Archive for the ‘Screenwriting’ Category
Karoo: A Novel
Product Description
Saul Karoo thinks. But understanding eludes. He lusts. And sometimes with success. He drinks. But he cannot get drunk. Karoo is a professional fixer of other people’s scripts and, by his own acknowledgment, he ruins them all. Originally published in 1998, shortly after the author’s untimely death, this splendid new paperback edition, with an introduction by E. L. Doctorow, brings to the spotlight a book of shining causticity, humor, insight, and originality. Ruin and repair follow shambolic Saul Karoo as his life breaks down. But he is not without resources, namely his wit, his ex-wife, and his irrepressible soul, which in its own way is reminiscent of another bighearted broken man of literature: Saul Bellow’s Herzog. Finally, he is a man prone to luck both bad and good, and when a young woman with a strange connection to his own past shows up, the plot of his life comes into sharp focus. Steve Tesich has grounded his story in the highly recognizable world of New York in the late-eighties, a milieu of unscrupulous producers from the West Coast, dry cleaning, divorce, and fantasies of escape. Karoo is a haunting, highly human, deliciously real novel of decline and fall and rejuvenation.Amazon.com Review
There are far more tragicomic possibilities in the lives of gracelessly aging men than one might suspect, and the list of writers who have taken advantage of them is small but fertile–Mordecai Richler, John Updike, Philip Roth, and Saul Bellow among them. The late Steve Tesich, best known for his original screenplay for Breaking Away, joins this august group with the tale of Saul Karoo, a wealthy, alcoholic Hollywood script doctor plagued by exactly the kind of banal problems that he has ruthlessly edited out of the scripts of others–most notably a fear of intimacy. He meets regularly with his estranged wife Dianah to discuss the academic question of their ever-impending divorce and celebrate the anniversary of their separation. “Tender, deeply felt, full of love, that’s the kind of divorce we had in mind… The more we talked about divorce, the more married we seemed.” His adopted teenage son, Billy, keeps pushing for more dedicated father-son contact, to Karoo’s great discomfort: “I loved Billy, but I was absolutely incapable of loving him in private where it was just the two of us. That was another disease I had… Evasion of privacy. Evasion at all cost of privacy of any kind. With anyone.”
A doctor tells Karoo that he’s shrinking vertically and swelling horizontally, as if to push the world even further away. But when he signs on to re-cut the last film of dying directorial great Arthur Houseman, he discovers Leila, Billy’s natural mother, playing a bit part in the film, and from that moment he’s transformed. In a bizarre twist, the unbelievable melodrama that follows from his attempt to engineer happiness from this coincidence is the stuff of a blockbuster script–offered to him, naturally, for the writing. Karoo is bitter and cynical to the core, but the somewhat heavy-handed ending embraces the possibility of redemption even as it delivers the final insult to its unhappy hero.
Learn Movie Magic Screenwriter Screenwriting Software Training CD
Learn Movie Magic Screenwriter Screenwriting Software Training CD
- Learn the basics and advanced options of Movie Magic Screenwriter.
- Write your first (or next) screenplay and quit wasting time on formatting mistakes.
- 35 Movie Magic Screenwriter tutorials and over 1 hour of video tutorials.
- CD works equally well for both Macs and PCs.
Product Description
This Learn Movie Magic Screenwriter Training CD contains 35 different lessons that will take you from a beginning
screenwriter to a Movie MagicTM Screenwriter® expert. You will learn the basics of formatting a script through preparing your script for production purposes. You will learn how to use Movie MagicTM Screenwriter’s functions to write a perfectly formatted screenplay every time.
Movie Magic® ScreenwriterTM is used by thousands of screenwriters including
Hollywood’s top selling screenwriters Ted Rossio and Terry Elliott, Academy-
Award winning screenwriters like Paul Haggis, and top television shows such
as 24 and South Park. Movie Magic® ScreenwriterTM is a hybrid Mac and PC program. If you write on
a Mac at home, but on a PC at work, you’ll need just one copy of Movie Magic®
ScreenwriterTM
Learn Movie Magic Screenwriter Screenwriting Software Training CD
The Only Writing Series You’ll Ever Need Screenwriting: Insider Tips and Techniques to Write for the Silver Screen!
Product Description
Writing scripts for the big screen takes more than a good ideaÑit requires passion, perseverance, and insider know-how. The Only Writing Series YouÕll Ever Need: Screenwriting is your go-to resource for mastering the complete screenwriting process. Taking you step-by-step from idea to deal, youÕll learn how to:
- Write a sellable script
- Create real and credible dialogue
- Find an agent and marketing the script the right way
- Edit and reviseÑover and over and over, again
- Live the life of a full-time screenwriter
Ideal for those writers who want to perfect their craft and shop their scripts around, The Only Writing Series YouÕll Ever Need: Screenwriting is your entre to this exciting career!
