Schmucks with Underwoods: Conversations with America's Classic Screenwriters (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)Anything written by Max Wilk is bound to be genius.His breath of understanding as a dramatist and historian and rampant consumer of pop and otherwise fine culture has made him an incredible resource for people who want to learn more about their craft, the context that their craft has been created in and the meaning of life in general.I can't say enough about this author, or this book. Buy it and you won't be sorry.

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"Where were you when the page was blank?!" a beleaguered screenwriter once asked a demanding director back in the golden age of movies. Max Wilk, an esteemed writer himself, admits "dignity for screenwriters is long overdue." That's why he has assembled this insightful homage to the men and women whose words created the foundation for our best and most-loved films.Here are face-to-face interviews with some of the historic giants of the industry, spanning the silent era to the 1960s, including Billy Wilder, Ernst Lubitsch, Sidney Buchman (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), Donald Ogden Stewart (The Philadelphia Story), R.C. Sherriff (Goodbye Mr. Chips), Albert and Frances Hackett (It's a Wonderful Life), Evan Hunter (The Birds), John Collier, Edmund Hartmann, Ben Hecht, Nunnally Johnson and many more.In addition, Schmucks with Underwoods (a derogatory label for screenwriters coined by none other than the irascible Jack Warner) includes quotes and commentary about many other towering figures of the day, including Raymond Chandler, Edward Chodorov, Preston Sturges, Howard Koch, Dorothy Parker, Herman Mankiewicz and Paddy Chayefsky.Always entertaining, this book offers invaluable insight into the craft of writing, a fascinating portrait of a lost era of Hollywood, with enough hilarious anecdotes and behind-the-scenes trivia to please even the most casual movie buff.

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Original Story By: A Memoir of Broadway and Hollywood (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a beautifully written book!I loved every page of this book and I heartily commend Laurents for making me feel what it was like to be a gay man in the forties and fifties who just happened to know most of the greatsof New York and Hollywood! it's a cliche but my advice is to run out andbuy this incredible book! Thank you, Mr. Laurents!

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Television Writing from the Inside Out: Your Channel to Success (Applause Books) Review

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(More customer reviews)TV writer-producer Larry Brody uses Television Writing From The Inside Out : Your Channel To Success to explore a medium he helped shape, discussing writing jobs available in TV work, considering teleplay development and writing for different genres, and including sample teleplays by Brody and others complete with analysis. This "nuts and bolts" reference is a recommended pick because it's packed from cover to cover with Brody's insider experience and knowledge of how the industry works.

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Television Writing from the Inside Out is a how-to book with a difference: Larry Brody is a television writer-producer who has helped shape the medium. The book is rooted in experience, and told in the breezy style that is the trademark of Brody and his award-winning website TVWriter.Com, which has helped launch the careers of many new writers. The information given by Brody and the manner in which he gives it has made him a writing guru to thousands of hopefuls.Television Writing from the Inside Out covers: what writing jobs are available; the format, structure and stages of teleplay development; tips on the writing of different genres - drama, comedy, action, the television film, soap opera, animation; and sample teleplays by Brody and others, with analyses of why they were written the way they were in terms of creativity, business, production and "insider politics."Television Writing from the Inside Out presents all that Larry Brody has learned about writing, selling and surviving in the television industry. The best-kept secret in show business has been that it is a business, but Brody's readers will know the truth - and armed with their new knowledge, they will have a significant edge as they set out to conquer this fascinating field.

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William Goldman: Five Screenplays (Applause Screenplay) Review

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(More customer reviews)Just go ahead and try to write a screenplay like William Goldman and you'll get slammed!
Yet despite the "flowery phrasing" the author of some of cinema's greatest screenplays is a master at getting you to play the movie in your head! It's the great ones that get to break the rules.
Every script is an enjoyable read, instantly and visually compelling, and a real lesson for writers on how to use language to give Actors, Directors, Cinematographers, and Script supervisors what they need to know as poetically and economically as possible.
I particularly enjoyed reading about the decisions that went into the making of The Great Waldo Pepper. As a kid, this movie really turned me around. It was a life affirming tragedy and it painted an emotional picture of a man's life using every color on this writer's pallette. Worth the price for this one alone!
All the essays prefacing the screenplays are a fascinating read, and a window into a facet of film history.

