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Monster
Monster is John Gregory Dunne's mordant account of the eight years it took to get the 1996 Robert Redford/Michelle Pfeiffer film Up Close & Personal made. A bestselling novelist, Dunne has a cold eye, perfect pitch for the absurdities of Hollywood, and sharp elbows for the film industry's savage infighting. 192 pp. Author tour & national ads. 25,000 print.
203 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1997
23 people are currently reading
964 people want to read
About the author
John Gregory Dunne
20 books139 followersJohn Gregory Dunne was an American novelist, screenwriter and literary critic.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.
As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.
He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.
He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.
He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).
His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.
He was born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was a younger brother of author Dominick Dunne. He suffered from a severe stutter and took up writing to express himself. Eventually he learned to speak normally by observing others. He graduated from Princeton University in 1954 and worked as a journalist for Time magazine. He married novelist Joan Didion on 30 January 1964, and they became collaborators on a series of screenplays, including Panic in Needle Park (1971), A Star Is Born (1976) and True Confessions (1981), an adaptation of his own novel. He is the author of two non-fiction books about Hollywood, The Studio and Monster.
As a literary critic and essayist, he was a frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books. His essays were collected in two books, Quintana & Friends and Crooning.
He wrote several novels, among them True Confessions, based loosely on the Black Dahlia murder, and Dutch Shea, Jr.
He was the writer and narrator of the 1990 PBS documentary L.A. is It with John Gregory Dunne, in which he guided viewers through the cultural landscape of Los Angeles.
He died in Manhattan of a heart attack, in December 2003. His final novel, Nothing Lost, which was in galleys at the time of his death, was published in 2004.
He was father to Quintana Roo Dunne, who died in 2005 after a series of illnesses, and uncle to actors Griffin Dunne (who co-starred in An American Werewolf in London) and Dominique Dunne (who co-starred in Poltergeist).
His wife, Joan Didion, published The Year of Magical Thinking in October 2005 to great critical acclaim, a memoir of the year following his death, during which their daughter, Quintana Roo Dunne, was seriously ill. It won the National Book Award.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
September 12, 2014
This book makes screenwriters look like beggars on the street, but instead of asking for a quarter, they're begging for a quarter-million dollars. Although I think the intent of the book was to show how frustrating the screenwriting process can be when there are too many cooks in the kitchen, my takeaway was that life for a writer in Hollywood is nothing more than a never-ending scramble for cash so as to afford that second apartment in NYC and the beach house in Malibu.
I was really disappointed by how shallow this book was; Lots of name-dropping, way too many descriptions of meetings at fancy restaurants where no one ever seems to eat anything, and plenty of bitching about having to fly out to LA to stay in posh hotels. With that in mind, I guess it's only fitting that the last chapter of the book is not about how the author feels the final version of the film he spent 7 years working on turned out artistically, but rather a detailed account of how much the final product grossed at the box office.
I was really disappointed by how shallow this book was; Lots of name-dropping, way too many descriptions of meetings at fancy restaurants where no one ever seems to eat anything, and plenty of bitching about having to fly out to LA to stay in posh hotels. With that in mind, I guess it's only fitting that the last chapter of the book is not about how the author feels the final version of the film he spent 7 years working on turned out artistically, but rather a detailed account of how much the final product grossed at the box office.
August 28, 2013
As a Didion fan, I loved this deep-dive into the tales of woe she and Dunne endured as Hollywood screenwriters/script-doctors. This came out years before we dismissed such sagas as "first-world problems," but it's apt.
May 19, 2025
How is anyone supposed to write under these horrendous conditions? Writing by committee! Why do it except for the obscene money? With 35- 50 people having a say over what you put down on paper. Ugh. And the enmity, the ego trips etc.
The tale of this misadventure, however, is superbly told. Just try not to be gobsmacked.
The tale of this misadventure, however, is superbly told. Just try not to be gobsmacked.
March 13, 2021
This short book is about a screenplay. John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion, a married couple and both established authors, had collaborated on quite a few movie scripts, some of were highly successful. They were approached in 1988 to write a screenplay based on a biography of the newswoman Jessica Savitch. Dunne describes his book in the first paragraph: “This is a story about the making of that movie, about why it took eight years to get it made, about Hollywood, about the writer’s life, and finally about mortality and its discontents.”
