Movies Books

The Queen of the Nile will soon be battling for historical significance with the Queen of Pop very soon. A unique take on the influence of Madonna beyond just hit records to a whole social expression that inspired other artists, feminism, and what it means to be an ambitious woman without apology.

Like so many, I find Madonna interesting. And I agree with the positive reviews of this book -- I really like it. The unique contribution here is the way the author discusses Madonna in ways that make "postmodern" an interesting, understandable, ans useful concept. And believe me, I am no fan of academic writing of or about the posrmodern. But this book can be highly and widely recommended.

Madonna:alot can be said about Her but Boring isn't one of them.thsi Book Explores the Many things that relate too the Artist&personna that is Madonna.this Book is Challenging&also puts Madonna into a Complete Perspective from start too finish.just like the Woman Herself it will keep you wondering more&what lays around the Corner.

In this book GC Guilbert shows how absolutely everything Madonna has ever done is packed with clever references. He doesn't mean that she's a plagiarist, far from it: she just uses her vast knowledge of (popular) culture, in a "postmodern" way. A fascinating read.

At last a book about Madonna that can be enjoyed by academics AND fans. There have been two or three collections of highbrow essays by various university eggheads that were a bit too hermetic. "Madonna as Postmodern Myth" is "intellectual" but crystal clear.The subtitle pretty much sums it up: Georges-Claude Guilbert does show the way the diva "rewrites" just about everything -- always cleverly -- and especially old Hollywood stars. Besides, it's a very feminist book, but a sexy feminist book (yes, it is possible). I'm sure every Cultural Studies professor is going to want to read it, as well as every Madonna fan who's ever wondered why it is exactly that makes her / him adore the "self-constructed" star, beyond the obvious: she's unique.

hi,
We are twins to and we love mka.Our names are:Marjolein and Christine.This book has a lot of high qualid pictures but there is not much whriten in it.The best part is,when there IS something whriten,mka themselves say it.It seems like their talking to you in person.It's a fun book and if you like ptp a lot,you must get it (...)

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are teenagers now and off to Paris, the City of Light, to flim the new movie Passport to Paris. The girls have a great time shopping, eating snails!, and riding on montorbikes with two handsome french boys. They each talk about how pretty Paris is and they have a great time there. This a great inside scoop of the hit movie.

This book is very cool, there are alot pictures in it, and if you like the movie you will LOVE this book.... Every Olsenfan Must have this book, it's great!!

Totally Awesome. Deserves a AAA. Has great pictures from the movie and even pictures behind the movie. Great for anyone who loves the Olsen Twins or loves the movie.

This book has GREAT photo's from the movie Mary-Kate and Ashley "Pass Port to Paris" there sare the GREAT time they had and much more do you love mary-kate and ashley can't watch the movie or watched it and LOVED it than this Scrap book is for YOU!

I think that this is one of the better Sabrina novels. It is fairly long, which makes for a thrilling page-by-page story. After a short introduction (roughly 20 pages) you get to the different sections. What happens is that The Great Clock of the Other Realm is wearing out and it will stop at midnight! If that happens, then magic will cease to exist. While the Witches Council tries to repair the clock, Sabrina knows that she must build a new one. And so, with the help of Salem, she travels through time to the 12 most important events in history. She meets many people like Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth. The reasons for this rating is because of how Nancy Holder puts a time limit on Sabrina's quest which make the story more exciting and for it's great plot and suspenseful mini-stories through out the book. Overall, this is a great book that should be bought by everyone!

i loved this book! The excitment about if Sabrina will get to make the new clack was intense! The twlve short stories were different, so they were really fun to read. I think even the beginning is already totally interesting, so you are automatically pulled right into the plot. GREAT BOOK!

