Writing Hollywood

Writing Hollywood

Author: Patricia F. Phalen

Publisher:

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781138229815

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The central focus of Scripting Hollywood is the television writing process for drama and comedy series. Patricia F. Phalen argues that the way writers do their jobs is heavily dependent not only on the demands of commercial business but also on the uncertainties inherent in a writing career in Hollywood. Drawing on the literatures of "Media Industry Studies" and "Occupational Culture," Scripting Hollywood shows how writers efforts to control risk and survive in a constantly changing environment affect the stories they tell and how they tell them. Using data from personal interviews and a two-month participant observation at a prime time drama to analyze the relationships among writers in series television, this text describes the interactions between writers and studio/network executives, and explains how endogenous and exogenous pressures affect the occupational culture of the television writing profession. Scripting Hollywood is written primarily for undergraduate and graduate courses in Media Industries and Organizations, screenwriting, television studies, and popular culture. It will also appeal to anyone interested in how media "work." "


Writing for Hire

Writing for Hire

Author: Catherine L. Fisk

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2016-10-17

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0674973208

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Required to sign away their legal rights as authors as a condition of employment, professional writers may earn a tidy living for their work, but they seldom own their writing. Writing for Hire traces the history of labor relations that defined authorship in film, TV, and advertising in the mid-twentieth century. Catherine L. Fisk examines why strikingly different norms of attribution emerged in these overlapping industries, and she shows how unionizing enabled Hollywood writers to win many authorial rights, while Madison Avenue writers achieved no equivalent recognition. In the 1930s, the practice of employing teams of writers to create copyrighted works became widespread in film studios, radio networks, and ad agencies. Sometimes Hollywood and Madison Avenue employed the same people. Yet the two industries diverged in a crucial way in the 1930s, when screenwriters formed the Writers Guild to represent them in collective negotiations with media companies. Writers Guild members believed they shared the same status as literary authors and fought to have their names attached to their work. They gained binding legal norms relating to ownership and public recognition—norms that eventually carried over into the professional culture of TV production. In advertising, by contrast, no formal norms of public attribution developed. Although some ad writers chafed at their anonymity, their nonunion workplace provided no institutional framework to channel their demands for change. Instead, many rationalized their invisibility as creative workers by embracing a self-conception as well-compensated professionals devoted to the interests of clients.


Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love

Writing Scripts Hollywood Will Love

Author: Katherine Herbert

Publisher: Allworth Press

Published: 2000-11

Total Pages: 168

ISBN-13:

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This fully updated, career-boosting book arms aspiring and experienced writers with an insider's insights into the process of conceiving, writing and marketing a winning film or TV script. A veteran story analyst reveals what is demanded of scriptwriters in today's competitive marketplace.


Sell Your Story to Hollywood

Sell Your Story to Hollywood

Author: Kenneth Atchity

Publisher: Story Merchant Books

Published: 2016-10-01

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 9780996990875

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This little book aims to help you figure out how to get your story told on big screens or small. It offers nearly thirty years of observation of how things happen in the business of entertainment. Dr. Ken Atchity's Hollywood experience ranges from writing to managing to producing; he's seen Hollywood from nearly every angle.


Make Your Story a Movie

Make Your Story a Movie

Author: John Robert Marlow

Publisher: Macmillan

Published: 2012-12-11

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 1250001838

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$50 Billion of Advice in One Book* Have you ever wondered why some books and stories are adapted into movies, and others aren't? Or wished you could sit down and pick the brains of the people whose stories have been adapted--or the screenwriters, producers, and directors who adapted them? Author John Robert Marlow has done it for you. He spoke to book authors, playwrights, comic book creators and publishers, as well as Hollywood screenwriters, producers and directors responsible for adapting fictional and true stories into Emmy-winning TV shows, Oscar-winning films, billion-dollar megahits and smaller independents. Then he talked to the entertainment attorneys who made the deals. He came away with a unique understanding of adaptations--an understanding he shares in this book: which stories make good source material (and why); what Hollywood wants (and doesn't); what you can (and can't) get in a movie deal; how to write and pitch your story to maximize the chances of a Hollywood adaptation--and how much (and when) you can expect to be paid. *This book contains the distilled experience of creators, storytellers and others whose works have earned over $50 billion worldwide. Whether you're looking to sell film rights, adapt your own story (alone or with help), or option and adapt someone else's property--this book is for you.


