Monster: Living Off the Big Screen

Last updated
First edition (publ. Random House) Monster Living Off the Big Screen.jpg
First edition (publ. Random House)

Monster: Living Off the Big Screen is a 1997 book in which John Gregory Dunne recounts his experiences as a screenwriter in Hollywood. [1] [2] [3] The book focuses on the process of drafting the screenplay for Up Close & Personal (1996), a movie starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. [4] It details the meetings, writing, rewriting and all the other struggles in the way of creating a sellable screenplay. It also describes how a film that started being about Jessica Savitch ends up being a Star Is Born-type film, where one character is a "rising star," and the person she/he is in love with becomes a "falling star."

Critical reception

The Guardian called Monster "among the funniest, cruellest and most 'New York' takes on the fate of writers in the Hollywood system. Contemptuous of so much of what he saw, yet unwilling to detach himself from his own role in the process, which turned a dark, amoral tale of psychological disintegration into a feel-good vehicle for Robert Redford, Dunne wrote a classic." [5]

Related Research Articles

William Goldman American novelist, screenwriter and playwright

William Goldman was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist before turning to screenwriting. He won Academy Awards for his screenplays Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and All the President's Men (1976).

Robert Redford American actor and film director

Charles Robert Redford Jr. is an American actor, director, producer and activist. He is the recipient of various accolades, including an Academy Award from four nominations, a British Academy Film Award, two Golden Globe Awards, the Cecil B. DeMille Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2014, Time named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Robert Towne American screenwriter, producer, director and actor

Robert Towne is an American screenwriter, producer, director and actor. He was part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking. He is best known for his Academy Award-winning original screenplay for Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974), which is widely considered one of the greatest screenplays. He later said it was inspired by a chapter in Carey McWilliams's Southern California Country: An Island on the Land (1946) and a West magazine article on Raymond Chandler's Los Angeles. Towne also wrote the sequel, The Two Jakes (1990); the Hal Ashby comedy-dramas The Last Detail (1973) and Shampoo (1975); and the first two Mission: Impossible films.

Joan Didion American writer (1934–2021)

Joan Didion was an American writer. Her career began in the 1950s after she won an essay contest sponsored by Vogue magazine. Her writing during the 1960s through the late 1970s engaged audiences in the realities of the counterculture of the 1960s and the Hollywood lifestyle. Her political writing often concentrated on the subtext of political and social rhetoric. In 1991, she wrote the earliest mainstream media article to suggest the Central Park Five had been wrongfully convicted. In 2005, she won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize for The Year of Magical Thinking. She later adapted the book into a play, which premiered on Broadway in 2007. In 2013, she was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama. Didion was profiled in the Netflix documentary The Center Will Not Hold, directed by her nephew Griffin Dunne, in 2017.

Nick Adams (actor, born 1931) American actor, screenwriter (1931–1968)

Nick Adams was an American film and television actor and screenwriter. He was noted for his roles in several Hollywood films during the 1950s and 1960s along with his starring role in the ABC television series The Rebel. Decades after Adams' death from a prescription drug overdose at the age of 36, his widely publicized friendships with James Dean and Elvis Presley would stir speculation about both his private life and the circumstances of his death. In an AllMovie synopsis for Adams' last film, reviewer Dan Pavlides wrote, "Plagued by personal excesses, he will be remembered just as much for what he could have done in cinema as what he left behind."

John Gregory Dunne was an American writer. He began his career as a journalist for Time magazine before expanding into writing criticism, essays, novels, and screenplays. He often collaborated with his wife, Joan Didion.

Screenwriting Art and craft of writing screenplays

Screenwriting or scriptwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is often a freelance profession.

Jane Goldman English screenwriter, author and producer

Jane Loretta Anne Goldman is an English screenwriter, author and producer. With Matthew Vaughn, she co-wrote the screenplays of Kingsman: The Secret Service (2014) and its sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle (2017), as well as X-Men: First Class (2011), Kick-Ass (2010) and Stardust (2007). Goldman also worked on the story of X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014), the sequel to First Class, in partnership with Vaughn. Both met high critical praise for their partnership works.

A production company, production house, production studio, or a production team is a business that provides the physical basis for works in the fields of performing arts, new media art, film, television, radio, comics, interactive arts, video games, websites, music, and video. Production teams consist of technical staff to produce the media. Generally the term refers to all individuals responsible for the technical aspects of creating a particular product, regardless of where in the process their expertise is required, or how long they are involved in the project. For example, in a theatrical performance, the production team has not only the running crew, but also the theatrical producer, designers and theatrical direction.