This was actually quite good for a Sabrina novel. I enjoy them long, and this one was long enough. It starts out when Sabrina discovers that the Great Clock in the Other Realm is going haywire and that if it breaks down at midnight on New Years Eve, witchs all around could loose their powers for good. Frantically, the witch's council tries to fix it, but Sabrina decides to build a new one instead. To do that, she has to travel to 12 magical times in history. I won't mention them all, but I really liked the part where she went back into colonial times and when she met Queen Elizabeth, even though it only lasted a page. Buy this book. I don't think you'll be disappointed.

I found this book really interesting with 12 twelve short stories about Sabrina trying to find pieces for a new clock.FABULOUS.

Millennium Madness was one of the best. The twelve short stories were a really good idea. The things that she collected to build a new clock was cool to. You should definitely read this book!

Movie Sets 101: The Definitive Survivor's Guide by professional special effects and makeup filmmaker Paul J. Salamoff is the complete and deftly written 240-page guide covering every important detail of the movie making business. Readers will be educated with seasoned and experienced advise drawn from over 70 working professionals, including Wes Craven, Ron Underwood, Tom DeSanto, James Gunn, Daniel Roebuck, Owen Roizman, Andrea Weaver, Kenny Myers, John Medlen and many others. Movie Sets 101 is highly recommended to all readers, whether they be aspiring movie makers, experienced professionals in the film business, or the ordinary movie enthusiast viewing the finished product. Movie Sets 101 it can really teach its readers every perspective of the movie making business and should be a part of any personal, professional, and academic library Film Studies reference collection.

A pragmatic guide to appropriate film set behavior with a complete and concise reference section. Simply put, it's a great tool for anybody starting out in the film production business, required reading.

An outstanding and unique guide to what the numerous players in producing a movie do and should not do with illustrations and antidotes from well known professionals in the field. Fascinating to the film lover, the curious and necessary for those plying the trade.

Why spend thousands of dollars on film school when you can learn everything you need to know for $17.95 on MOVIE SET 101? A certifiably great book, intensely well-researched, full of valuable info for the rookie and veteran alike. A must have!

This is a great book. Even if you already work in film and tv there's something unexpected to be read. It gives you a really good heads up about on-the-set mayhem you could never really anticipate and wouldn't expect until it happens. Invaluable stuff.

Colorful and easy to read. Nice acompniment to the show. Easy to follow each misson. Cool extras, including - the radio station list and things to see and do in each state visited.

Road Rules, Road Trips gives a wonderful insight in what goes behind the first two seasons of Road Rules. It allows to not only see the process behind the missions and other aspects of the show but it allows you to get to know the chracthers behind each season in an entirely different light. While I enjoyed the television series this book showed it to me in a wonderful new light. A great read for those who want to know more about Road Rules and the people who make it. :)

I haven't seen Road Rules but I was curious about the series. The book is excellent and provides much detail into each mission and the performers. This book is much better than Road Rules Passport Abroad and Road Rules Journals (which assumes that the reader has seen Road Rules).

I am a big RR and RW fan. This book had a lot of really interesting information that you wouldn't get by just watching the show. I liked getting each person's reaction to situations. I would have liked more reaction to Mark's skydive that went wrong. All in all - a very good read for fans interested in the series.

I applaud the writer of the book for only writing about the first two seasons. They were the hands down winners for best seasons ever. It was interesting to find out everything that I didn't see on the show. The cast was also very interesting.

I love the Murder She Wrote series, and "Provence--to die for," is no exception. I enjoyed the characters and setting for this entry in the series. Jessica travels to Provence, France, where she hopes to spend quiet time away from home. But murder follows her, as usual, and her reverie is cut short. Donald Bain and his wife, Renee, have continued a series adored by millions, and hope they persevere with Jessica's fun, and sometimes dangerous travels. Jessica Fletcher is my favorite detective in the business! I only wish she was a real person. I'd love to meet her one day!

i truly truly enjoyed this book, every page was exciting. JB i love ya thanks.....................