That’s an apt description, though it’s a little short in the mortality department. It portrays, in detail, the craziness of Hollywood movie production. I found this book at a used bookstore sale and grabbed it because of my high esteem for Joan Didion. I wondered what her spouse’s work would be like.
It’s an interesting, breezy book. I was interested in the couple and in the screenwriting process. To me, their life resembled jet-setters – flying from NY to LA for a meeting, flying to Honolulu for Christmas break, attending a popular post-Oscar party. And yet, they live from job to job – in order to retain his health insurance with the screen writer’s guild, the author must have a certain number of screen writing jobs each year. They are forced to take some projects to maintain this number. I was interested in how they collaborated, but this was not fully described here. I found some of the interactions between them and the studio humorous. The studios repeatedly attempted to cut their fees, get free work from them, and complicate the process. But Dunne and Didion stood their ground.
A fun read.
That’s an apt description, though it’s a little short in the mortality department. It portrays, in detail, the craziness of Hollywood movie production. I found this book at a used bookstore sale and grabbed it because of my high esteem for Joan Didion. I wondered what her spouse’s work would be like.
It’s an interesting, breezy book. I was interested in the couple and in the screenwriting process. To me, their life resembled jet-setters – flying from NY to LA for a meeting, flying to Honolulu for Christmas break, attending a popular post-Oscar party. And yet, they live from job to job – in order to retain his health insurance with the screen writer’s guild, the author must have a certain number of screen writing jobs each year. They are forced to take some projects to maintain this number. I was interested in how they collaborated, but this was not fully described here. I found some of the interactions between them and the studio humorous. The studios repeatedly attempted to cut their fees, get free work from them, and complicate the process. But Dunne and Didion stood their ground.
A fun read.
February 19, 2019
The story is told over the eight years it took for the author and his wife, Joan Didion, to complete the screenplay for the film "Up Close and Personal" starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. I watched the film out of curiosity and it's cringe-worthy, a saccharine romance full of cliches. Apparently, the movie made over $100 million at the box office which is not surprising since mediocre films appeal to the lowest common denominator.
The purpose of the book is to expose Hollywood's treatment of screenwriters, but I couldn't get on board with the author. From the first page where he talked about Princeton and his mother's tea party, I almost put it down. I'm university educated, too, but come from humble beginnings so elitist writers who hob-knob with the rich and famous don't make me want to root for them.
I'm glad he and his wife have reached the point where they draw big bucks for their work; I'm sure they deserve it, but it doesn't make me feel sorry for him when he whines about late payment from the studio. The couple get paid plenty for work they don't even do.
Dunne exposes himself while he exposes Hollywood as lacking in integrity and compromising quality for money. All the studios care about is how to make money from the film. He explains why this is necessary - pictures are so expensive they have to earn $10 million in the first weekend just to be viable. But if he finds Hollywood so distasteful, why work in the industry?
Greed drives everything here and I include the author in that assessment.
The purpose of the book is to expose Hollywood's treatment of screenwriters, but I couldn't get on board with the author. From the first page where he talked about Princeton and his mother's tea party, I almost put it down. I'm university educated, too, but come from humble beginnings so elitist writers who hob-knob with the rich and famous don't make me want to root for them.
I'm glad he and his wife have reached the point where they draw big bucks for their work; I'm sure they deserve it, but it doesn't make me feel sorry for him when he whines about late payment from the studio. The couple get paid plenty for work they don't even do.
Dunne exposes himself while he exposes Hollywood as lacking in integrity and compromising quality for money. All the studios care about is how to make money from the film. He explains why this is necessary - pictures are so expensive they have to earn $10 million in the first weekend just to be viable. But if he finds Hollywood so distasteful, why work in the industry?
Greed drives everything here and I include the author in that assessment.
June 15, 2017
So wrapped up with the minutia of screenwriter's lives (hustling, endless drafts, rewrites for potential stars) that I can't imagine why anyone who isn't a screenwriter would want to read it. But then the content (really, so much about drafts) feels like the end of the day rants to a partner and sort of the last thing a screenwriter wants to read (least this one).
