Understanding Screenwriting: Learning from Good Not-Quite-So-Good and Bad Screenplays

About this book

From the authors introdution: This book isnt about me its about you. I am a teacher not a guru. As a wise teacher once said "With a guru it is all about the guruhis vision and the students loyalty to him. Whereas with a teacher it is all about the students learning." You should be reading this book because you as screenwriters directors producers development executives critics historians students in thosedisciplines and just plain movie fans want to learn about screenplays. Feisty clever entertaining and at times incredibly arch and cutting Tom Stempels Understanding Screenwriting delivers a practical how-to (or how-NOT-to) guide to writing a screenplay. Why study a bad screenplay? For the simple fact that it will train you to look for problems in your own work and avoid them in the future. Why does Rear Windows success owe more to John Michael Hayess screenplay than Alfred Hitchcocks directing? Why is Bull Durhams "I believe in the church of baseball" one of the great opening lines in the history of movies? Why is James Camerons first draft screenplay for Titanic better than the film? What can we learn from Kinsey about writing about sex for American audiences? Why is Lawrence of Arabia one of the best examples of "writing for performance" in films not only the performances of the actors but also of the director cinematographer and composer? Stempel guides the reader through a cross section of cinema: historical epic adventure science fiction teen comedy drama romantic comedy suspensefilms with budgets large and small. selective in its discussions and (sometimes withering) analyses Stempel dissects the blockbusters and the bombs discusses why certain aspects of a screenplay work and others do not explains the difference between the film we watch and what was the screenplay and lays out some of screenwritings hard and fast taboos only to give examples of screenplays that break them with successful results. Full of insight for novice and expert screenwriters alike Understanding Screenwriting is the perfect book for anyone looking to gain a deeper understanding of how screenplays work.