Although I prefer the setting of the Murder She Wrote novels in Cabot Cove, I just say that this is one of my favories. It's interesting and filled with French culture and wonderful food! Hope you enjoy this one as much as I did.

Yet another great book in the Murder She Wrote series, again a great sense of atmosphere is created with people and places so vividly described you could almost be there, roll on the next in the series!

The older Jessica gets, the more wiser she becomes. "Provence To Die For" is one of the most mysterious books in the Murder She Wrote series. Traveling to an unfamiliar country in Jessica's latest adventure, so many readers will wish they were there with her as she stumbles upon clue after clue trying to right a wrong of a clever culprit. I couldn't put the book down, as I was taking it with me where ever I went. Chapter Three is my favorite chapter, as it depicts Jessica on a dark and lonley farmhouse surrounded with strange noises--or is it only the wind? This book is a page turner, as many readers will agree, and the best in the series. That's hard for me to acknowledge because of the earlier works by Donald Bain, and which I enjoyed immensely--"Brandy and Bullets," "A Deadly Judgment," "A Palette For Murder," "The Highland Fling Murders," "Murder on the QE2," "Murder in Moscow," "A Little Yuletide Murder," and "Knock 'em Dead."

This is a good reference for Nightmare on Elm Street fans and collectors. It contains both color and B&W still photos, lots of trivia and behind the scenes facts, etc.

I wish they'd update this and bring into a full-color format with a more modern media-centric look, and add material From New Nightmare and Freddy vs. Jason. As it is, it covers up through Freddy's Dead, the Final Nightmare, and is relatively complete.

It's hard to come by, but is great for the completist if you can get your hands on a copy.

This is the ultimate collectors item for any Nightmare fan. A good variety of pictures from each of the movies (Nightmares 1 thru Freddy's Dead), plus some good insight into some of the special FX that went into the movies.

The only real problem I had was, if your a devoted NOES fan like I am, you will notice a lot of minor mistakes throughout the book. For instance, Lisa, from Nightmare 2, is listed as Lisa Poletti, but in the movie her name is Lisa Webber.

Other than the few minor mistakes, this book is definetly worth picking up!

This book has everything you need to know about Freddy Krueger and all the Nightmare on elm street films! This book is not missing one detail! Its has a summary of every Krueger Film! It also has ever picture from all the Krueger films including behind the scene footage! It is the best Freddy Krueger book ever made!!!!

If you love Freddy Kruger then this book is a must! It shows many secrets of each films from 1-6.

This is a must with great pictures and biographies of each cast member and a large amount of pictures,charts and biographies on each film from: A Nightmare on Elm St -to- Freddy'd Dead

I'm a huge collector of Freddy Krueger and Nightmare On Elm Street stuff, and when I got this book, I was just blown away. The great pictures and behind the scenes made it excelent! email me if you wanna talk Freddy!

Judy Stone is disarmingly engaging, a trait and quality that has endeared her to many of her fascinating subjects for attention in this thoroughly embracing and terrific journey of conversations and commentary with (incredibly!) 120 filmmakers, writers, and artists from every continent and culture. Reading the stories I felt an unusual intimacy, often forced or lacking in standard interview formats, with stilted questions or stock inquiries, which Stone adeptly avoids. She enables the person to reveal themselves without it seeming intrusive. Her remarkable, incisive curiosity and talent spans generations (from pre-WW2 to the present) and genres, revealing not only what we previously didn't know about the artist or subject, but also illustrating how a creative life is imperative. It is Stone's life that is the real revelation, however. As she writes about the playwright Jon Robin Baitz, he says "Ideas live. Ideas vibrate." So does this book! Get it to discover the astounding array of humanity inside its covers, get it to curl up with this national treasure, Judy Stone!
Not Quite a Memoir: Of Films, Books, the World

Judy Stone's Not Quite a Memoir is the printed equivalent of one of those late-night pub conversations in which the world's great thinkers get together and come up with viable solutions for all the world's problems. And right there in the middle is Stone's unflappable voice, asking the hard questions.

