Name: Monster: Living Off the Big Screen
ISBN: 9780375750243

Monster: Living Off the Big Screen

John Gregory Dunne

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"Monster" is John Gregory Dunne's mordantly funny account of life on the Hollywood food chain. Dunne and his wife, Joan Didion, have been working in the movies for over twenty-five years, and have written, rewritten, brainstormed, and developed two dozen scripts, seven of which have been produced. Monster is the candid chronicle of how one of those scripts finally got made into "Up Close & Personal," starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. The "Up Close" screenplay started out as the story of Jessica Savitch, the television news anchorwoman whose history included drugs, opportunistic sex, and an early, violent death. Over the years it was refined into a story that would "make the audience walk out feeling uplifted, good about something, and good about themselves, " as one executive put it in an early script meeting. The tale of how this happened is a hilarious saga that Dunne relates with a wicked eye and perfect pitch for the absurdities and savage infighting of the film industry.

Book Details

Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publish Date: Mar 17th, 1998
Pages: 224
Language: English
Edition: Vintage Books - undefined
Dimensions: 7.98in - 5.18in - 0.60in - 0.52lb
EAN: 9780375750243
Categories: • Film - History & Criticism• Film - Screenwriting

About the Author

John Gregory Dunne wrote six novels--Vegas; True Confessions; Dutch Shea, Jr.; The Red White and Blue; Playland; and Nothing Lost--and seven works of nonfiction, among which are the memoir-like Harp and two books that look at Hollywood, The Studio and Monster. Born in West Hartford, Connecticut, in 1932, he graduated from Princeton in 1954. He collaborated with his wife, the writer Joan Didion, on many screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park and True Confessions. John Gregory Dunne died in December 2003.

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What people are saying

Claire

@clairecdowns

2 years

🌹writerdirector on strike. games writer. Rep: Jim Strader at Quattro Media

Everyone read “Monster” by John Gregory Dunne

Writer behind two Academy Award-winning films, incl. SIDEWAYS. SIDEWAYS hardcover next: https://t.co/2Gbq0PbgnN

@Gennefer In John Gregory Dunne's brilliant, but now dated, book, "Monster," he was talking about the industry's attitude toward screenwriters and he wrote: "Everyone in Hollywood thinks they can write a screenplay ... if only they had the time." Their arrogance and derogation in one.

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