October 18, 2009
I'm always fascinated by anything that details the behind-the-scenes mechanics of a process, and particularly to do with writers and film. I'll read anything about working Hollywood, pretty much. Monster strips back to how a screenwriter negotiates and operates, but not so much what motivates him (Dunne, I mean specifically). I was also interested in this, like many people, probably, because of reading Joan Didion's wonderful Year of Magical Thinking, and wanting to know some more about their lives. Reading Monster was in that sense a bit like time travel; you can't help thinking about who will be missing in just a few years time. Unfortunately, there's not much passion driving this narrative other than what feels a bit like a sneery negative drive to get their own experience told. The movie that this book is telling the story of writing doesn't seem to be a good one; I have pretty much no desire to see it. Is this what Dunne wants us to know, that they tried to make it good, and what came out wasn't really their work, so it's not their fault? I'm not really convinced of that; the whole thing seems kind of cold, why should there be anything magical in the results. No visions were adhered to because no-one had a vision, once they chucked out Savitch. It's an ugly picture of the machine in action; Dunne comes across as narky and prickly as well. Some of the reviews of the film said it was 'smug'; that kind of summed up how I felt about the POV in monster. I wanted to like him, I really did.
August 21, 2007
I came to Dunne through death, his death as described by his wife, Joan Didion, one of the greatest writers of our time. The Year of Magical Thinking captivated, moved, destroyed me and I wanted to know the man that held her heart. And here, in what is clearly a lesser work of an accomplished though work-a-day author, I get to see the other side of the partnership. There is a familiarity and warmth. I like this man though he is different than myself is fundamental ways.
The book, in and of itself, is an enjoyable Hollywood memoir. It is not exemplary but it is pleasant. I have read many of these tales, being a once-and-future movie buff. There are few original, magical insights if you have read You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again and Adventures in the Screen Trade. But it's a good read if you care about such things.
The book, in and of itself, is an enjoyable Hollywood memoir. It is not exemplary but it is pleasant. I have read many of these tales, being a once-and-future movie buff. There are few original, magical insights if you have read You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again and Adventures in the Screen Trade. But it's a good read if you care about such things.
May 20, 2007
A tepid account of the writers inability to write action flicks, and a fairly interesting account of what it takes to write a rom-com that's trading off real people.
February 20, 2021
i love films and even i can barely get myself interested in this...
February 11, 2023
A fascinating look at screenwriting, how a film is made and the realities of dealing with larger than life personalities was a writer.
July 20, 2023
The life of a writer, what fun! Also Jon Avnet is a hack director. Case closed.
April 22, 2020
This is the story of Dunne and his wife Joan Didion writing the screenplay for Up Close and Personal, the 1996 movie that (eventually) starred Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. Since it took 8 years, like 40 script rewrites and even more scene revisions, even at a padded 200 pages (and more like 175 due to each chapter averaging two pages, if that), it is packed with different stories and events that deeply illuminate, and not so positively, what it can take to just get a simple movie done. For example, the movie was initially based on the book Golden Girl, the story of anchorwoman Jessica Savitch, a drug addicted train wreck of a news anchor who died young in a car wreck. But after only the first revision, she lives and her lover/mentor dies. Then they both live. Then he dies. Then everything else is changed, and the final product, instead of being the indicting and cautionary behind the scenes tale of (aspects of) the news industry, it becomes a hybrid of Redford’s “The Way We Were” and the Streisand version of A Star is Born (whose screenplay was by Dunne and Didion, which I did not know). Like so many memoirs there’s a lot of events that (for good reason) matter a lot more personally to the writer than they might to the average reader but there’s still tons of fascinating insider “this is how the sausage gets made” stuff for any movie fan and/or critic of Hollywood, including stories from the other projects they were working on, separate and together, during all that time. Names are named, punches are not really pulled and of course there’s some positive stuff as well. As a huge fan of Didion especially, my biggest personal disappointment was in reading how little at times both cared about the quality of their work on screenplays in general, and seeing how many crappy projects they accepted and did (admittedly) only semi-decent work on, including the final draft of UC&P, which sucked as a movie. Also, the Dunne’s writing is not quite as electric as I’d hoped, and nowhere near the level of his wife’s, but I read it for the stories, and it did not let me down at all there. Highly recommended for those fascinated with Inside Hollywood stuff and fans (or critics) of the movie and/or the author(s). 85/100
March 19, 2022
If you want to experience exhaustion, fatigue, frustration, nausea, anger and violent fantasies read this book.
