While discussing our favorite scriptwriting literature on Facebook with some friends, I remembered that I wrote a long review about David Mamet’s book “On Directing Film” back in February 2013 for the newsletter of the Association Of Film- And TV Script Consultants (VeDra). This is the article:
The moments that shifted my perspectives on screenplays as a script consultant often happened when I was looking beyond my own nose – in the editing room, while repeating lines with an actor or while sitting next to the director on set.
Thus it is a book that has the word “Directing” as part of its title, that is one of my favorite books on scriptwriting since years: ON DIRECTING FILM is based on a series of lectures given by writer and director David Mamet in 1987 at Columbia University’s film school. The book is only 128 pages long, and it is polemic, radical and unorthodox, which makes reading it a very un-analytical pleasure.