Judy Stone (the sister of I.F. Stone) has been writing these indispensable articles (now collected in an omnibus edition) of both American and international movies for the past three decades.

In between, she has conducted revealing and intelligent interviews (also in this book) with a startling array of directors, actors, and writers from every corner of the world, often traveling to do so. Stone's impressive body of work has actually been collected in two volumes, "Eye on the World" (1997) and this brand new book, "Not Quite a Memoir."

Stone modestly prefers to call herself a reviewer, not a critic, but if any film reviewer has a knowledge of the world as deep as hers and manages to show how films function in that world, I believe Judy Stone has earned the right to be called a critic.

Keep this book around, and you'll find yourself reading it each day, just because it's so much fun and remains so imformative about our world today.

For anyone who has enjoyed Judy Stone's perceptive articles over the years, this book is a feast: a look back at several decades of writing and filmmaking. The only problem is that it reminds you of all the books you wish you had read and the films you wish you had seen. But still, in a world where there is more culture than we can possibly take in, it's nice to have this kind of guidebook to the highlights.

"Not Quite a Memoir" flies around the world from the U.S's Gus Van Sant to Iran's Abbas Kiarostami, Israel's Amos Gitai,Spain's Carlos Saura, Chile's Isabel Allende, India's Satyajit Ray...At every landing, Stone creates a portrait of the artist as a force for social change. Intriguingly, the author backs up her portrait in words by capturing - with unassuming genius--astonishingly insightful photographs of her interview subjects...For medical reasons, Kiarostami never takes off those enigmatic sunglasses. Yet Stone's camera flash cleverly shines right through the artist's dark glasses to give us the first glimpse of eyes that revolutionized filmmaking with how they saw the world. Judy Stone's short interviews, like that camera flash, are just as clever and penetrating."
Ari Siletz, author "The Mullah with No Legs and other stories."

Hirsch's book is an absolutely first-rate biography of a filmmaker that makes fascinating reading whether one is a Preminger fan or not.

When you deal with Otto Preminger there's possibly too much story to possibly deal with in one volume. One might ask for a whole book just on the relationship betwen Preimnger and his Marshalltown, Iowa, discovery, the late Jean Seberg, for their back and forth intimacy, the sense that they ruined each other in a way, is something Foster Hirsch works up perfectly, and for once he seems to have informants in all the right places and with the proper combination of critical judgment and insider information. One is encouraged to think of SAINT JOAN and BONJOUR TRISTESSE--back to back flops for wounded Preminger--as two sides of a single coin, a coin with a profile of short haired Seberg on each side. You're left thinking of her as a proto Edie Sedgwick, Preminger as an irascible Warhol, and the St. Joan-Tristeese one two punch as their own "Inner and Outer Space."

Preminger's affair with Dorothy Dandridge might equally well have been expanded. Hirsch credits Preminger as a sort of civil rights pioneer, pointing to Avon Long's ooften overlooked turn in CENTENNIAL SUMMER as just the sort of music number which Hollywood should be proud of, instead of apologizing for. For every step forward, however, that Preminger seemed to make--placing Duke Ellington on the piano bench alongside James Stewart, for example, in ANATOMY OF A MURDER, or trying to hire Martin Luther King to play a senator in ADVISE AND CONSENT, he takes two steps back. I suppose he should have encouraged Dandridge to take the part of Tuptim in Walter Lang's THE KING AND I--it might have helped preserve her illusion of serious stardom for more than a minute. And speaking of which, how bad can PORGY AND BESS be? Gershwin estate, release your shroud of silence over this film! It just isn't right to keep it from us, let us judge for ourselves how shrill and self serving Sammy Davis Jr can be, how miscast Sidney Poutier.

