Something Old, Something New - Joe Engel

There are some screenwriting books that teach you the "technical" side of screenwriting, then there are the books that deal with the creative side. Joe Engel's book belongs in the latter category. It's the sort of book you will find yourself returning to time and time again. Every interview contains some useful nugget of information or some note of inspiration, though Engels introduction to each is next to useless and so sycophantic as to be nauseating. I found myself skimming each introduction and just skipping straight to the interview.

This book will also help you to understand the business of screenwriting. Many of the writers featured, for example novelist John Irving (Cider House Rules), talk about the collaborative process of filmmaking. Ron Bass, for example, talks about the experience of writing Rain Man. He reveals it was Dustin Hoffman's idea to make his character Raymond autistic. Originally, the character was intended to be retarded, an "idiot savant". And it was Steven Spielberg who suggested the film's central relationship between Hoffman's character and that played by Tom Cruise. Bass says he learned about collaborating the hard way: "Only when I became a producer did I understand that the director is the person who has to work with the material, and if he or she isn't comfortable with it and doesn't share its vision, the film is going to suffer. So what this epiphany did was turn me into a collaborator. I realised that I'm not writing a script to be read by a lucky few...the words on the page are not the film. As a screenwriter, I can't divorce myself from the film itself; I have to understand everyone else's needs ..."