Behold the mantra of TVWriter™’s fearless (feckless?) leader, Larry Brody:
“Could be shorter. Could be cleverer. Could be tenser.”
Okay, so the rhythm there isn’t quite perfect, but the thought behind what LB says is true. Brevity sells. And if you want a crash course in how to achieve it, we’ve found just the book for you to see.
Alex Epstein knows:
I keep hearing that traditional funding for indie films is getting harder and harder.
I’m not sure it was ever that easy, unless you count the moment right after video stores came in and you could put together almost any cheesy erotic thriller or teenagers-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods horror movie and make a direct-to-video movie. If you read Joe Camp’s book about how he funded BENJI, the sleeper dog movie hit of 1974, he had a lot of trouble getting his movie made, and then more trouble getting it into theaters.
Disclosure: I’m entering my 13th year as a novelist, with over 20 published books as of this writing. I am both pro-traditional publishing and pro-self-publishing. My review comes from a completely neutral viewpoint.
Interested in self-publishing? Who isn’t now days? While the book publishing industry is undergoing major–and I mean major–upheaval right now, it’s never been a better time to be an author. Anyone can publish a book, which is the main idea behind APE. Guy Kawasaki is a case in point.
Basically APE is an amalgamation of information that’s readily available on the internet–for free. Kawasaki is about a year late with his entry into the Self-Publishing Guide genre, although he’s covered by stating that the info in this book can change at any minute, and how awesome is it that he can update his book at anytime? Just one of many benefits of self-publishing.
Ken Levine says this is the best comedy writing book evah…and who are we to disagree?
If anybody ever had great credentials for a book about comedy – what it is, what it ain’t – Dan O’Shannon, Emmy winning showrunner of MODERN FAMILY, former showrunner of FRASIER, former executive producer of CHEERS is the guy. His approach – analyzing the “comedic event” as opposed to examining joke structure, makes you wonder why anybody ever even thought of looking at what’s funny another way. To O’Shannon, context is everything…and he’s convinced me of it too.
With that in mind: