First published 2018
Authors joke about hurling their manuscripts over the California border and speeding away. There's good reason for this. Hollywood executives rarely grasp what writers actually created. They sit in development meetings listening to younger, less experienced people suggest changes that bear little resemblance to story improvement. Stephen Jay Schwartz knows this world from both angles. He worked as Director of Development for filmmaker Wolfgang Petersen, then switched sides to pitch his own novels and screenplays. This collection gathers real accounts from writers who entered "the room" to discuss film and TV adaptations. Some managed to bridge both worlds successfully. Others walked in blind after selling early novels and got steamrolled. The stories reveal why "the book was better than the movie" rings true so often. Development executives praise brilliant work while simultaneously demanding endless rewrites that miss the point entirely. These firsthand experiences expose the gap between literature and screen entertainment. They confirm every wild Hollywood tale you've heard.
Genres: adaptations, literary-criticism, american-fiction, business, writing, non-fiction, biography-memoir, film
Vibes: intimate, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: industry-critique, insider-perspective
Setting: California
Period: 20th-century, 21st-century
231 pages · Kindle Edition · Rare Bird Books