Baggy Pants Comedy (Palgrave Studies in Theatre and Performance History)
by A Davis
The first full-length study of comedy on the burlesque stage, this book takes the reader inside the burlesque houses of the 1930s, looks at the role comedy played in an entertainment form known mostly for striptease, and explores how these sketch performers approached their craft.
Writing for the Screen (PERFORM)
Writing for the Screen is a collection of essays and interviews exploring the business of screenwriting. This highly accessible guide to working in film and television includes perspectives from industry insiders on topics such as breaking in; pitching; developing and nurturing business relationships; juggling multiple projects; and more. Writing for the Screen is an ideal companion to screenwriting and filmmaking classes, demystifying the industry and the role of the screenwriter with real-worl...
Hollywood's premier teacher of screenwriting shares the secrets of writing and selling successful screenplays in this perfect gift for aspiring screenwriters. Anyone fortunate enough to win a seat in Professor Richard Walter's legendary class at UCLA film school can be confident their career has just taken a quantum leap forward. His students have written more than ten projects for Steven Spielberg alone, plus hundreds of other Hollywood blockbusters and prestigious indie productions, includin...
Inside the TV Writer's Room (Television and Popular Culture)
by Lawrence Meyers
A collection of interviews with some of today's top episodic TV writers contains revealing insights to why people become television writers and what makes them successful. Each chapter's topic is distilled into a practical lesson for both professionals and aspirants to heed if they wish to find or maintain success in writing for television.
A comprehensive and sustained analysis of the development of storytelling for television Over the past two decades, new technologies, changing viewer practices, and the proliferation of genres and channels has transformed American television. One of the most notable impacts of these shifts is the emergence of highly complex and elaborate forms of serial narrative, resulting in a robust period of formal experimentation and risky programming rarely seen in a medium that is typically viewed as form...
A series of three-hour-long linked plays for BBC2 plus two shorter plays Oswald and Marilyn, played by Timothy Spall and Lindsay Duncan, are the custodians of the collection of 10 million black and white photographs housed in a beautiful period building on the edge of London. Their peaceful old fashioned existence is threatened when some Americans buy the property to turn it into a business school. They have to use their resources and ingenuity to fight the forces of the modern world and as they...
"Queer as Folk" is the story of three gay guys, their families and friends. The exploits of Stuart, Vince and Nathan covered many of the thornier problems in life, such as cleaning up your loft apartment after a wild party, how you should react when your mum wants to come clubbing with you, and the perils of being the ultimate social outcast - a Doctor Who fan. This title contains the complete unexpurgated scripts from the first series, and includes scenes that were never transmitted.
Though screenwriting is an essential part of the film production process, in Britain it is yet to be fully recognised as a form in itself. In this original study, Jill Nelmes brings the art of screenwriting into sharp focus, foregrounding the role of the screenwriter in British cinema from the 1930s to the present day. Drawing on otherwise unseen drafts of screenplays, correspondence and related material held in the Special Collections of the BFI National Archive, Nelmes's close textual analysi...
This book is about the life and work of David Milch, the writer who created NYPD Blue, Deadwood and a number of other important US television dramas. It provides a detailed account of Milch's journey from academia to the heights of the television industry, locating him within the traditions of achievement in American literature over the past in order to evaluate his contribution to fiction writing. It also draws on behind-the-scenes materials to analyse the significance of NYPD Blue, Deadwood, J...
How I Escaped from Gilligan's Island (Ray & Pat Browne Book)
by William Froug
In the early 1950s writers were leaving radio en masse to try their hand at another promising medium - television. William Froug was in the thick of that exodus, a young man full of ideas in a Hollywood bursting with opportunities. In his forty-year career Froug would write and/or produce many of the shows that America has grown up with. From the ""Drama of Playhouse 90"" and the mind-bending premises of ""The Twilight Zone"" to the escapist scenarios of ""Adventures in Paradise"", ""Gilligan's...
Angel Scriptbook Collection: Volume 1
by Joss Whedon and David Greenwalt
Dennis Potter was a most remarkable, idiosyncratic, and influential screen playwright, writing such shows as "The Singing Detective" and "Pennies From Heaven" for British TV during the last half of the 20th century. In dramatizing the anxiety of his own inner journey, he articulated for the millions watching his shows their own distresses about the fast-changing cultural environment. The Passion of Dennis Potter represents the first collection of international essays on this celebrated playwrigh...
What They Didn’t Teach You in Your Screenwriting Course Screenwriters, listen up! Breakfast with Sharks is not a book about the craft of screenwriting. This is a book about the business of managing your screenwriting career, from advice on choosing an agent to tips on juggling three deal-making breakfasts a day. Prescriptive and useful, Breakfast with Sharks is a real guide to navigating the murky waters of the Hollywood system. Unlike most of the screenwriting books available, here’s one that...
Break Into Writing For Television takes you from the very first line of the script through to becoming a regular writer for soaps and 'continuing dramas'. It starts with the basics of different types of script and production, and moves on to getting ideas, shaping character and dialogue, re-writing, pitching work and the practicalities of who does what in the production world, in both the UK and the US. Structured around a practical, progressive, goal-orientated approach, each chapter contains a...
Mastering the Pitch
Told from the perspective of a Hollywood executive with nearly 20 years’ experience professionally pitching and distributing film/TV projects, Mastering the Pitch reveals all the nuanced details of the pitching process. Readers will gain valuable insights into how the Hollywood system operates, improve their professional pitching skills and gain a competitive edge in getting their ideas from concept to greenlight. This book covers:how projects are packaged and developed before a pitchhow a pitc...