I'm all for teaser trailers that reveal very little, especially as an alternative to the Robert Zemeckis school of trailers meant, apparently, to replace the finished film. And while I'm deeply skeptical of Marley & Me, an adaptation of local Philly journalist John Grogan's sappy man-and-his-dog memoir, I love the teaser that Fox unveiled today on the official website for the Christmas release.

The reason I like it so much, I think, is that it played a trick on me. I heard the Chariots on Fire theme, saw the slow motion images, concluded that the labrador puppy and Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston's happy couple were triumphantly running toward one another, and kind of rolled my eyes. But then I thought, wait, that doesn't make sense -- they're clearly running in the same direction along the beach in the separate shots. Then it dawned on me; I watched the thing again, saw Aniston's concerned expression and the empty leash in Wilson's hand, and laughed out loud. Clever stuff.

The movie is directed by David Frankel (The Devil Wears Prada) and -- on the bright side -- written by Scott Frank (The Lookout, Minority Report). It's the first work Owen Wilson's done since recovering from last summer's horrifying suicide attempt.

The Bucket List stars Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman as two terminally ill men who escape from a cancer ward determined to complete everything on their "Bucket List" -- a list of things to do before they "kick the bucket." The film, directed by Rob Reiner, was just named one of the Ten Best of the Year by the National Board of Review. Cinematical spoke with the film's screenwriter, Justin Zackham.

Cinematical: You sit down to write The Bucket List, do you ever dream that you're going to get Rob Reiner to direct, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman to star...

JZ: Of course not! I'd have to be an idiot! Not even close. I wrote it with Morgan Freeman's voice in mind, somehow thinking maybe I'd find a way to get it to him. But no, nothing like this.

Cinematical: And how did you get it to these huge names? What were the steps that brought this movie to the screen?

JZ: I went to film school at NYU. I did a TV pilot that I wrote and executive produced in New York with Paul Sorvino years ago. And then I came out here (Los Angeles) and was dicking around for a while. I made Going Greek, which was a very sort of crappy fraternity comedy that I did back in 2000. I wrote, produced, and directed, and that took so much out of me that I spent another couple years dicking around. And then I just sat down one day and wrote my own "Bucket List" just to kind of get my head organized. On that list was like "Get a movie made by a major studio, marry the perfect woman," all that kind of stuff. A lot of the stuff on there wound up in the movie. I had always fantasized about going to the Pyramids, the Great Wall, I've always been sort of obsessed with the whole notion of Everest. All those things were on it, and I just stuck it on a bulletin board.

About a year later, I just came up with this quote one day, a line that's actually in the film -- "You measure yourself by the people who measure themselves by you." Stuck that up on the bulletin board. And then another year went by before I had the idea "What about making this into a script?" And I thought if it were about me, at the time I was about 34, it wouldn't be that interesting. So I decided to make it about two guys who had lived a full life, and they only have a few months left, and suddenly there's a ticking clock, and the things that do have real importance, at least in their minds. The story really became about the one thing neither of these guys puts on their list but is the thing they most want. And that's a best friend. I have this ridiculous process, and I wrote the actual script really quickly, in about two weeks.

Welcome to the Thanksgiving edition of The Write Stuff!

Thanksgiving is always rough on a screenwriter. You're usually seeing a lot of friends and family, and while they (candied) yammer on about their accomplishments, you have to start all of your sentences with: "We're still waiting to hear on that one..." and "Our agent says we're really close..." and "Grandma, let me explain the WGA strike to you one more time..."

But there is a great deal to be thankful for this year. On Monday, still happy and groggy from a weekend of gorging, representatives from the WGA and the AMPTP will resume talks. Ideally, each side will come away happy and we can end this strike. From a personal note, my writing career was right on the verge of kicking into high gear when the strike was announced, and I certainly don't want to lose that upward momentum. And looking at the bigger picture, we're a month away from Christmas here. Who wants to see not just writers but everyone who works in and around the entertainment industry desperately struggling to pay the bills? The grips, the gaffers, the assistants, the dry cleaners...these people are out of work, too.

So send your good vibes to the negotiating table on Monday. And if you think there's nothing you can do, you're wrong. You can electronically sign this petition to the AMPTP, which starts: "We, the undersigned, fully support the strike of the Writers Guild of America, and agree with the WGA's stated goals of obtaining just and fair compensation regarding revenues generated through "new media". The petition currently has 57, 695 signatures, which is extremely impressive. Won't you add yours?

In an age of moviemaking where non-linear storytelling has, in some ways, gone from the exception to the norm, the trailer for The Lookout -- with screenwriter Scott Frank (Out of Sight, Minority Report) making his directorial debut -- didn't inspire confidence. It shows a hero (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) suffering from a traumatic head injury that affects his memory, a bad guy (a nearly-unrecognizable Matthew Goode) planning a bank heist with our hero's help and a character actor (Jeff Daniels) intoning "Start at the end, and then go back from there ..." before the trailer explodes in a barrage of stutter-cuts and rewind noises. I could feel my eyes involuntarily roll at The Lookout's trailer, and some small, cynical part of myself said "Oh, awesome -- Memento, Jr." And then, I found myself surprised by The Lookout -- and not just because of the fact that, trailer and Frank's work on Out of Sight aside, it unspooled in a fashion as clean and linear as a bullet from the muzzle of a rifle.

I admired its economy, its modernist spin on classic noir ideas, its unexpected surprises and ultimately the fact that the film's central spine wasn't twists or tricks but rather an iron-strong emotional core, brought to life with an ambitious but never showy performance by Gordon-Levitt. As The Lookout opens, teens roll down a road in the night, laughing and smiling -- one couple in the front, one couple in the back. Chris Pratt (Gordon-Levitt) is driving; he kills the lights so they can see the fireflies stream by in the Kansas darkness. And then something bad happens -- unexpected, irreversible. We flash forward four long years, and Chris is having a hard time of it. He forgets things -- the apartment he shares with garrulous, blind roommate Lewis (Jeff Daniels) is marked with Dymo-tape reminders: "lock door from the outside"; "turn off alarm." Chris can't find things easily, or gets confused; unable to locate a can opener, we watch as he tries to open a can of tomatoes with the garlic press. We know it won't work; Chris knows it won't work. But he can't stop trying.

It was announced late last year that The Lookout, screenwriter Scott Frank's directorial debut, had secured the considerable talents of Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Jeff Daniels for its starring roles. Gordon-Levitt plays a disabled janitor who is caught up in a heist, while Daniels is a blind ex-biker who is also involved, though no one in the press seems to know exactly how. While the two of them alone certainly have the ability to carry a well-written film (and, since Frank wrote the script, it's good), it's now being reported that three impressive names have been added to the cast, and the movie is sounding better and better. Playing a criminal (presumably one involved in the heist) will be Matthew Goode, who won praise for his performance as Scarlett Johansson's boyfriend in Match Point, and another scene-stealer, Isla Fisher of Wedding Crashers, has been cast as "a scandalous vixen." (Boys, that one's for you.) Rounding out the trio of additions in the role of a therapist is the wonderful Carla Gugino who someday, maybe, will get the attention she deserves.

The movie is scheduled to begin filming in Canada later this month.

Scott Frank is one of the best screenwriters in the business. Besides the recent Nicole Kidman/Sean Penn thriller The Interpreter, he also wrote Out of Sight, Dead Again, Little Man Tate, Minority Report, and Get Shorty, and polished the Saving Private Ryan script. In this interview with Screenwriter's Utopia, he talks about his writing process, his rewrite work on Dawn of the Dead, and his script for the movie version of Lawrence Block's novel A Walk Among The Tombstones.