Customer Reviews

Hard Core Roadshow: A Screenwriter's Diary

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Written from the screenwriter's point of view, Hard Core Roadshow is about the making of a brilliant Canadian film, Hard Core Logo. Having seen and liked the movie, I then read the book by Michael Turner. There is a long road between the book and the movie and Noel Baker takes you on the journey, showing how the movie came to be from the initial blind luck of his getting the assignment through the laborious writing process, casting, financing and finally filming. This book should be required reading for anyone contemplating a career in screenwriting and will be enjoyed by anyone with an interest in filmaking.

What struck me most about this book was the harsh realities of writing for money.

Scriptwriting is a truly harrowing process. The process of the scriptwriter taking a book and turning it into a script is full of massive pitfalls and some truly cruel moments. Scriptwriters do not have the final say on what they write, there are many people who can tell the writer to change this, or completely destroy that whole section. As a writer myself, I found it frightening. One of the wonderful things about writing is being able to express your thoughts and ideas as they come to you. Artistic freedom, however, is not something that most scriptwriters have. And so this book has a touch of tragedy about it, as Mr. Baker watches his script get gutted and re-arranged again and again.

Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed this book, both for the insight into the scriptwriter's mind as well as the behind the scenes info on HCL. It's definitely made me determined to view the movie again. The style it's written in, journal entries, creates an intimate feel to the narrative. By the end of the book you feel like you know this person, a little bit at least.

Very impressive.