The only compass readers will ever need to navigate the treacherous waters of filmmaking.
A hilarious and helpful insider’s guide to launching a successful writing career in Hollywood.
The co-creators of the TV series Reno 911 and such films as Night at the Museum Garant and Lennon take a gut-busting stab at the published world in their first book. Unapologetically designed as “a guide to writing hit movies that make you and the studio piles of money,” the authors offer invaluable advice that much of Hollywood would shudder to reveal. And they would know—the pair has grossed “$1,467,015,501.00 and counting at the box office.” Garant and Lennon take on the Goliath-like task of explaining the entire screenwriting process from pitching to selling, studio development to a practical guide to writing with a partner (which they swear will have “you writ[ing] twice as fast as you would without”). They emphasize the importance of both humor and practicality, both of which are imperative tools to a successful career working in “the Dream Machine.” The authors demystify the secretive world of screenwriting in Hollywood by offering tips on everything from sequels (“Never discuss the sequel before the movie comes out!”) to, arguably, the biggest question of all: “Why does almost every studio movie suck donkey balls?” Their answer: “Development Hell.” They even provide helpful hints on how to discern one’s importance to the studio, suggesting that “the easy way to tell what the studio’s opinion of you is where…they let you park.”
The only compass readers will ever need to navigate the treacherous waters of filmmaking.Pub Date: July 5, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4391-8675-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: June 6, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2011
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
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