It chronicles the torturous experience of two highly accomplished married writers, John Gregory Dunne and his wife Joan Didion as they endure belittling, degrading, condescending egos as they work on the screenplay “Up Close and Personal” from the highest echelons of 1990s Hollywood.
Crammed with legal recounting of every meeting, exhaustive snippets of conversations, memos, letters, phone calls, from every agent, executive and actor who crossed paths with Dunne and Didion, in Beverly Hills, Hawaii, Paris, Park Avenue, Spago, The Grill, poolside in Belair, it never ends.
They are always on a plane, always on the phone, always negotiating, notating, reviewing, revising, editing. Years of work on one mediocre screenplay whose survival depends upon the power politics of studio executives high on coke, or low on booze.
And Dunne has heart surgery, collapses while speed walking, drinks to drunkenness, works 25 hours a day , schmoozing, socializing, writing, promoting his own novel, and negotiating with talent agents and Disney to eek out more high pay rewriting dialogue for what turned out to be the biggest bomb of the 1990s.
He is the MAN who knows how Hollywood works. He has a MAN's view of things and even thinks it's whimsical when one of their middle-aged male friends picks up a teen girl for a night of fun. What great times!
And the name dropping! Streisand, Spielberg, Redford, Rudin, OJ Simpson! And that’s just one sentence on one paragraph on one page of two hundred and two! He cannot take a piss in a restroom without bumping into the CEO of MGM.
Everyone they know is a marquee name, all their children are marquee names, nobody is less than very well known and very well connected.
Nobody it seems knew more about films and writing and screenwriting and all the line items in a WGA contract than Mr. John Gregory Dunne. Nobody.
It chronicles the torturous experience of two highly accomplished married writers, John Gregory Dunne and his wife Joan Didion as they endure belittling, degrading, condescending egos as they work on the screenplay “Up Close and Personal” from the highest echelons of 1990s Hollywood.
Crammed with legal recounting of every meeting, exhaustive snippets of conversations, memos, letters, phone calls, from every agent, executive and actor who crossed paths with Dunne and Didion, in Beverly Hills, Hawaii, Paris, Park Avenue, Spago, The Grill, poolside in Belair, it never ends.
They are always on a plane, always on the phone, always negotiating, notating, reviewing, revising, editing. Years of work on one mediocre screenplay whose survival depends upon the power politics of studio executives high on coke, or low on booze.
And Dunne has heart surgery, collapses while speed walking, drinks to drunkenness, works 25 hours a day , schmoozing, socializing, writing, promoting his own novel, and negotiating with talent agents and Disney to eek out more high pay rewriting dialogue for what turned out to be the biggest bomb of the 1990s.
He is the MAN who knows how Hollywood works. He has a MAN's view of things and even thinks it's whimsical when one of their middle-aged male friends picks up a teen girl for a night of fun. What great times!
And the name dropping! Streisand, Spielberg, Redford, Rudin, OJ Simpson! And that’s just one sentence on one paragraph on one page of two hundred and two! He cannot take a piss in a restroom without bumping into the CEO of MGM.
Everyone they know is a marquee name, all their children are marquee names, nobody is less than very well known and very well connected.
Nobody it seems knew more about films and writing and screenwriting and all the line items in a WGA contract than Mr. John Gregory Dunne. Nobody.
April 23, 2019
John Gregory Dunne was a journalist, a writer of non-fiction books, a novelist, and a screenwriter. As a screenwriter, he was part of a team, he and his wife Joan Didion, also a journalist and novelist. Together, they wrote some notable films, most notable perhaps was Barbra Streisand’s version of A Star Is Born. In 1988, they were approached by their friend John Foreman about doing a screenplay about the real-life TV broadcaster Jessica Savitch. This book, Monster: Living Off the Big Screen, is an account of the duo’s trials and tribulations writing that screenplay. Over eight years, they worked with several producers and Disney pictures to get a script composed that would satisfy everyone involved, a task that became even tougher when superstars Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer got onboard. Dunne put together an exhaustive analysis of this experience. During those eight years, they did countless versions of the script, quit the project over and over, got rehired, and eventually, a movie emerged called Up Close and Personal, a film that had nothing to do with Jessica Savitch, but rather was a generic romantic comedy about TV broadcasters. Monster is a fascinating look at the movie business. Dunne tells us how the process of screenwriting works, how producers work, what happens when studio lawyers get involved, and the expectations of studios coupled with the anxieties and hopes and wishes and dreams and machinations of producers. I found the book to be totally readable and enjoyable. At just a few pages over two hundred, it goes quickly, and yet when all is said and done, a satisfying story has been told, and entertaining story has been told, and an enlightening story about Hollywood has been told.