Zen and the Art of Screenwriting 2: More Insights and Interviews
Zen and the Art of Screenwriting 2: More Insights and Interviews
Product Description
This new tapestry of Froug’s essays and interviews with top screenwriters, producers and directors is a sequel to his highly popular Zen and the Art of Screenwriting. Once again, Froug proves that he can pull engaging comments from his interviewees and, with his essays, cause both novice and seasoned screenwriters to stop and rethink what they’re doing. The essays are wide-ranging, covering such diverse subjects as creating your own talent, getting your scripts read, avoiding story-structure gurus, entering screenplay contests, Hollywood’s rewrite panic, Hollywood’s ephemeral enthusiasms, the stop-start method for studying films, guarding your surprises, reinventing old ideas, and guilt as a writer’s tool. There’s also a scene-by-scene look at the film Body Heat.
The interviewed filmmakers are Richard Donner (Lethal Weapon, The Omen), Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Dead Again), Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential, Payback), Nicholas Kazan (Reversal of Fortune, Fallen), Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon, Cool Hand Luke), Eric Roth (The Horse Whisperer, Forrest Gump), Lauren Shuler-Donner (Any Given Sunday, Bulworth), Aaron Sorkin (A Few Good Men, The American President) and Robin Swicord (Little Women, Practical Magic).
Zen and the Art of Screenwriting 2: More Insights and Interviews
Screenwriting 101: The Essential Craft of Feature Film Writing
Screenwriting 101: The Essential Craft of Feature Film Writing
Product Description
This book provides writers with the tools necessary to write and market a successful screenplay.
Hicks says: ‘Having a great idea is not enough. You need to get it down on the page. Having a great script is not enough. You have to pitch it to the right person at the right moment in time!’
Elements include:
* Structure
* Characters
* Style
* The business of screenwriting
* The economics of film
* Agents, attorneys and the screenwriter
and much more!
Hicks’ credits include two of the number one box office films in the world – Rumble in the Bronx in the United States and First Strike in Asia. Some of his other Hollywood screenwriting credits include the critically acclaimed Dead Reckoning, starring Cliff Robertson, and Pierce Brosnan’s Don’t Talk to Strangers.
KEY FEATURES:
* An essential guide to screenwriting
* Reveals the tricks of the trade
* Written by an acclaimed scriptwriter
Screenwriting 101: The Essential Craft of Feature Film Writing
Chris Soth’s Million-Dollar Screenwriting: The Mini-Movie Method
Chris Soth’s Million-Dollar Screenwriting: The Mini-Movie Method
- CHRIS SOTH’S MILLION-DOLLAR SCREENWRITING!
- Learn “sequencing”: The Mini-Movie-Method previously taught only at USC!
- From a produced Hollywood Screenwriter who has sold his screenplays and seen them made!
- Be part of the coming REVOLUTION in STORY –
- – the simplest, easiest method you’ll find anywhere, EVER.
Product Description
LEARN FROM A WORKING HOLLYWOOD PRO!
Own the Million-Dollar Screenwriting Seminar on DVD! Recorded at the first ever MillionDollarScreenwriting.com Seminar, the only course that teaches the Mini-Movie Method of sequencing story.
Do you find 3-act structure lacking? Is Act Two a monster? Have you always thought there must be a better way?
THERE IS. Learn the simplest and best technique for designing story ever!
Never be more than 10-15 pages from a major landmark on your journey again. The secret to structure that has made millions for savvy screenwriters, and this is the only DVD set that teaches it! This set contains 4-DVDs packed with more than 5 hours of information, chaptered and edited with your learning in mind.
CHRIS SOTH has made more than a million dollars as screenwriter. You could too!
DVD ONE: BACKSTORY
The History of Story — how it all lead to The Mini-Movie Method
The Tension Dimension — how Freud’s Pleasure Principle is the key to making readers and viewers LOVE your story!
DVD TWO – THE HOLY GRAIL
This is IT! THE MINI-MOVIE METHOD! Break your story into reels, sequences or MINI-MOVIES! So much easier — A THOUSAND TIMES BETTER!
DVD THREE: STORY TYPES
Use the Mini-Movie Method to create 10 different kinds of stories!
DVD FOUR: MICRO-MOVIES AND BEYOND!
What about when you can’t figure out how to handle the next 10-15 pages?
LEARN TO BREAK THEM DOWN EVEN FURTHER!
MICRO-MOVIES AND BEYOND!