<i>Up Close & Personal</i> (film) 1996 film by Jon Avnet

Up Close & Personal is a 1996 American romantic drama film directed by Jon Avnet, and starring Robert Redford as a news director and Michelle Pfeiffer as his protégée, with Stockard Channing, Joe Mantegna, and Kate Nelligan in supporting roles.

Patty Jenkins American filmmaker

Patricia Lea Jenkins is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. She has directed the feature films Monster (2003), Wonder Woman (2017), and Wonder Woman 1984 (2020). For the film Monster, she won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature and the Franklin J. Schaffner Award from the American Film Institute (AFI). For the pilot episode of the series The Killing (2011), she received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination and the Directors Guild of America award for Best Directing in a Drama Series. In 2017, she occupied the sixth place for Time's Person of the Year.

Philip Dunne (writer) American screenwriter, film producer & director (1908–1992)

Philip Ives Dunne was a Hollywood screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox crafting well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium. Dunne was a leading Screen Writers Guild organizer and was politically active during the "Hollywood Blacklist" episode of the 1940s–1950s. He is best known for the films How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), The Robe (1953) and The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965).

Gavin Lambert was a British-born screenwriter, novelist and biographer who lived for part of his life in Hollywood. His writing was mainly fiction and nonfiction about the film industry.

<i>Which Lie Did I Tell?</i>

Which Lie Did I Tell?: More Adventures in the Screen Trade is a work of non-fiction first published in 2000 by novelist and screenwriter William Goldman. It is the follow-up to his 1982 book Adventures in the Screen Trade.

Jay Presson Allen American screenwriter and playwright

Jay Presson Allen was an American screenwriter, playwright, stage director, television producer, and novelist. Known for her withering wit and sometimes-off-color wisecracks, she was one of the few women making a living as a screenwriter at a time when women were a rarity in the profession. "You write to please yourself," she said, "The only office where there's no superior is the office of the scribe."

Austin Film Festival Film festival

Austin Film Festival (AFF), founded in 1994, is an organization in Austin, Texas, that focuses on writers’ creative contributions to film. Initially, AFF was called the Austin Heart of Film Screenwriters Conference and functioned to launch the careers of screenwriters, who historically have been underrepresented within the film industry.

A scriptment is a written work by a movie or television screenwriter that combines elements of a script and treatment, especially the dialogue elements, which are formatted the same as in a screenplay. It is a more elaborate document than a standard draft treatment. Some films have been shot using only a scriptment.

Robin Stender Swicord is an American screenwriter, film director, and playwright, best known for literary adaptations. Her notable screenplays include Little Women (1994), Matilda (1996), Practical Magic (1998), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008); which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. She wrote and directed the 2007 film The Jane Austen Book Club.

Michael H. Weber is an American screenwriter and producer from Great Neck, New York. He and his writing partner Scott Neustadter have written the original screenplays for the films 500 Days of Summer (2009) and The Pink Panther 2 (2009). They also wrote the screenplays for The Spectacular Now (2013), based on the novel by Tim Tharp, The Fault in Our Stars (2014), based on the best-selling novel by John Green and Paper Towns (2015), based on another novel by Green.

Josh Cooley American film director

Joshua Cooley is an American animator, screenwriter, director and voice actor. He is best known for working on the 2015 Pixar animated film Inside Out and directing the short film Riley's First Date? that was included in its home video release. He made his feature film directorial debut in 2019 with Toy Story 4, the fourth film of the Toy Story franchise, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.

References

  1. "Up Close and Personal : MONSTER: Living Off the Big Screen. By John Gregory Dunne . Random House: 206 pp., $26". Los Angeles Times. February 16, 1997.
  2. "Monster: Living Off the Big Screen". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  3. Feeney, Mark; Globe, Boston (January 1, 2004). "John Gregory Dunne -- author and screenwriter". SFGate.
  4. Yardley, Jonathan (February 19, 1997). "A DUNNE DEAL? HOW A HOLLYWOOD SCRIPT TURNED INTO A 'MONSTER'" via www.washingtonpost.com.
  5. Obituary:John Gregory Dunne The Guardian, 2 January 2004. Retrieved 21 May 2014.