Reddit reviews Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!

I love me some Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant. They started off alongside Reno castmates Kerri Kenney and Joe Lo Truglio and other great comedians like Michael Ian Black, Michael Showalter, David Wain, and Ken Marino in The State. Here's a fun skit from that show.

Then Reno 911! started and took their careers to another level, but those two didn't stop there. They went on to write the screenplays for Night At The Museum, The Pacifier, Herbie Fully Loaded, and Balls of Fury. The movies they wrote ended up grossing a total of over $1 BILLION in the box office, and they ended up writing a book about writing those movies called "Writing Movies for Fun and Profit"

Needless to say they're powerhouses of comedy and some of my idols.

If you're just concerned about the business details, rather than story structure and artistic content:

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Movies-Fun-Profit-Billion-ebook/dp/B004G8QTWA

Lennon and Garant’s Writing Movies for fun and Profit has tons of this info, it’s really interesting. I got it for 50 cents on Amazon used last week.

Note: there are a handful of lines in the book that make it clear it was written pre-metoo. Nothing terrible, but there were a few moments I thought “geez guys you can do better” when talking about attractive women. I suppose the “geez guys” comment is also applicable to some of their movies, but that part I knew before reading the book.

• Writing the Romantic Comedy
  by Billy Mernit
  
  
• Not on Kindle, which is my main gripe. Very useful structure.
  
• Supposedly the ebook is a coming. I'm ready.
  
  
• Writing the Comedy Blockbuster: The Inappropriate Goal
  by Keith Giglio
  
  
• Save the Cat but focused specifically on writing comedies. Really focuses on making sure you derive maximum conflict from your protagonist meeting your premise.
  
  
• Elephant Bucks: An Insider's Guide to Writing for TV Sitcoms
  by Sheldon Bull
  
  
• A decades long professional writer and showrunner tells you how to write a sitcom. You're dumb if you wanna write sitcoms and haven't cracked this open yet.
  
  
• How to Write Funny: Your Serious, Step-By-Step Blueprint For Creating Incredibly, Irresistibly, Successfully Hilarious Writing
  by Scott Dikkers
  
  
• Again, a professional explains how he works. Dikkers was head writer on The Onion for years and years.
  
  
  
• Writing the Pilot
  by William Rabkin
  
• Again, a veteran showrunner explains what he knows.
  
  
• Screenwriting is Rewriting: The Art and Craft of Professional Revision 1st Edition
  by Jack Epps Jr
  
• Fucking gold. I'd read it even before you start a first draft.
  
  
• William Martell Blue Books
  
• Three Hundred Pages on Act Two and how to craft it. Three Hundred and Ten pages on the first ten pages of your screenplay! Three hundred and ninety! Pages! On! Action lines!
  
• Essential if you want to really dig deep on a specific skill of screenwriting.
  
  
  
• Writing for emotional impact : advanced dramatic techniques to attract, engage, and fascinate the reader from beginning to end by Karl Iglesias
  
• A very useful lens to think about screenwriting through. I'd consider this the intro to the kind of specificity that the Blue Books will break down into.
  
  
• Writing Movies for Fun and Profit by Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon
  
• Four quadrant movies are probably the hardest movies to do well. And these guys did them, very well. Plus the book will make you laugh as you read it.
  
  
• Writing the Other by by Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward
  
  • Which is a practical guide to writing about experiences that are not your own, with a focus on race, gender, and sexual orientation.
    
• It'll definitely inform my take the next time reddit implodes on who can write what character.
  
  
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  The only non Screenwriter on the list are Scott Dikkers, Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.
  
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  I'm Currently going through:
  
  
• Wit's End: What Wit Is, How It Works, and Why We Need It by James Geary
  
  • I am always trying to be smarter and funnier. And funny smart people get hired.
    
    
    
• Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence by Lisa Cron
  
• The science behind why we enjoy narrative and how that can guide writers to write well.
  
  And want to read:
  
  
• The Hero Succeeds: The Character-Driven Guide to Writing Your TV Pilot by Kam Miller
  
• Working Writer. 500 pages on characters in a pilot. Real world examples. Of course I want to read this.
  
• I think I heard about it from Paperteam, or a blog post on the WGA Foundation page.

Read Writing Movies for Fun and Profit by Tom Lennon and Ben Garant