Customer Reviews

Plots and Characters: A Screenwriter on Screenwriting

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Anyone who loves stories of old Hollywood or anyone who appreciates a good story, wonderfully and wittily written, will appreciate this book. Kaufman captures the nuttiness of Hollywood - he is an iconoclast in the best sense, having lived the experiences himself. Also wonderful to read are the vignettes scattered throughout by contemporary screenwriters, including the writers for "Seinfeld," for "Thelma and Louise," and many others. The pictures in the middle of the book, which include beautiful shots of Elizabeth Taylor, Monty Clift, and Eva Marie Saint, make the book worthwhile in themselves. Anyone who has struggled with writers' block, even doing a paper for school, will appreciate what Kaufman has to say on this subject. The book is a pleasure to read - fast and funny.

If you're desperately seeking a how-to manual on screenwriting, maybe it's not your calling. In any case, I found this book to be useful and interesting. I've thumbed through such standbys by Robert McKee and Lajos Egri - they're just stating the obvious and reverse engineering successful films and literary works. That's something anyone with a brain can do, I think. When Millard Kaufman was writing, there weren't any how-to books, preying on the masses seeking a low-mid six figures writing- deal. A lot can be learned from a writer like this.

An absorbing, intelligent, funny and revealing book, which makes it a great read for writers as well as readers with no such aspirations. After reading the book I finally got free of any guilt feelings I had for liking "The Fugitive" so much. Thanks to "Plots" I now know what a superb scritpt is behind that film. I wish I could be so sure about any personal potential to ever match its excellence.

There are SO many screenwriting books out there. I know, I have them all. As a screenwriter, you're always looking for hints from the experts, and no book tells it to you straighter than Plots and Characters. Few really talk about screenwriting as a business, and that's what it is. Thanks to Kaufman my illusions are shattered, but I'm better equipped to get real work.

The only plots and characters in this book are Millard Kaufman's interminable diatribes about the entertainment industry over the past twenty to thirty years. An occasional unsuspecting tip managed to slip through a chapter or two, but quickly segued to the author's unrelatable escapades.

Based on the synopsis, I assumed this book was a "How To" book on writing. The title promises to aide the reader with plot and character development. This however was never realized. The gist of this book was so elusive, I came out of it completely empty handed. If I could have gotten past the first 100 pages, there might have been some useful information. However, my time is too precious to waste on such laborious textbook reading with no point.

I was extremely disappointed and felt the title "Plots and Characters" was completely misrepresentative of the actual content of the book. Instead, the title should have read "Plots and Characters, the autobiography of Millard Kaufman."

As a working screenwriter and WGA member, I'm dismayed to see the growing number of poor quality screenwriting books by authors who have little or no experience in the movie business and are simply trying to make a buck at the reader's expense. Millard Kaufman's wise, biting, funny, edgy book is a breathtaking exception to this sad trend. If you only have money to buy one screenwriting book, buy this one. If you have more money, buy two copies and give one to a friend. Kaufman knows his stuff from decades of working in the trenches. Buy it, read it, enjoy it, learn from it. You won't be sorry. [As a matter of disclosure, I know of Mr. Kaufman as a WGA board member, having seen him speak at meetings. I do not know him personally, however, nor does he know me.]

I think the reason I didn't like this book as much as some of the other readers is that I was looking for a book on the 'how-tos' of screenwriting, and as one of the main reviews on this page indicates, this book has been hyped as setting a "new standard in screenwriting instruction." It doesn't. It's more accurate to say that the book is Millard Kaufman's memoir of working in the Hollywood studio system, leavened with occasional generalities about writing. Not that these generalities aren't valuable, but it takes Kaufman *more than 100 pages* to start talking about the art of writing. That isn't what you want or expect from an "instructional" book.

Also, anyone with a writing background will disagree with many of Kaufman's generalities. He says that one should never ask for a critique of one's work from another writer, because of, among other things, other writers' jealousy of good work. The *day after* I read that, I met with a fellow playwright who gave me two hours of insightful critique on a play I'd just completed. In another place, Kaufman says, "Readers are only conscious of seeing words on a page when the narrative is so boring or so confused that you can't picture it." I can think of James Baldwin and others as counterexamples.

The point is that when you start questioning Kaufman's generalities, he hasn't presented enough material about the craft of writing to make you trust the rest of the book. I can only recommend this book marginally, since some of the material may be useful if only because it reinforces what you've learned elsewhere. But this definitely should not be high on someone's list.

I happen to know Mr. Kaufman personally, so I've disclosed my bias. But he is as good a storyteller in print as he is in person. This book is wildly entertaining, contains bits of wisdom, has interesting observations and provides a window onto capital "H" Hollywood. It's as good a "how to" for screenplay writers as it is an entertaining romp through the politics and personalities of "the biz".