Film, Television and Comedy

How young directors and drugs remade Hollywood in the 1970s, from Easy Rider on.

Walt Disney's life from Missouri to Mickey Mouse, the 1941 strike and Disneyland.

Goldman wrote Butch Cassidy, All the President's Men, and The Princess Bride, and this book is his frank account of what it is actually like to write for Hollywood. His central claim — that nobody knows anything — is an important corrective to every book on this list that treats filmmaking as a solved problem.

The most commercial book on this list, and the most widely used. Snyder's beat sheet is a blunt instrument, but understanding it is necessary — both to apply it and to understand what mainstream studio films are doing structurally, whether you intend to follow the template or subvert it.

Oral history of CAA and the agency model.

How storyboards become shots, and how shots are built into film sequences.

Film editing explained: why cuts work when they follow the rhythm of thought.

How a film comes together, from the first script reading to the final mix.

Directing as finding the simplest images that carry the story.

The production diary of El Mariachi, a feature film made for $7,000.

A filmmaker's theory of the image as a vessel of time rather than information.

How screen stories are built, from scene construction to subtext.

Camera angles, continuity, cutting, close-ups and composition: the basics of a shot.

A Hollywood producer's life behind The Godfather, Chinatown and Rosemary's Baby.

A comedian's eighteen years building a stand-up act, and why he quit it.

Personal essays on sex, menial jobs and missteps, offered so others learn from them.