Now Joel Engel brings together interviews with the best screenwriters working today, each of whom has won an Academy Award for his or her work, and each of whom shares a wealth of knowledge, insight, and experience about this little understood facet of moviemaking. In each essay, writers such as Alan Ball (American Beauty), Eric Roth (Forrest Gump), Marc Norman (Shakespeare in Love), Tom Schulman (Dead Poet's Society), Kurt Luedtke (Out of Africa), John Irving (The Cider House Rules), and many others explore and explain their craft and technique. Anyone interested in writing, making, or learning about movies will enjoy this behind-the-scenes compilation of wisdom and advice from Hollywood's natural-born storytellers.

Amazon.com Review
All film jobs, says Joel Engel, "depend on the script." It remains a mystery, then, that so many in the film biz consider a script to be "little more than typing." Strangely enough, everyone, it seems, wants to be a screenwriter. In Screenwriters on Screenwriting, Engel has shaped interviews with 11 Oscar-winning screenwriters into chapterlong monologues. These writers provide companionship for the aspiring screenwriter, but their tales should appeal equally to any film lover interested in the stories behind the stories. William Goldman (All the President's Men) laments the current state of cinematic storytelling; Ron Bass describes how My Best Friend's Wedding and Rain Man evolved; Stephen Gaghan (Traffic) talks about completely revamping his work process after giving up drugs and alcohol. And Marc Norman (Shakespeare in Love) claims that his best writing "has been on the scripts I wrote as suicide notes to the industry--sort of, 'F--- you, guys, I'm outta here. This is the last script you'll ever get from me.'" --Jane Steinberg