January 5, 2026
As someone who has experienced "Hollywood development hell" firsthand I loved this book. Monster describes how Dunne and his wife Joan Didion spent more than six years shepherding a screenplay through dozens of drafts, multiple executives, battles between studios and labor unions, countless cross-country flights, and nearly-endless contract re-negotiations, all to make a film that had very little to do with their original idea. Dunne and Didion's original pitch focused on the tumultuous life of a pioneering news broadcaster named Jessica Savitch; the resulting film, called Up Close and Personal, is a soft-focus romance between characters played by Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford. (It has nothing to do with Savitch whatsoever.) And Dunne and Didion were lucky! Their film actually got made; they got paid well. My own work in Hollywood was decades later, and hasn't made it to screen, but the process has been much the same: huge personalities, big promises, bald-faced lies, cost-cutting, re-negotiations, inexplicable logic, artlessness, and, at the center, the desperate groping around in the dark for profit. Ultimately, no one knows what the public is going to like, least of all the executives in charge. And this lack of knowledge fuels the insanity of this industry, where it might take a dozen meetings to get a single line of dialogue changed, where writers are fired only to be re-hired months later, where contracts are written with the hope that the writers will breach them, and therefore forfeit pay. The idea of the next Ben Affleck and Matt Damon writing a script between day job shifts that becomes an Oscar-winner is pure fantasy. Scripts aren't art; they're commerce by committee, constructed in the most inefficient way imaginable.
August 19, 2023
It’s a bonafide miracle that any movie exists. If you want proof, just make some time to read John Gregory Dunne’s remarkable Monster, a book documenting Up Close & Personal’s 8 year journey from the blank page to the big screen.
What started as a Jessica Savitch biopic, as to be written by Dunne and his wife Joan Didion for the Walt Disney Corporation, turned into a much more tamed version of Savitch’s life, complete with A Star is Born dynamic intended to appease a wider audience and capitalize on Dunne and Didion’s tried-and-true set of skills (they’d written the 1976 A Star is Born version starring Barbra Streisand). The Savitch angle was eventually eliminated all together and the couple ended up writing 26 drafts (a lot of them for free), over 300 script revisions, and quitting multiple times over the years, a product of constant clashes with various producers and, especially, Disney’s business affairs division, which comes across in the book as, well, exactly what you’d imagine.
Through diligent reporting and sardonic wit, Dunne guides readers through an eye-opening, step-by-step account of what exactly is to be a writer with some clout in Hollywood. Spoiler: writers are undervalued, underpaid, and most often viewed as a “necessary evil.”
Reading this book in 2023, as the WGA strike is happening, with the threat of AI looming, resonates on a whole different level.
What started as a Jessica Savitch biopic, as to be written by Dunne and his wife Joan Didion for the Walt Disney Corporation, turned into a much more tamed version of Savitch’s life, complete with A Star is Born dynamic intended to appease a wider audience and capitalize on Dunne and Didion’s tried-and-true set of skills (they’d written the 1976 A Star is Born version starring Barbra Streisand). The Savitch angle was eventually eliminated all together and the couple ended up writing 26 drafts (a lot of them for free), over 300 script revisions, and quitting multiple times over the years, a product of constant clashes with various producers and, especially, Disney’s business affairs division, which comes across in the book as, well, exactly what you’d imagine.
Through diligent reporting and sardonic wit, Dunne guides readers through an eye-opening, step-by-step account of what exactly is to be a writer with some clout in Hollywood. Spoiler: writers are undervalued, underpaid, and most often viewed as a “necessary evil.”
Reading this book in 2023, as the WGA strike is happening, with the threat of AI looming, resonates on a whole different level.
June 10, 2024
I picked this up because it sounded pretty funny. It is a lot like the television show Episodes about a husband/wife writer team from Britain who come to Hollywood to adapt their hit British comedy series set in a public school (like History Boys). The Hollywood people nitpick at the script so much that it ends up being Saved by the Bell with Joey from Friends as the princicpal. I always say, do not hate Hollywood for making crap. Hate the public for eating it up with a rusty spoon.
