About book Writing Movies For Fun And Profit: How We Made A Billion Dollars At The Box Office And You Can, Too! (2000)
This book does not tell you how to actually write a movie. It does, however, give you a lot of information on how to make money writing screenplays. Thomas Lennon and Ben Garant scrub away the glitz and glamour of Hollywood to reveal the black and white machine. After reading this book, I started to realize that it is a miracle that movies even get made. (Let alone the ones that are considered Oscar candidates). A realistic and humorous look at writing big budget screenplays for the Hollywood studio system. These guys have gone through the whole process from all the different angles and have lived to tell the tale, often very humorously. Fans of The State and Reno 911 will get extra mileage out of the sense of humor and especially the entire "scriptment" for the unproduced Reno 911 sequel movie, which is pretty great. What NOT to expect: bullet-point breakdowns of how to write a screenplay. There is some discussion of the basic building blocks, but if you're looking for a how-to guide, read Save the Cat and the first 40 pages of Screenplay. (Sidenote: internalize those rules but don't be beholden to them, if writing a script was really just checking off a series of boxes everyone would do it and every script would be great).If you're looking for more honest and thoughtful insight into how REAL screenwriting in Hollywood works, be sure to check out the Scriptnotes podcast by John August and Craig Mazin. This book is highly recommended to anyone interested in screenwriting and understands that there's a place for arthouse "films" and there's also a place for popcorn entertainment. Someone's gotta write Night at the Museum (actually a pretty good family movie) and the like, and these guys can tell you what to expect if you're lucky enough to get a job writing in Hollywood.
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Loved this book. Fun read on how to write screenplays.
—Fawn143
An amusing, casual look at screenwriting.
—mikaele