Big books could be written on so many chapters here--the supplanting of Lubitsch, the Gene Tierney spiral of madness and deceit; the Gypsy Rose Lee affair that led to the birth of their son, Erik Lee Preminger. The big, serious films of constitutional critique each need more pages than Hirsch can possibly give them, even in the deluxe sort of Knopf movie bio glossy treatment he gets here. For goodness sake, for a Preminger fan, THE CARDINAL all by itself could use a complete encyclopedia, just for the way the man played up his little Viennese starling Romy Schneider, her quickeyed grace so sumptuous and moving against Tom Tryon's need to be bigger, need to blow himself up. Though I must say this is the most complete treatment, in and out, that THE CARDINAL is ever likely to get.

What I dislike is Hirsch's need to have something to say about everyone in his path, and he is often vicious as Clifton Webb, which would be fine if you shared his bile and hated his targets as much as he must. Why the hate for the late Ira Levin (who worked with Preminger on the screenplay for BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING), why dismiss a great novelist as a "mediocre" hack, it's just gratuitous sniping, and it leaves you wondering why--perhaps an ill Levin refused the biographer an interview? Jackie Gleason is "humor-free" here, while Groucho Marx os "gross, uncouth, extremely unpleasant." Kim Cattrall will want to go into hiding after the full scale attach Hirsch mounts on her. Not that I'm a great fan of Kim Cattrall, but still! Give the girl a break! As for Dyan Cannon, well, I wasn't there, but neither was Hirsch and he paints her as worse than Grendel's grandmother. And Romy Schneider? I refuse to believe that "Romy really was an awful person," "highstrung and arrogant," etc and an impossible demon. No way Jose! Even Ursula Andress comes off as a shrew, and there's no evidence Preminger ever spoke to her, so it seems that Hirsch just delights trashing all these women just because it's easy.

"The director of the movies The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder and Carmen Jones was a genius. Hirsch tells all including Preminger's determination to film movies about African Americans with Carmen Jones and gays in Advise and Consent."

This is a great book about a complex, fascinating man/filmmaker. As an avid cinema fan, I've always found Otto's films overly long, self important, and way too episodic. I recently saw Preminger's The Cardinal, and I was surprised at how much I loved the film. I've decided to go over Preminger's work again, and that's one of the main reasons I read this book.

This book is very well written and researched, and gives you a complex, measured portrayal of a great showman. Whether you like Preminger's work or not, he had a brilliant knack for getting great publicity for his films, and tackling then controversial subjects. He made films like The Moon Is Blue (which had pretty saucy sex talk, especially for 1953), The Man with the Golden Arm (about heroin addiction), Advise and Consent (which had a homosexual plot line in it, which was very bold for its time), and Anatomy of a Murder, which is one of the most riveting, complex courtroom dramas ever made.

The book shows how Otto became one of the biggest powerhouses in Hollywood during his heyday, his shooting methods (he shot very lean and came in under budget, something Hollywood loves), his relationships with actors (he got along wonderfully with Patricia Neal and John Wayne, and was constantly at the throat with Faye Dunaway and Dyan Cannon), and his dedication to family and to liberal politics. Otto helped smash the blacklist by hiring Dalton Trumbo to write the screenplay for Exodus, and insisted on him using his real name. While some of Otto's work is a bit dated and not as shocking as it used to be, it's still extremely well made and head and shoulders above other "message" films of the era (particularly films like Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, which is rather painful to watch nowadays).

The book has none of the intellectual, film professor talk on what his films mean, and that's always welcome. It's an absolutely fascinating portrait of a very complicated, polarising filmmaker, one whose films still invoke strong reactions from people today.