Of course, the writers John Dunne and Joan Didion both had a lot going on in their lives (like fielding other offers, making documentaries, and covering the O.J. trial) and certainly did not plan to get sucked into doing seven years of rewrites on a film they had lost interest in. However, like quicksand, they could not get out of it so easily, and they kept getting sucked back in. It was supposed to be about Jessica Savitch, the network news anchor woman who was a bit of a wild child and ended up dead. By the end, it was a star vehicle for Michelle Pfieffer and Robert Redford (who to his credit, insisted they put back some of the more cynical elements of working in local news).
Dunne makes it clear, they only worked for Hollywood for the money ["screenwriters are the bottom of the food chain, which is why they are the ones who always go on strike" he explains], but despite the big egos and -- sometimes -- despicable behavior, he inisists, "We had fun."
Of course, the writers John Dunne and Joan Didion both had a lot going on in their lives (like fielding other offers, making documentaries, and covering the O.J. trial) and certainly did not plan to get sucked into doing seven years of rewrites on a film they had lost interest in. However, like quicksand, they could not get out of it so easily, and they kept getting sucked back in. It was supposed to be about Jessica Savitch, the network news anchor woman who was a bit of a wild child and ended up dead. By the end, it was a star vehicle for Michelle Pfieffer and Robert Redford (who to his credit, insisted they put back some of the more cynical elements of working in local news).
Dunne makes it clear, they only worked for Hollywood for the money ["screenwriters are the bottom of the food chain, which is why they are the ones who always go on strike" he explains], but despite the big egos and -- sometimes -- despicable behavior, he inisists, "We had fun."
June 27, 2025
It's not a surprise that Hollywood, in the 1990s, was a cynical, business driven place. And that writers got a strangely adjustable stick. John Gregory Dunne makes no secret of the fact that he and his illustrious wife Joan Didion, were in the screenwriting game for the money and health coverage. That admission kinda masks the fact that their film work was not stellar. But then again, Monster, which tracks their involvement with the film Up Close and Personal, reveals the absurdity of the bottom lines, the rewrites, revisions, and studio shake ups that have a way of highlighting the opposite of artistic integrity or at least an original vision. Up Close took nearly a decade from writing to release-- and obviously Didion and Dunne did other things concurrently. They meet with good people and ass holes, engage in legal battles, hot head directors, deaths, and humorous absurdities. In the end, Dunne writes that the film made a modest profit after all that rigamarole. One imagines this book, which has a breezy tone suggesting it was written fairly quickly, did the same.
October 24, 2022
While Up Close & Personal is not a favorite movie of mine, this is a very detailed, fascinating and often juicy account of the life of a screenplay all the way down the line. I only stumbled upon this book and I wish we had others like it. Depending on your outlook and what chapter you’re on, it’s either inspiring or deeply dispiriting. Since 1998, one aspect has aged poorly and really undercut my enjoyment and sympathy for Dunne and his wife. They work with Scott Rudin and actually praise him for being a bully and casually breeze past his berating his assistant. The monster of his title refers to an asshole exec but this is exactly the attitude that let monsters like Rudin flourish for so long. This is obscene since Dunne is so proud of his social justice non-fiction work. I still recommend this book but if Dunne were alive to see the full measure of monsters like Rudin, he wouldn’t be so amorous.
February 5, 2019
Not everyone wants to know how the sausage is made. But living in Los Angeles, the stories are all around us. Every serving person has a dream to be on the big screen, every grocery bagger has a screeenplay.
Having seen the process of movie making at arms length, I wanted the screenwriters' perspective and in this book, I got it. Such an amazing array of people touched this particular script that it speaks to the author's patience and commitment that he (and his wife, Joan Didion) did not walk away at several junctures where it seemed a good option.
Big studio films are the product of committees and although the subject film in this case did well at the box office, its original raison d'être was abraded away over years of 'development.'
This book is emphatically not for everyone, by any means. But it may help set expectations for screenwriting hopefuls.
Having seen the process of movie making at arms length, I wanted the screenwriters' perspective and in this book, I got it. Such an amazing array of people touched this particular script that it speaks to the author's patience and commitment that he (and his wife, Joan Didion) did not walk away at several junctures where it seemed a good option.
