Hey everyone welcome back to the screenwriting life. I'm Meg LaFogue

Loring. Loring couldn't be with us today but I'm thrilled to be welcoming Michael

aren't back to the show Michael's first produced screenplay, Little Miss Sunshine,

won the Oscar, the BAFTA, the WGA,

and the Indie Spirit Award for Best Original Screenplay.

Wow, Holy Smokes.

He also was nominated by the Academy for Best Adapted screenplay for Pixar's Toy Story 3, which was only the third animated film ever to be nominated for Best Picture. He has written for many major

studios and franchises including the Hunger Games franchise. So Michael, welcome to

the show. Thank you for having me. All right we have so much to talk about with

Michael today,

and we're going to answer your questions, too,

that you guys sent in.

So let's jump right in.

Now, Michael, I know you came today with a topic in mind.

Well, we're going to talk about several different topics,

but the first topic that we're thinking about or you're thinking about that's on your mind is the death of the movie rebel. Do I have that right? Yes. Yes. Yeah. What does that mean? Tell me. Well, it's interesting. This is something that I've been thinking about for a long time. You'll have to forgive me. This is going to be me blathering on for a couple of minutes here.

But I was, when I was a kid growing up, we go to see movies and one of the main

stables of movies was sort of the heroic male rebel, right?

The guy who was going to bust out of ordinary life, leave the

rat race and go off and live on his own terms and be the cool guy, right? And those were like very powerful figures for me like growing up, like and I think for a lot of people.

And to make a long story short, I'm going to try and make this brief. I feel like that figure has kind of disappeared from American movies. And so I spend some time

like thinking about why and sort of why we don't see guys trying to escape, trying to leave.

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