success
ArtCenter College of Design (current faculty member)
Backstage West
BBC 6
CineVegas
Columbia College Semester in L.A.
Cybercity Radio
DIFF LA
Double X
Doug Eboch on Screenwriting Blog
Figure Four Radio
Film Connection aka Recording, Radio and Film Connection Film Writers Guide
FUSION Film & Theatre Arts
The Great American PitchFest
IBM @ USC: Imagine the World in 2050
The Institute for Humane Studies’ Cinematic and Literary Traditions of Liberty: A Workshop
The Institute for Humane Studies’ MFA Scholarship Review Committee, Film and Fiction Scholarship Program (judge)
K-EARTH 101
Liberty Film Festival
Liberty Lab for Film
Lights Camera Liberty! Storytelling Workshop
Los Angeles Academy Middle School
Menlo School
Moncrieff on News Talk (Ireland)
Morning Mix (Ireland)
Nerdgasm
NOW WRITE! Screenwriting: Exercises by Today’s Best Screenwriters, Teachers and Consultants (wrote a chapter for the book)
Pomona College Magazine
Reason Goes Hollywood
Reason TV
Ross Reports
The Paul Ryan Show
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Nebula Awards (panelist and keynote speaker)
ScreenplayLab
Screenwriters Online
The Screenwriting Expo
Scr(i)pt
Scriptwriters Network
Sherwood Oaks College
The Singapore Media Academy
SLAM! Sports -- Wrestling
The Taliesin Nexus
Diane Thomas Screenwriting Awards (mentor)
UCLA Extension Writers’ Program
USC’s Peter Stark Producing Program
Wexford Literary Festival (Ireland)
WGA Craft Conference
Writers Digest
Writer’s Guide to 2013