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A collection of five screenplays by this Academy Award-winning writer. Includes: All the PresidentÕs Men ¥ Magic ¥ Harper ¥ Maverick ¥ The Great Waldo Pepper. Also features essays by Goldman: "Getting Even or Creative Accounting," "Sneak Previews, or Why Did She Have to Die?," "Hype or Consequences: A Brief History of the Future," "Shooting from the Hip: DonÕt You Know Anything About Screenwriting?," and "Nothing for Me to Steal: The Secret Life of an Adaptation."

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The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Screenplays Volume 2 Review

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(More customer reviews)I have just finished this particular collection of screenplays, two of which are Academy Award winners and I am knocked out, just completely bowled over by them.I've always been a fan of Chayefsky, ever since I first saw NETWORK (included), perhaps his best known film.I hadn't seen THE HOSPITAL and caught only part of ALTERED STATES on television once.Let me say, they are every bit as dark and funny and pertinent to today as NETWORK.
Brief summaries:NETWORK is a satire on Network television, the story of a news anchor who goes crazy (or not so crazy) and the ensuing descent of his network as they play to the lowest common denominator for ratings.Through Peter Finch, Chayefsky has bequeathed us the immortal line, "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it any more."Fans of the film will notice this script contains some extra dialogue and one brief scene, all of which was probably shot, but which the great director Sidney Lumet saw fit to cut.It won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1976.
THE HOSPITAL script also won an Academy Award.Here Chayefsky satirizes a bevy of denizens in a large New York hospital complex and the activists of the surrounding neighborhood, making them all complicit in the killing of "God" who checked himself in as a patient.It's a fantastically snarky story, full of dialogue like
BOCK: What do you say Miss Drummond?
BARBARA: I expect you can call me Barbara, considering you ravished me three times last night.
BOCK: Three times?
BARBARA: Oh, look at him, pretending he didn't count.
Finally, there is ALTERED STATES, perhaps my favorite, which did not win any awards, and is considered somewhat of a failure as a film.Well there's a story behind that.Chayefsky, with his reputation (he also won a screenwriting Oscar for MARTY), was able to secure an unheard-of contract for the movie: not a single line could be changed.This is standard in theater, but film is considered a director's medium -- and the director, Ken Russel, was adamant about rewriting.He tried to change a few lines and Chayefsky shut him down.Russel retaliated by trying to film the dialogue in the worst way possible, having it interrupted by other sounds, turned down too low, having actors speak it in weird ways.After reading this script, one will agree this was a tragedy.ALTERED STATES is nothing less than Chayefsky's answer to every scientific and religious question.It packs a mind-blowing philosophical punch behind a science fiction story about a psychologist who regresses to a primitive consciousness.It is also completely, touchingly human in the end.
There are other volumes of his screenplays, teleplays and stageplays -- all of which I am now desperate to get my hands on and read.For anyone who reads screenplays, this book is an absolute essential.I'm going to keep it in a reverent place on my shelf.Staggeringly good.5/5 stars!

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A collection of screenplays by this brilliant writer. Includes: "The Hospital," "Network," and "Altered States."

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A Fish Called Wanda: The Screenplay (Applause Screenplay Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)Fish Called Wanda is a brillant script with some very funny moments in it. While reading it I couldn't hold my laughter when I still knew what was about to happen. It's one of those scripts that gets you're attention right away.

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Complete screenplay from this outrageous comedy written by John Cleese who also starred in it alongside Jamie Lee Curtis, Kevin Kline, and Michael Palin.

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