Good Scripts, Bad Scripts

click here for more details, find new or used items	Tom Pope New from £6.55 Used from £5.96 Pages: 256 (Paperback) ISBN: 0609801198 Pub: Crown Publications Pub date: 1999-02-25 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 313364

Reader Reviews:

Populist Fare (0/0 people found this helpful)

If you're an aspiring screenwriter looking to inspire some form of logic to your budding script, pick up a copy of Thomas Pope's "Good Scripts, Bad Scripts". Mr. Pope's critiques and breaking down of popular films in various genres are so meticulous and well studied that you will never look at films such as Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction the same way again.

I'm curious, though. How would Mr. Pope have judged more complex fare like David Lynch's "Eraserhead," or formalist exercises such as Gus Van Sant's "Elephant," or surreal genres such as Luis Buñuel's "Un Chien Andalou," or films within a film such as Jim Jarmusch's "Coffee and Cigarettes," or structureless essays like practically anything by Jean-Luc Godard?

Looking through Pope's 25 selections, there is not one avant-garde representation. The films may have been avant-garde in the way they were conceived ("Singing' in the Rain" being a fine example) but the end products are, by and large, mainstream entertainment.

It's ironic that Thomas Pope's best point in his book was in the preface: "There are no rules. In fact, that may be the single most important idea to come from this entire book." I agree 100%.

That said, I would still recommend "Good Scripts, Bad Scripts" even to those who are stubbornly resistant to traditional narrative structure, because you can choose to adopt, challenge or disregard most of the formulas and conventions that are laid out in his meticulous book. Either way, you can't go wrong.

By the way, I disagree with Mr. Pope that "Singing' in the Rain" is the finest musical ever made. I believe that honour belongs to "West Side Story."

This book opened my eyes... (1/1 people found this helpful)

I highly recommend this book not only to writers but also to movie buffs. It has focused my thoughts with regard to film structure, and its superb appraisal of some of my favourite films has made me re-evaluate them with a more critical understanding of what they are (or should be) striving to achieve.

This is not a book to teach theory, there are many of those to choose from so look elsewhere if that is what you need. This book gives you new eyes, it has neatly consolidated my knowledge of film dynamics and will prove a valuable reference from this point.

This book is not what it is made out to be (0/0 people found this helpful)

I was dissapointed with the context of this book. I could have gotten the same information about screenwriting from reading the local newspaper movie reviews. That is basically what this book comes down to. Some of the information could be used in fine tuning your screenplay, but you could get the same results by having a friends read your work and giving advice. There are better books out there.

Fun to Read but provides great insight (0/0 people found this helpful)

This is a great book. So many screenwriting books either dive deep into complex theory OR give us a Paint by Numbers formula to writing the new Hollywood blockbuster. Pope looks at 25 differing scripts and shows BY EXAMPLE what makes some work, some fail, and why no script is 100% PERFECT.

A wonderful resource that teaches by example not just theory (0/0 people found this helpful)

A clever book that dissects the scripts to twenty-five popular or classic films. Unlike other screenwriting books that teach theory in a strictly generic fashion, Pope teaches by EXAMPLE. He systematically breaks down each script showing exactly why it works, or why it doesn't. A valuable aid that I only wish was in print when I was in film school.

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