Customer Reviews

Women Screenwriters Today: Their Lives and Words

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It's easily her best book yet, with wide-range appeal. It's sufficiently analytical and well-researched to pass muster with critics and academics -- I'm recommending it to my scriptwriting students at University of Houston - but it's also accessible enough to be a fun read for movie buffs.

"Marsha McCreadie 'gets' what it means to be female, and achieve some unique
niche in the arts/or any realm of success in our contemporary u.s.a.; she manages to
educate and entertain, her research solid, and her manner of expression deft,
informative, and entertaining"--
Eve Packer, poet/performer/nyc

As an American male, I developed an interest in the work of women filmmakers when I lived in Sydney and became something of an Aussie film booster. Gillian Armstrong and Jane Campion more than held their own against the Weirs and Schepisis as their early movies were released.

Two weeks ago, an aspiring screenwriter gave me Women Screenwriters Today, thinking I would enjoy it. And right she was-so much so that I bought copies for two friends. The author's choice of subjects is spot-on, her prose is eminently readable, and the personal histories are intriguing. Better still, the tips for novice screenwriters are worth their weight in gold. A very fine book all around!

Witty, insightful, and gutsy from the first line to the last, Marsha McCreadie's bird's-eye view, "Women Screenwriters Today, Their Lives and Words," is a must-read for female writers of any ilk. An amalgamation of interviews, commentary, and history, McCreadie focuses on these women's works, their process, and their experiences breaking into the male-dominated film "business" (or, as McCreadie points out, "art" if you happen to be from a country that actually supports art and film, i.e. those "little" countries like Canada, France, and Australia). I enjoyed McCreadie's multi-layered investigation into women's vs. men's stories, structure, and form, a discussion bandied about at least since Virginia Woolf, who declared in A Room of One's Own, "the nerves that feed the brain seem to differ in men and women." Speaking as a novelist, I wish that I had read this book years ago and seen the references to women's writing as "fluid" (Stacy Cochran), or crosscutting through time, as McCreadie reiterates. It would have saved me years of questioning my own approach and style.