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My POV
Brian A. Wilson
BOOK REVIEW: "Sell Your Screenplay: Your Guide to the Independent Film and Television Producer" by Andrea Leigh Wolf. Robert D. Reed Publishers, San Francisco
Part 1 of 2
The screenplay cycle just gets shorter and shorter.
First, Viki King's book promised that you, too, could "Write a Movie in 21 Days."
The latest fast-track entry is from something called the "Gotta Minute" book series. It's entitled "Sell Your Screenplay: Your Guide to the Independent Film and Television Producer."
Nice to know that if you put in that solid three weeks creating your epic masterwork, it'll only take a minute to sell it!
If you've never even skimmed a book on screenwriting, "SYS" might help. A little. But if you've taken any classes, read any other screenwriting books or even poked around online extensively, this book doesn't divulge much fresh information.
Targeted at the rank amateur, "SYS" is published by Robert Reed of San Francisco, a company specializing in the vanity press/self-publishing industry. That goes a long ways toward explaining how a book so short on original content could make its way into the crowded screenplay publishing field.
This book flies under the banner of being a guide to indy producers. That's fine. But tell me about them! Don't just list them one after the other. Tell me their script preferences, their credits, their favorite burger joints where I might run into them, something! Presumably, Ms. Wolf has some first-hand contact with these people. If so, supply some detail and evaluation for the purchase price of the book. If not, why list them?
The title is a bit misleading because the book mentions virtually nothing about television. As for being a "guide" to indy producers, it comes much closer to being a list than anything else.
The main components of the book are:
*a rambling recap of the author's life, experiences and limited credits (including the fact that "she received high grades on essays and term papers");
*lengthy reproductions of option agreements;
*and (for about half the book) listings of tiny production companies, film commissions and web sites.
NEXT WEEK: The breakdown
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