WATCH IT ON YOUR TV, KEEP IT IN YOUR LAPTOP DVD DRIVE AND CONSULT IT WHILE YOU WRITE!
Chris Soth’s Million-Dollar Screenwriting: The Mini-Movie Method
Oscar-Winning Screenwriters on Screenwriting: The Award-Winning Best in the Business Discuss Their Craft
Product Description
Hollywood’s most respected screenwriters tell intriguing and instructive tales of their successes, failures, aspirations and inspirations in the movie business.
Academy Award-winning movies such as American Beauty, Shakespeare in Love, and Forrest Gump are remembered, long after Oscar® night, for their stellar performances, their breathtaking beauty, and their transcendent scenes. But before any of these films were directed, lit, performed, or edited, they needed to be written. Screenwriting is, arguably, the most important and underrated role in Hollywood.
Now Joel Engel brings together interviews with the best screenwriters working today, each of whom has won an Academy Award for his or her work, and each of whom shares a wealth of knowledge, insight, and experience about this little understood facet of moviemaking. In each essay, writers such as Alan Ball (American Beauty), Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), Marc Norman (Shakespeare in Love), Tom Schulman (Dead Poet’s Society), Kurt Luedtke (Out of Africa), John Irving (The Cider House Rules), and many others explore and explain their craft and technique. Anyone interested in writing, making, or learning about movies will enjoy this behind-the-scenes compilation of wisdom and advice from Hollywood’s natural-born storytellers. Amazon.com Review
All film jobs, says Joel Engel, “depend on the script.” It remains a mystery, then, that so many in the film biz consider a script to be “little more than typing.” Strangely enough, everyone, it seems, wants to be a screenwriter. In Screenwriters on Screenwriting, Engel has shaped interviews with 11 Oscar-winning screenwriters into chapterlong monologues. These writers provide companionship for the aspiring screenwriter, but their tales should appeal equally to any film lover interested in the stories behind the stories. William Goldman (All the President’s Men) laments the current state of cinematic storytelling; Ron Bass describes how My Best Friend’s Wedding and Rain Man evolved; Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) talks about completely revamping his work process after giving up drugs and alcohol. And Marc Norman (Shakespeare in Love) claims that his best writing “has been on the scripts I wrote as suicide notes to the industry–sort of, ‘F— you, guys, I’m outta here. This is the last script you’ll ever get from me.’” –Jane Steinberg
Screenwriting Updated: New Ways of Writing for the Screen
Screenwriting Updated: New Ways of Writing for the Screen
Product Description
Today’s screenwriter must be adept at today’s popular yet often complex and unconventional script forms, such as the parallel storytelling of Pulp Fiction and Magnolia, the multiple protagonist narrative of American Beauty, and the complex flashback forms of The Usual Suspects and The Sweet Hereafter. Becoming comfortable with and skilled in such modern script forms is the focus of Screenwriting Updated, which identifies basic parallel structures, clearly explains how and why they work (or fail to work), and establishes the basic principles of their construction. These modern forms are presented in tandem with and in relation to tried-and-true, traditional screenwriting forms, rendering unconventional structures as easily grasped as conventional ones. Unlike any other screenwriting book, Screenwriting Updated combines solid, basic screenwriting craft with a thorough presentation of very contemporary script structures. The result is a unique, wide-ranging, in-depth screenwriting text and do-it-yourself script-doctoring manual suitable for both seasoned and novice writers.
Zen and the Art of Screenwriting: Insights and Interviews
Zen and the Art of Screenwriting: Insights and Interviews
Amazon.com Review
Twilight Zone and Playhouse 90 veteran William Froug gives indispensable advice in that the Zen encourages you to be true to your voice, write what you want, and dispense with all those books that straitjacket you into a formula. Think of the money you’ll save! (Unless, of course, you have an urgent need to write a Speed or Die Hard sequel.) Froug also reinforces my Northern California bias (my home turf): two of the interviews that pepper this book are with screenwriters who live there–Bo Goldman and David and Janet Peoples.
Screenwriting is Storytelling: Creating an A-List Screenplay that Sells!
Screenwriting is Storytelling: Creating an A-List Screenplay that Sells!
- ISBN13: 9780399530241
- Condition: New
- Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Product Description
While most screenwriting books focus on format and structure, Kate Wright explains how to put story at the center of a screenplay. A compelling story, complete with intriguing characters and situations created with these screenwriting tricks of the trade can become a box office blockbuster film.
Screenwriters will learn:
– Developing themes within the plot
– Using structure to define the story
– Creating memorable characters
– Establishing moral dilemmas and conflicts
– Achieving classic elements of storytelling in a three-act dramatic structure
– Mastering different genres
Screenwriting is Storytelling: Creating an A-List Screenplay that Sells!