Ploughing through it at the mo'
It's required reading on a narrative illustration brief I'm teaching this month..
Anyone else read it?
No, sounds like what Dredd would term 'Weirdo freak out stuff'.
Hope you enjoy it though!
Apparently everyone from Irving Kershner (director of The Empire Strikes Back) to JK Rowling has read it at some point or other..
Comes over as a right nut job (even taken the time spent in a concentration camp into consideration)
"Critics also claim that he often spanked his patients despite the fact that rejected spanking as "brutal". Treatments based on his autism theories failed to help children, and his reported rates of cure (around 85%) were found to be fraudulent."
Link: wiki
my mother read that recently
Ahhh... but does she spank you, Max?
Why is your mother interested in Freudian analysis of the fairy tale genre?
geez a synopsis bart ... its one of those books that comes up a lot.
is it in the psychology / folklore section ? or am i way off as usual ?
i was digging up lots of folklore for a recent project, leads me to want to track down some book by some feminist type who goes right into the jungian symbology of common tales, you know all red rose / white rose stuff.
i found some right wierd siberian / mongolian tales with nasty shamans & magical birch bark paintings, awesome.
Bou, wouldn't know where to seek it out in a Waterstones but I'm sure a quick trawl on Amazon UK would produce a couple of copies.
As for a sysnopsis check the link below, Mr. James-I-teach-screenwriters pretty much sums up the significance of the book ;)
Link: *Ahem* "..recovery and consolation.."
"Let those that cannot do, charge ?275.00 for a one-day screenwriting seminar. (Fee includes copy of latest book. Inspirational lecture DVD charged seperately.)"
Along the lines of what you're doing, and if you've not done so already, 'Art and Illusion' by Gombrich and 'Ways of Seeing' by John Berger are good for a read.
Arhh yes, the twin towers of Gombrich and Berger ;)
I'v e also got 'No Go the Bogeyman' by Marina Warner to read after Bruno..
Never expected to be this well read teaching a bit of practial HE on the side..
john d barrow, the artful universe. covers lots of science/ psychology/ art/ the senses/ perceptions & sociology stuff. heavy going.
my olde guru from student days wrote a nice fat book "Keltic art & Faerie Tales, by Kaledon Naddair " sort of unpicked some basic celtic myths & archetypes. some great stuff on archetypes etc & some spurrious cack ogham bollocks channelled by the wildmen, certainly worth grabbing from second hand bookshop nutter section.
++ ?275.00 for a one-day screenwriting seminar. ++
After a quick scout round the site I read that JM charges a $900 fee for a read through with some pointers as to where a script is failing to deliver..
WTF?
The thing about all these scriptwriting gurus is, if they've mastered the secrets of the three-act structure so completely, then how come I'm not seeing their names on Oscar statuettes or the credits for hugely successful blockbusters?
My thoughts exactly.
My thoughts exactly.
It just seems to me like another form of exploitation- like the casting couch but for aspiring screen writers.
Yeah. Alex Cox used to write a really good column for the BBC Films site, and said that these guys are basically scam artists, part of a luctrative side-industry (that, he thought, also includes the producers of "specialised screenwriting software") out to exploit wannabe-writers for every cent they've got.
McKee is god! And everyone knows you need 'special software' to be a proper screenwriter...
Link: And the Award doesnt go to
To be fair to him, there are a couple of points in the article where he more or less admits that he performs no useful function...
"but I know perfectly well that these are extremely talented people. With or without me, I think they would have achieved what they achieved."
"I teach what used to be common knowledge,"
"... I was no Ingmar Bergman, and I never would be. I just didn't have that genius."
- pj
Exception: William Goldman. A great writer (he's won real awards, and everything) and with a track record that commands a little more respect (Butch & Sundance, All The President's Men, A Bridge Too Far, Heat, Marathon Man, Misery) than episodes of Columbo and a Bibilical mini-series for German TV.
Doesn't do the $500/day seminar thing, and his two books to date - Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I just Tell? - are great reads, moreautobiography and casual insights revealed than "secrets of the three-act route to riches revealed!" and far more entertaining than McKee's turgid Story book.
>Adventures in the Screen Trade and Which Lie Did I just Tell?
I re-read that few years ago and it's a touch of class ('Nobody knows anything')
Some FREE software. Now you too can write a screen play and make a fortune.
CLTX Screen writing software
I'm a big fan of those two Goldman books (though WHICH LIE DID I TELL rer#trod some ground of the original). He also says my favourite thing about ENDINGS. And everytime I watch a film and think; "That ending was rubbish" (which happens increasingly these days), I wonder how he'd have written it.
There's a great sequence in one of them where he had to write a title sequence for a Paul Newman film - the running time was short and they needed a couple of extra minutes. The stuff he wrote is utterly masterful in telling you (visually) so much about Paul Newman's character that I keep nicking bits of it to put in my rejected scripts.