Foster Hirsch has done a masterful job putting together a study of the life and times of Otto Preminger--a "rebel with a cause," namely the expansion of individual freedom against forces opposed to it. He was a figure from a time when people were serious about arts and culture, and 'adult entertainment' did not mean xxxx-rated porno. A better producer than director of actors, that is Hirsch's main argument, but Preminger still gets points for being a masterful "Noir" auteur, as well as a decent director of social-issue films of the 50s and 60s. He broke censorship taboos, the blacklist, the color-line, and created an overtly pro-Israel classic in Exodus (though not pro-Israel enough for author Leon Uris), and dealt with the Alger Hiss case in Advise and Consent (also pulling punches, to the dismay of Alan Drury). But he made the type of films that, while familiar in the 1950s and 1960s--think of Stanley Kramer, Sam Spiegel, Elia Kazan, and so on--are all but gone today. Serious, thoughtful films, posing philosophical dilemmas in the middle of melodrama.

If Preminger's reach exceeded his grasp, Foster Hirsch makes the case that he deserves credit for trying. There's also material on Preminger's colorful personal life--his illegitimate son by stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, Dorothy Dandridge's abortion (Otto's fault per Hirsch), his temper tantrums (Dexedrine use may have been a factor), and his interesting relationship with his brother Ingo (talent agent and producer of Robert Altman's MASH) and his parents (father was former Attorney-General of Austria-Hungary). His final marriage, to Hope, seems to have worked out OK--his son became a doctor in New Jersey and his daughter a lawyer who manages the Preminger business today. His son by Gypsy Rose Lee was responsible for some of Preminger's more peculiar films, such as Skiddoo and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon.

He directed Porgy & Bess, which was pulled from distribution, as well as Carmen Jones. Laura is his most enduring hit. But many others have withstood the test of time. Preminger's last film, The Human Factor, was written by Tom Stoppard. Foster Hirsch says it is worth another look--like many other Preminger productions.

If you are interested in movie history, America in the 1950s and 1960s, or Viennese refugees and their Kultur, this is the book.

I caught up with this book in the library -- (and then actually bought a copy)...it serves as a warning to anyone that trys to talk-the-walk of attempting writing screenplays. If they only knew how Hollywood eats you up, and leaves you as road kill...I found the authors conversations with the people that lived to talk about their films -- (with the best of intentions) a Testament to the flawed movie making process...sad but amazingly fascinating. Eat it up, this is a good one!!

That's the eye catching sub-head for Mr. Cohen's very candid essay on the making of the movie "Bounce." It is not even a movie I saw and yet, I couldn't get myself to put down the book (and get back to work) until I finished this painfully insightful memoir by writer/director Don Roos.

In fact, the entire book is a little tough to put down because each story gets your foot inside the door of what writers had to endure to get their stories on the big screen. In some cases, you get the impression that the stories glided between the cracks. But in most cases, you wonder how anyone could ever have the tenacity to see a script to the end. And in many cases they don't. A recurring theme in these pages is how often the script changes hands, as old writers are fired, new one's hired, and the first one re-hired. Ugh. Makes me glad that I'm a Graphic Designer...something I thought I'd never say.

Surprisingly, the best story is found right smack dab at the beginning from Mr. Cohen himself. I'm talking about the Introduction, which most people skip. Don't do that. Read the introduction. All of it. It's honest. It's brave. And it's even more tell-all than the stories that come after it. Oh, and it's so funny at times that I embarrassed myself when laughing at the bookstore. I wrote the author an email, giving him a little wink about his story. He wrote back. That was enough for me to buy the book.

One more great thing about this book. I've always felt that writers are the last vestige of the world's wisemen. They have an insight about people, places and situations that when I read books like these I begin to wonder if I'm really reading a psychological self-help book. I've underlined quite a few snippets, as so much of what is shared resonated with my own experiences as a creative person. It's very difficult to stand by and watch someone "bend" your idea until it breaks (that's me paraphrasing Mr. Cohen in his Introduction).

So the point is, Get this book. If misery indeed loves company, you'll have plenty of it.

Have you ever loved a book and then been disappointed by how it was butchered in the movie? Or, thought a book was nothing more than a movie script, and then be enchanted at how it came alive on screen?

