Monster: Living Off the Big Screen: Amazon.ca: John Gregory Dunne: Books

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This is a story of a screenplay, how it was initially conceived, "developed" by a number of studio heads and producers, and finally transformed into a movie even its writers admit is mediocre. In 1988, John Gregory Dunne and his wife Joan Didion began work on a film script based on the tragic life of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch. Over the next eight years, studio executives coaxed them to transform it into Up Close and Personal, a toothless star vehicle for Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. In his account of the script's metamorphosis, Dunne also mentions other potential masterpieces of excess that he and Didion worked on, including Dharma Blue, an aborted Jerry Bruckheimer-Don Simpson movie about UFOs and Ultimatum, a nuclear thriller that was abandoned after its studio spent $3 million on script development! Dunne makes no bones about being in show biz for the money--his film work financed his heart surgery, legal costs, and vacations in Honolulu. Still, this account of a screenplay's devolution unmasks an industry spoiled rotten by wealth and power. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Novelist (Playland) and journalist Dunne makes much of his living by writing screenplays, and this journal covers the eight years it took between the time he and his wife, Joan Didion, were approached to write a screenplay based on Golden Girl, a biography of newswoman Jessica Savitch, and the 1996 appearance of Up Close and Personal, a rather different movie that made no mention of Savitch. The "monster," this veteran of Hollywood knows, is the producers' money, which always takes precedence over creative ego. This account-written while Dunne had much other work but also money worries-is often digressive and undigested, as if it were written to satisfy Dunne's own money monster. Even so, Dunne can be a deft and amusing reporter both of the tricks of the screenwriting trade and of the foibles of the "industry," as Hollywood is known. He explains why studio execs like screenplays with explanatory exposition while good actors don't, and he uncovers the dynamic of a script reading, in which stars need less dialogue than others to establish their characters. He tells of the youthful "creative executives" who give screenwriters critiques laden with peculiar jargon, and he reports on working with a series of charismatic executives-first producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer, then producer Scott Rudin and director Jon Avnet. In the end, the film made a nice profit and Dunne not only had a good time but wrung a book out of the experience.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Screenwriting, (some) warts and all, May 5 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (Hardcover)

I thought that as a professional screenwriter, Mr. Dunne's book might be something to which I could relate. To a certain degree I can--the business as he describes it is a dysfunctional system with no immediate signs of recovery.

However, budding scenario writers who do not know should be warned that Mr. Dunne and his wife, the great Joan Didion, do not rely on the big screen exclusively for their livelihood. Mr. Dunne claims early on that heart problems and the Writers Guild's health benefits precipitated their acceptance of the assignment to write the script that came to be called "Up Close and Personal."

But the facts are (as recounted in MONSTER) that the Dunnes are capable of high-tailing it to Hawaii or St. Trop when they need to think things over, rub elbows with both literati and gliterati on both coasts, and throw their collective weight around with nasty faxes to studio execs.

While this makes for an occasionally entertaining read, it is hardly representative of its subtitle, "Living Off the Big Screen," and suffers from an overall tame but nonetheless self-serving tone. Thus, the whole book suffers from a lack of teeth given the subject. Perhaps that's oddly fitting, though, as "toothless" was the same basic criticism that the Dunnes' screenplay for "Up Close and Personal"--once based on the life of Jessica Savitch--itself received.

bilfro@loop.com

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4.0 out of 5 stars Insightful book on more of the business side of the process., Jun 1 2003

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Bradley P. Valentine "bpvalentine" (Tampa, FLA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)

This review is from: Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (Paperback)

Few times have I been so compelled to finish a book as I finished this one. Of course, I have had a long time fascination with the inner workings of H-wood, which is to so many of us something of a mystery (including, I am sure, some of those who make a living there). This book offers an undressed view at two established and respected writers (John Dunne and his more well known wife Joan Didion) who over a span of eight years accept a screenwriting project and alternately work on it to its long delayed completion. Over the eight years, we get a sense of the "industry" as projects come and go and status' rise and fall and financial needs rather than passion or interest motivate what projects are to be taken and when. This by no means an account of your garden variety H-wood screenwriter. John Dunne and Joan Didion are both along in years and have work in the literary and screenwriting field for some time. Neither are starving young artists; however, they rely on the financing of the entertainment industry to maintain their comfortable lifestyle. What this book does is give us an opportunistic window to a project that in one way itself became a monster, and in another way became a perfect structure to provide an account of the typical dealings in H-wood.

It's up to the reader to decide if the author and his wife are "prima donnas." I did not get that sense. To keep from being taken advantage of, you must be tough, and maybe it rubs some people the wrong way. I do not understand how Dunne "name dropped" either. Many people he dealt with through the course of the book are names we recognize. Would it be preferred if he went the way of a gossip column by writing "a certain legendary so and so who..." and "a leggy blonde actress" type of lines?

One of the things that interested me about this story is the dispassionate though dogged effort with which the writer and his wife pursued Up Close & Personal. Usually books are written about great or even just notable movies. Maybe I should save this for another review, but Up Close & Personal is, to me, neither great nor even notable except to say that an insightful book about H-wood was written because of it. Another thing. I do not fault MONSTER for it, but I wish with it had been included one of the early drafts of the script when still centered on Jessica Savitch. That is a movie that sounds like it would be worthwhile.

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1.0 out of 5 stars Dunne is sterile, pompus and a Herculean name-dropper., Nov 16 2002

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S. G. (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monster: Living Off the Big Screen (Paperback)

The title "Monster" is unintentionally ironic, as Dunne, a priviledged WASP insider, suffers little, financially or at the hands of Hollywood. The only "Monster" in this story is his unquestioning ego, which dominates the narrative like a power-broker at a cocktail party.

As a working screenwriter I've read the gamut of books on Hollywood. Some of the best, like "High Concept," and "The Gross," dish the dirt with a cold hand and are both gripping and informative; then there are first-person accounts like Max Adams' "The Screenwriter's Survival Guide," and the William Goldman books, which are self-mocking and full of personality as well as insight (although Goldman is a bit doddering). Dunne, however, plays his hand to his chest, disparages no one, most noticably HIMSELF or his wife (his writing partner/wife Joan Didion), and you learn little to nothing about the industry. Worse, Dunne drops more names than an usher retelling his evening at the Academy Awards. Futher running it out, Dunne often irrelevantly digresses into asides that serve only to pile on the list of the people he knows and places he's been. There are no real anecdotes, lessons or jokes involved with these mastubatory indulgences. Books like these thrive on the likability of the story teller, and if I saw Dunne at one of his many listed celebrity cocktail parties, I'd quickly turn the other way or leave. Truly the WORST and most dull of all the books I've read on the industry (other than Syd Field and his like). An utter waste of time. I returned it.

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