Screenwriter Scott Z. Burns (The Informant!) Talks with Oscar Winner Oorlagh George for The Talkhouse Film Podcast

At the Sundance Labs, one of Hollywood's best screenwriters shares his wisdom with a young Academy Award winner starting out as a director.

By Scott Z. Burns

2:00 AM EDT on August 29, 2014

The latest episode of the Talkhouse Film podcast was recorded earlier this summer at the Sundance Resort, where the Sundance Screenwriters Lab took place. In conversation are lab mentor Scott Z. Burns, a regular collaborator with Stephen Soderbergh, and lab fellow Oorlagh George, who won an Oscar for producing her father Terry George's 2012 short The Shore, as they share stories from trenches, screenwriting wisdom — and a very memorable Bob Dylan story. For more filmmakers talking film and TV, visit Talkhouse Film at film.thetalkhouse.com.

The music featured in the podcast is as follows:
1. Intro / outro underscore: “Plastic Man vs. The Giant Red Phase Of The Sun” – Iced Ink

Scott Z. Burns

Scott Z. Burns is an award-winning screenwriter, producer, director and playwright. His new Audible Original podcast, What Could Go Wrong?, is out now. He is the writer, director, executive producer and creator of the Apple TV+ series Extrapolations, starring Meryl Streep, Forest Whitaker, Edward Norton and Marion Cotillard. In film, Burns' writing credits include The Bourne Ultimatum as well as The Informant!, Contagion, Side Effects and The Laundromat for director Steven Soderbergh. As a director, Burns' credits include PU-239, starring Oscar Isaac and Paddy Considine, and The Report, starring Adam Driver, Annette Bening and Jon Hamm, which tells the story of the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. Burns served as a producer for the Academy Award-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth, as well as an executive producer for An Inconvenient Sequel and Sea of Shadows. On stage, Burns' play The Library, which deals with a high school shooting, was produced at the Public Theater and was nominated for an Outer Critics Circle Award for best new American play. Burns began his career in advertising; before leaving the industry, he was part of the team that created the "Got Milk?" campaign.