Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!
by Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant

I read this book totally on a lark. I mean, how can you not be attracted to this? Take a good look at that cover. It's totally gaudy, slightly offensive, and come on, even "for fun" is crossed out. How could anyone possibly take anything written in this book seriously?

But that's just the point. The very prominent subtitle says it all: from guys who've made over $1 billion in the box office. That's right, Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant adapted the book that was made into Night at the Museum starring Ben Stiller, which made more than $950 million worldwide. Add that haul to their other screenwriting credits, and suddenly, it's got more zeros than your average student loan bill.

Plus--and it took my more TV-savvy coworker to realize this--these guys are also on Reno 911! as Lt. Dangle and Deputy Travis Junior. In other words, perhaps these two guys know what they're talking about when it comes to screenwriting, making movies, and working in Hollywood.

Now, as a writer in my day job, I've often thought of what it would be like if I could turn my writing into big bucks (I know, it's a shock I'm not making them now). According to Ben and Tom, I'd need to move to Hollywood to even consider being a successful screenwriter, unless I happened to be named Woody Allen. After double checking my birth certificate and deciding that leaving my husband, family, and friends behind for some half-witted dream to move cross-country wouldn't be the best idea, my reading of this book was purely for entertainment. And entertaining it was. These guys know how to make you laugh--even when writing instructional material (seriously, they could make the booklets that come with any small appliance seem funny).

Their book covers everything you, a budding screenwriter, need to know, including the secret menu at In-n-Out Burger (I had it once when I visited LA and yes, it's that good). But seriously, they do seem to cover all of the bases, from tips on how to best write your screenplay (revisions, revisions, revisions!) to how to make studio executives like you to how you can make sure the movie you wrote gets made into a movie you'd actually recognize. I found myself fascinated by tidbits such as: in most movies, the most untouched, unedited-from-the-original-shooting-script sequences are the action scenes because these parts are handed off to the second director team (the one who doesn't think s/he is a writer/director) and all s/he cares about is figuring out how to get what you wrote translated into special effects and the like. So that would explain why some movies have really cool action scenes that seem disjointed from the rest of the movie's storyline.

Overall, the book was a great read, chock full of tips and actual advice, despite its slightly off-putting cover. I'd have no problem recommending this to anyone who'd like to be a screenwriter or who has been lured by the siren song of Hollywood.