Monster: Living Off the Big Screen [Import] [Paperback]

John Gregory Dunne (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Pan Books (March 10, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0330392468
• ISBN-13: 978-0330392464
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Arrogant, sloppy, and I can't put it down, March 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (Paperback)

John Gregory Dunne is an arrogant, name-dropping monster, himself. So much of the book is poisoned by his self-congratulatory tone. While he was a full participant in all of the events he recounts, he drips superiority as if he were floating (sneeringly) above the action rather than right down in it. The book is so lazily written. Abrupt, disjointed sections; his pacing and sense of time only confuse the reader. He indulges great detail on boring scenes that show himself off while he quickly glances over the scenes that would interest the reader the most. We have absolutely no sense of his wife, Joan Didion. We learn nothing about how he actually writes a script. Nevertheless, I couldn't put the darn thing down. I read it in a few hours and was captivated. It doesn't give nearly enough detail, the analysis is slight, the conclusions absent. But, somehow, I whipped through it and was glad I did. The subject matter is so fascinating that--while he forces us to peer at it through the haze of his ego--I still enjoyed looking. Perhaps more than anything, I enjoyed luxuriating in my hatred of the author.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Monster is the Studios Money..., July 17, 2006

By 

Marc Flanagan "Reading Through Lunch" (Santa Monica, Ca.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (Paperback)

At a lunch with a studio executive,screenwriter John Dunne was insisting on a story point in the script that he had written with his wife,Joan Didion, the excutive mimed reaching under the table and bringing out,"The Monster",their money, to win the argument. Seven or eight years they toiled on the script that became ,"Up Close and Personal",this is the chronicle of their experiences. Fascinating and sobering, when you realize how things can dissolve and then reappear in a completly different form. It is very well told and forshadows his health problems that cost him his life in 2003, that his wife wrote so exquisitly about in "The Year of Magical Thinking". If how movies get made is of any interest to you this and his other film making tale, "The Studio" will fascinate you.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars excellent insider's account, November 30, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (Paperback)

An excellent account of screenwriting and movie making, told in a very sardonic manner. If you liked Memo from David O. Selznick or William Goldman's Adventures in the Screen Trade, or Dunne's own The Studio, you'll probably enjoy this as well.