Big studio films are the product of committees and although the subject film in this case did well at the box office, its original raison d'être was abraded away over years of 'development.'
This book is emphatically not for everyone, by any means. But it may help set expectations for screenwriting hopefuls.
June 14, 2024
I can't tell you how much I appreciate a writer who knows how to appropriately use 'I' and 'me' in their work. Anyway, I would say that my rating here is probably closer to a 3.5. Clearly, John Gregory Dunne is an excellent writer. This book will likely not appeal to every reader. I am a native to the Los Angeles area and am very familiar with the area and the industry and therefore this appealed to me. The story of the twists, turns, conflicts, and relationships that developed over almost a decade to get this story into theaters is a tale in persistence. The process of taking a concept through the lifecycle of script development to ultimately getting it on the big screen is fascinating from this perspective. I also loved the incredible connections and history of Hollywood that is all tied back to this power couple.
July 10, 2022
This is a very interesting look at how screenwriters are treated in Hollywood, at least in the mid-nineties anyway (though I suspect things haven't changed much). It's also a window into the writing partnership between John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion. But it dragged in many places, as an eight-year saga about a film being made will do. This was also the period when Dunne and his brother Dominick Dunne weren't speaking, and that was silently evident when he writes about covering the OJ Simpson trial -- the same trial Dominick so famously covered himself. I would have loved to know what was on his mind about that at the time, but he never mentions it.
October 25, 2022
Recently reread this book that I received as a gift in 1997. Interesting peek into how commercial films actually come to fruition. Still shocks how many personalities and egos have to be navigated in order to get something made in Hollywood. And I enjoyed the entertaining glimpse of the writing life at a time when books and movies seemed to matter more than they seem to now. It is short, and sometimes feels like it was "tossed off" between projects. Made more poignant knowing that we would soon lose Donne and have now lost Didion. End of an era.
January 6, 2023
Since I was reading one of his wife’s books, why not check this one out. My mom gave it to me a few years ago. The entire book takes the reader through the process of writing a movie script. Husband and wife worked on this one together for 7 years and it was finally made and a successful - Up Close and Personal with Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert Redford. The book gives you a keen appreciation for how many pieces have to fall into place for an initial screenplay to make it to a final picture. Even more rare for it to be a hit.
May 12, 2024
I genuinely do not understand why this isn't the first book handed to everyone who claims to want to be a screenwriter. It should be.
After "how to write a screenplay" guidebooks turned screenwriting into a solo and technical pursuit that involves words on a page in certain order, this book busts up any illusions that this is the central talent of screenwriting. Instead, this book illuminates the subtle reality that successful screenwriting involves 1) relationships and 2) meetings and verbal discussions.
And that it's a game of insiders.
After "how to write a screenplay" guidebooks turned screenwriting into a solo and technical pursuit that involves words on a page in certain order, this book busts up any illusions that this is the central talent of screenwriting. Instead, this book illuminates the subtle reality that successful screenwriting involves 1) relationships and 2) meetings and verbal discussions.
And that it's a game of insiders.
March 9, 2018
A very entertaining account of what it takes, from the screenwriter's point of view, to get a script translated to the screen. A ton of patience, the ability to deal with truly sociopathic personalities, and, of course, writing talent. Sometimes the name dropping got to be too much, but it was still a fun read.
October 25, 2019
If you like true tales of Hollywood, or the writers' experience, it's hard to go past this fab book, written by one half of the talented Dunnes, who were roped into what ended up being a gruelling and ridiculously long process of writing the screenplay for the film Up Close & Personal. It's fascinating and razor sharp and wonderful.
December 29, 2020
A detailed and fascinating look at the the six years that Dunne and Joan Didion spent writing the script for the movie “Up Close & Personal.” There was a bit too much name-dropping and too much information about specifics of the script, but overall I enjoyed it quite a bit. Studio executives seem to really hate screenwriters.
March 6, 2022
Kind of wild this got written, pretty boring! The first half is a more or less interesting story of how a movie gets made, and Dunne writes in a dishy enough way to keep the reader interested. But things really go off the rails when he starts getting into endless rewrites, bringing the reader along for blow by blow discussions of each draft.
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