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Screenwriters have always been Hollywood's stepchildren. Yet, popular impressions aside, screenwriters have been central to moviemaking since audiences got past the sheer novelty of seeing pictures that moved at all. Soon they wanted to know: What happens next? Veteran Oscar-winning screenwriter Norman gives us the first comprehensive history of the men and women who have answered that question, from Anita Loos, the highest-paid screenwriter of her day, to Robert Towne, Quentin Tarantino, Charlie Kaufman, and other paradigm-busting talents reimagining movies for the new century. The whole rich story is here: the imposition of the Production Code in the early 1930s and the ingenious attempts to outwit the censors; the dark days of the blacklist that divided the screenwriting community; the rise of the writer-director in the early 1970s; and the scare of 2005 when new technologies seemed to dry up the audience for movies and forced the industry to reinvent itself yet again.--From publisher description

What happens next : a history of American screenwriting

Norman, Marc, 1941-

London: Aurum

Aurum Press

United Kingdom and Ireland, United Kingdom

obscured text on back cover.

The script-writer's place in Hollywood has traditionally been somewhere near the foot of the food-chain. Marc Norman traces the whole history of the industry from the perspective of the oft-abused individuals who actually provided the foundations upon which the directors, stars and studio bosses erected their titanic egos

'The movies: they tear you away from your home, draw you into a pigsty of people, make you do stuff that disgusts you, rip out all your ambition of inventiveness, reduce you to a hack - and what do you get for it? A fortune.' Screenwiter Samuel Hoffenberg

2023-06-28