This fbook traces the stories of how 25 movies made that transition, and I enjoyed every step of the way. Cohen interviews the "writer and explores the sometimes torturous path from idea to finished film from its very root the transformations.

Writers are sometimes blamed for the failures. But Cohen credits the complaint that changes in the scripts by directors, actors, and studio executives sometimes ruined the movie. On the other hand, Alan Ball believes changes to American Beauty he had strongly resisted significantly improved the film.

I found several of the interviews especially instructive: Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind), Sofia Coppola (Lost in Translation), and John Logan (The Aviator).

Cohen's quotes from his interview with Michael Cunningham, who wrote "The Hours" and has written for the screen, taught me something fundamental about movies (and novels and short stories for that matter):

"A novel can include a sort of panorama of characters, a little like the Breughel painting with Icarus going down in the lower right-hand corner of the canvas. That's one of the reasons there are novels. That's one of the reasons we need novels and we need movies. A novel can account for randomness and can include a wide range of people whose fates just barely impinge on one another. I can't think of a way to tell a story like that in a movie that I would want to see.

"I think movies are more closely related to short stories than to novels. A short story actually involves the compression you need for a movie, whereas a novel is another category of thing entirely. Was it Henry James who called a novel a big, baggy monster? That's what it is. That's why we love them. I think a short story, very much like a movie, has no room in it for extra baggage. It needs to move, it doesn't need to move directly, but it needs to move swiftly. It needs to be lithe and light and nimble, and though that forty-page digression to the Crimean War and how it resembles what's happening at the family dinner may be interesting, there's no room in a short story for it. Nor is there room in a screenplay for it."

I'm sure that aspiring screenwriters would learn a great deal by reading about the successes and failures described in this book. It will certainly inform and enrich my own movie viewing in the future.

Robert C. Ross, 2008

I've been a working writer for 30 years, so David Cohen's book is deliciously like listening in on the personal conversations of compatriots in the craft--but the more I read, the more relieved I was that I'd never been attracted to screenwriting. Cohen's fresh, entertaining and whip-smart insights help to lace these in-depth interviews with meaning and pathos, even when the writers themselves border on the vapid--and those with the most to say shine through, thanks to the author's careful balance between commentary and reportage. We may cringe when we read of a writer's summary dismissal from the movie script he's slaved over for years, but there are enough delightful stories in this book to make the chilling ones a bit more bearable. One way or another, we've all been there.

We get to know the inner Cohen as well, from his own foray into writing for Star Trek to his early naivete at the junket buffet table. Overall, this book is a great read.

Cohen's genius is giving us the real story of how things happen, by letting us drop in (sometimes mercifully briefly) on the minds and tormented, heartbroken lives of actual screenwriters and their actual screenplays. I work with book authors who often want to make the leap to screen, so I bought this to see what they might be up against. Normally I have to force myself to read writerly books like this (parceling out a chapter every few days, dutifully, 'cause it's so much a part of my day job), but I took this one to bed and read it like a novel. The stories are so wonderfully f$%!d up... you find yourself overwhelmed with pity, schadenfreude, horror, amusement you name it. It must have been hell to make some of these movies.

The most interesting surprises for me were the backstories on two directors whose films normally do little for me personally: Todd Solondz and John Waters. I've always considered them overrated in a hipster-annoying kind of way (ditto the Cohens and the Sedarises, zzzz), but both men came off as brilliant personally, and so much more in control of what happens with their films. They make you wonder why anyone would want to get involved with the studio system at all... both seem so sane by comparison to some of the studio writers in the other stories.

The best thing this book did for me is make screenwriting seem do-able, by actual humans, rather than something demigods accomplish for little reconition and erratic pay. It's a job, like plumbing, and people have this job and make it work for them. I'm going to buy several copies and give them out to would-be screenwriter clients. Great work: author, author!