Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Last Book on Screenwriting

Have I mentioned recently that Save the Cat is the best book on screenwriting? No?

Well it is. And the Blake Snyder Beat Sheet is an incredibly powerful tool. It works when analyzing a previously existing script too -- that's amazing to me.

You really should "board" your whole movie before writing it. You should really know how it ends. You should know how it amps up into act II. That will make things rock.

But if you have to go back and look at the movie scene-to-scene, Save the Cat still works as an analysis tool.

If Blake Snyder knew how many of his books I've bought or encouraged other people to buy, he would feel he owed me money. And then he'd feel I owed him a part of my profits. It wouldn't end well. Legions of killer robots. A desert where a city once stood. Brave men doing what brave men do. Many saved cats. OK, so maybe it'll end well after all.

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Don't think for a minute I wasn't seriously considering this. I want whomever works for the Onion writing these things to work for ME!



I'm not kidding. (Thanks Bill Martell)

The entirety of the 1980 Lathe of Heaven. The score is terrible and the dubbing is so awful that all the performances go right out the window. But it seemed cool at the time.

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