Screen Plays: How 25 Scripts Made It to a Theater Near You--for Better or Worse [Hardcover]

David S. Cohen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 2008

Every green-lighted screenplay travels a long and harrowing road from idea to script to celluloid. In this fascinating survey of contemporary film craft, David Cohen of Script and Variety magazines interviews screenwriters from across the board—Oscar winners and novices alike—to explore what sets blockbuster successes apart from downright disasters. Tracing the fortunes of twenty-five films, including Troy, Erin Brockovich, Lost in Translation, and The Aviator, Cohen offers valuable insider access to the back lots and boardrooms, to the studio heads and directors, and to the overcaffeinated screenwriters themselves. Full of critical clues on how to sell a script—and avoid seeing it destroyed before the director calls "Action!"—Screen Plays is a book that both the aspiring screenwriter and curious cinephile will find irresistible.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

As a well-placed observer who knows intimately many of tinsel town's key players, Variety reporter and 25-year Hollywood insider Cohen reveals the story behind 25 scripts that became such high-profile projects as Lost in Translation, Troy, American Beauty and The Aviator. On the way, budding screen-writers convinced their own story seems like a long-shot will find inspiration (or at least comfort) in stories like Milo Addica and Will Rokos's, whose screenplay for Monster's Ball was rejected by top industry brass as "the best script that will never get made." With the deep background reporting he's known for, Cohen produces revealing nuggets of moviemaking trivia, alongside stories of serendipity and triumph; for instance, had Erin Brockovich not shared a chiropractor with her future producer, Carla Santos Shamberg, her movie probably would never have been made. Nowhere is Cohen's understanding of the tempestuous film industry more apparent than in the compelling account of Black Hawk Down screenwriter Ken Nolan, who was terminated from that project only to get himself re-hired and, ultimately, sole writing credit. Cohen's is a surefire crowd-pleaser for casual movie fans and true cineastes.
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From Booklist

Variety reporter Cohen tells the stories of the scripts of several commercially and artistically successful recent films. Most were significantly tweaked to improve their commercial prospects. Some, such as those of Gladiator and My Best Friend’s Wedding, underwent wholesale change on the way to the screen. American Beauty, TV scribe Alan Ball’s attempt to break into the movies, was among the rare few that survived largely intact. Cohen also inspects a few stinkers, like Random Hearts and Pay It Forward, whose stories are just as revealing and instructive, despite their unhappy endings. The writers at issue range from novices to writer-directors John Waters, Sofia Coppola, and Todd Solondz, and include one of the few screenwriters considered a film auteur in his own right, Charlie Kaufman. Besides revealing each script’s genesis and fate, Cohen recounts the writers’ backstories and includes commentary by many of the movies’ stars. Almost any movie lover should enjoy the book’s illuminating insight into how what’s on the screen gets there, and aspiring screenwriters may be invaluably guided by the writers’ experiences. --Gordon Flagg

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: It Books (February 5, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061189197
• ISBN-13: 978-0061189197
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #584,498 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "It's Difficult Talking to Idiots", April 28, 2008

By 

Ahmad Jordan "Ahmad Jordan" (Bufalo, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Screen Plays: How 25 Scripts Made It to a Theater Near You--for Better or Worse (Hardcover)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars From words on paper to the screen -- fascinating journeys, April 13, 2008

By 

Robert C. Ross (New Jersey) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Screen Plays: How 25 Scripts Made It to a Theater Near You--for Better or Worse (Hardcover)

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

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Backstage: adj. of or pertaining to activities unknown to the public, November 11, 2008

By 

Stacey Tisdall (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Screen Plays: How 25 Scripts Made It to a Theater Near You--for Better or Worse (Hardcover)

A compelling read for movie fans and industry professionals alike. Cohen's book covers twenty-five scripts, each script following its own unique and sometimes tumultuous journey. The book feels like a backstage pass, as if a secret spy cam was tethered to each script from beginning to end and Cohen plucks out for the reader the most fascinating twists and turns of each journey, giving us plenty of gems of insider information: including personal quotes from various people involved with each film, to the internal processes of the writers, to the bickering about who deserves who's writing credits, to the being replaced as the writer on the writer's own script. Cohen's hard-fact journalism is mixed with a perfect dose of compassion for the messy humanity that is required to make any work of art come to life. A fascinating view into just what it takes to get a script made in Hollywood.