I’ve been absent from my blog for a while. I’ve been focused on writing two books for Macmillan Publishers and have also edited a script requested to be read by Spielberg’s DreamWorks.

This is fantastic and inspirational news.

Except, among it all, my mother was diagnosed with liver cancer, I lost my house due to money problems, I split up with my girlfriend and suffered a bout of depression too.

Interesting times, you might say. Yes, they have been, and thankfully they’re improving now. So, I thought it appropriate to write a new piece about the important fact of how -- throughout all of these life dramas – I was still able to focus on writing, writing and more writing.

Many people I’ve met, especially those having fruitful careers in Hollywood, say that there is one huge difference between those who really...

After coming into existence just two months ago -- following the six-month limbo created by the British conservative government’s abolition of the UK Film Council and its nine Regional Screen Agencies in 2010 – Creative England is beginning a new path of public-sector entertainment industry funding, talent development and is encouraging fresh digital content production.

If you’re a regular reader of my blog at TheWrap, you’ll know I joined many disheartened film industry workers (including Clint Eastwood, who wrote Prime Minister David Cameron this time last year to suggest he reconsider dumping the UK Film Council, after the PM consulted no one before doing so) in doubting that slimming and centralization was the right way forward for...

With the news that Rupert and James Murdoch will testify under oath in the U.K. in October -- to Lord Leveson’s media inquiry set up by British Prime Minister David Cameron -- about the phone-hacking scandal, it looks like we will be heading for some corporate courtroom drama. 

Like everyone else, I’ve morbidly vacuumed up stories from the U.K. about murdered children, dead soldiers, politicians and celebrities all allegedly having their phones hacked by News International (the European and Asian wing of News Corp.) over the past few months.

The British press, especially the Guardian, have been obsessed with simultaneously covering this deplorable story, at the same time as attempting to destroy the Murdoch global news and entertainment empire. 

And, as the news spread out from the U.K. to American soil -- with...

This week saw the launch of a new public and privately funded film production campaign in Los Angeles called “Film Works L.A.,” which aims to bring filmmakers back to Hollywood.

Billed by its organizers and supporters – who range from NBC’s “Law & Order: Los Angeles” to Mann Theaters and from Warner Bros. studios to the Screen Actors Guild – as “a stakeholder-driven education and outreach campaign centered around filming in Los Angeles,” this bold multi-media and marketing program aims to combat the problem of runaway production (when filmmakers and studios leave California to shoot elsewhere in America or around the world, because it is more cost-effective to do so) by showing the Angeleno communities just how much L.A. needs the movie industry.

And, as importantly, Film Works' job will be to highlight...