"Bernardi and Hoxter provide an astute cultural-industrial analysis of the creative labor of screenwriters, whose contributions have been increasingly devalued in the post-1980s era of deregulation, conglomeration, and globalization, as blockbuster media franchises and tentpole marketing have prompted a type of corporate group-think. Screenwriters have been historically undervalued in favor of directors, whose work has been lionized by industry trades and scholarly accounts alike ever since auteur theory first landed in the United States in the 1960s. This highly accessible but knowing production study of screenwriters provides a much-needed antidote to the plethora of 'how-to' books, workshops, and blogs currently flooding the marketplace."—Denise Mann, Professor, Department of Film, Televison, and Digital Media, University of California, Los Angeles
"Screenwriters work in a universe of rapidly evolving media platforms while buffeted by artistic, corporate, marketing, and production demands. Bernardi and Hoxter explore these murky waters in depth, along with the careers, hopes, and frustrations of seasoned screenwriters. An insightful must-read for writers across all emerging and converging media."—David Howard, author of The Tools of Screenwriting and How to Build a Great Screenplay
“At last, a book about screenwriting that breaks-out of the ‘how-to’ echo chamber of tired orthodoxies about story, plot, and career. This book does a rare thing: it provides a compelling bird’s-eye view of how the industry’s recent technological and economic changes have disrupted conventional writing practices, even as it closely analyzes scripts and drills deeply into the thoughts and words of working screenwriters. Each chapter details how one current mode—the tentpole picture, the TV writers room, independent and micro-budget filmmaking, and videogames—have impacted the kinds of stories written, the types of funding involved, the role of guilds, and the precarious nature of the writer’s labor since 2000. A must-read in screenwriting and media industry studies.”—John T. Caldwell, author of Production Culture: Industrial Reflexivity and Critical Practice in Film and Television