Writing for the Green Light

Writing for the Green Light

Author: Scott Kirkpatrick

Publisher: CRC Press

Published: 2015-03-02

Total Pages: 202

ISBN-13: 1317704207

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Tailor your screenplay to sell. Find out what Hollywood script readers, producers, and studio executives want in a screenplay (and why) from someone who’s been there. Discover what it takes to begin a lasting career as a screenwriter. Peppered with interviews from established professionals, Writing for the Green Light: How to Make Your Script the One Hollywood Notices gives you a sharp competitive edge by showcasing dozens of everyday events that go on at the studios but are rarely if ever discussed in most screenwriting books. With his behind-the-scenes perspective, Scott Kirkpatrick shows you why the system works the way it does and how you can use its unwritten rules to your advantage. He answers such questions as: Who actually reads your script? How do you pique the interest of studios and decision makers? What do agents, producers, and production companies need in a script? How much is a script worth? What are the best genres for new writers and why? What are real steps you can take to ‘break in’ to television writing? How do you best present or pitch a project without looking desparate? How do you negotiate a contract without an agent? How do you exude confidence and seal your first deal? These and other insights are sure to give you and your screenplay a leg-up for success in this competitive landscape!


500 Ways to Beat the Hollywood Script Reader

500 Ways to Beat the Hollywood Script Reader

Author: Jennifer M. Lerch

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 1999-07-13

Total Pages: 180

ISBN-13: 0684856409

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From a veteran Hollywood script reader who knows what sells--and what doesn't--comes a comprehensive collection of screenwriting tips that provides essential facts for anyone writing a screenplay.


William Faulkner in Hollywood

William Faulkner in Hollywood

Author: Stefan Solomon

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2017-08-01

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0820351148

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A scholarly examination of the scripts and fiction Faulkner created during his foray as a Hollywood screenwriter. During more than two decades (1932-1954), William Faulkner worked on approximately fifty screenplays for major Hollywood studios and was credited on such classics as The Big Sleep and To Have and Have Not. Faulkner’s film scripts—and later television scripts—constitute an extensive and, until now, thoroughly underexplored archival source. Stefan Solomon analyzes the majority of these scripts and also compares them to the fiction Faulkner was writing concurrently. His aim: to reconcile two aspects of a career that were not as distinct as they first might seem: Faulkner the screenwriter and Faulkner the modernist, Nobel Prize–winning author. As Solomon shows Faulkner adjusting to the idiosyncrasies of the screen­writing process (a craft he never favored or admired), he offers insights into Faulkner’s compositional practice, thematic preoccupations, and understanding of both cinema and television. In the midst of this complex exchange of media and genres, much of Faulkner’s fiction of the 1930s and 1940s was directly influenced by his protracted engagement with the film industry. Solomon helps us to see a corpus integrating two vastly different modes of writing and a restless author. Faulkner was never only the southern novelist or the West Coast “hack writer” but always both at once. Solomon’s study shows that Faulkner’s screenplays are crucial in any consideration of his far more esteemed fiction—and that the two forms of writing are more porous and intertwined than the author himself would have us believe. Here is a major American writer seen in a remarkably new way.


Writers in Hollywood 1915-1951

Writers in Hollywood 1915-1951

Author: Ian Hamilton

Publisher: Faber & Faber

Published: 2011-11-17

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 0571283713

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Legend has it that Hollywood lures gifted writers into its service with sunshine and money, only to treat them as glorified typists and plot-mechanics, peripheral to the main business of moviemaking. This is what Ian Hamilton describes as 'the writer-in-chains saga that emerges from any study of Hollywood during its so-called golden years - the period I have marked as running from 1915-1951.' But in this superb account of what befell the likes of Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Chandler and Huxley by working for the Dream Factory, Hamilton argues that these writers 'were in the movies by choice: they earned far more money than their colleagues who did not write for films, and in several cases they applied themselves conscientiously to the not-unimportant task at hand. And they had a lot of laughs...' 'Fascinating and enjoyable.' New Statesman 'Abounds in marvelous stories, apocryphal, fabulous, funny and even true.' Observer Faber Finds is devoted to restoring to readers a wealth of lost or neglected classics and authors of distinction. The range embraces fiction, non-fiction, the arts and children's books. For a full list of available titles visit www.faberfinds.co.uk. To join the dialogue with fellow book-lovers please see our blog, www.faberfindsblog.co.uk.


Death by Hollywood

Death by Hollywood

Author: Steven Bochco

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2009-08-17

Total Pages: 133

ISBN-13: 1408806711

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One evening, spying on his Hollywood Hills neighbours through his $4,000 electronic telescope, Bobby witnesses a beautiful woman making love to a handsome Latin actor called Ramon. As their pillow talk turns ugly, Bobby watches in horror as the woman appears to bludgeon her lover to death with his own acting trophy. Instead of rushing to the cops, Bobby decides to find out more about the events that led up to the crime, and to use the material for his next movie screenplay. However, when he sneaks into the actor's apartment, the discovery he makes changes his life forever. Empowered by his secret knowledge, Bobby is able to seduce the beautiful woman, while forging a unique friendship with Detective Dennis Farentino, the cop in charge of the investigation. Before long Bobby has dragged the detective, his wife, his lover, and his agent into a Hollywood fun-house hall of mirrors, where only the most manipulative player will survive.