Naked Screenwriting

by Lew Hunter

Award-winning screenwriters reveal their Hollywood secrets in crafting brilliant stories and methodology through interviews with world-renowned UCLA screenwriting professor Lew Hunter. Naked Screenwriting includes interviews with Francis Ford Coppola, Billy Wilder, Oliver Stone, Bruce Joel Rubin, William Goldman, Julius Epstein, Alexander Payne, Jim Taylor, Alfred Uhry, Tom Schulman, Ted Tally, Ruth Prawer Jabvola, Eric Roth, Jean-Claude Carriere, Frank Pierson, David Ward, Horton Foote, Ron Bass, Alan Ball, Callie Khouri, Robert Benton, Irving Ravetch, and Harriet Frank Junior.

Never before has a book covered Oscar-winning writers so thoroughly, shedding insight and wisdom into the art of screenwriting.

Genres: Nonfiction, Writing, Film

530 pages, Paperback

First published March 15, 2021

Reviews

[Spook]

DNF at 70%
Interesting but outdated (most writers interviewed were unknown to me) and no longer relevant to the current industry.

[Holly Manno · Rating 4 out of 5]

Naked screenwriting is a compilation of the most celebrated and honored writers and Directors of our time and their stories about writing. This book is older, but some things don’t change. There were quite a few moments of inspiration. I particularly enjoyed reading about Eric Roth and Oliver Stone. It’s a bit like being behind-the-scenes.

[Christopher Owens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Subtitle: Twenty-two Oscar-Winning Screenwriters Bare Their Secrets to Writing

I received an advance reader copy of this book from the publisher through Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.

Lew Hunter is a professor of screenwriting at UCLA. Naked Screenwriting is a collection of 22 interview sessions conducted by Hunter, mostly in the presence of members of one of his graduate screenwriting courses.

It took about two months between when I first started reading this book, with a couple of extended breaks where I read other ARCs to keep from falling behind on my other reading. This book was so long, and so repetitive in nature that I just wasn’t able to read through it in one go.

The main takeaway that I got from reading this book is that there is no secret “correct” creative process for writing a screenplay – each screenwriter developed a method that worked for them. I think the most helpful thing I read in it, and I don’t remember which one of them said it, but one of them said that when he is questioned about the theme of any of his works he simply responds “No man is an island.” That works for me.

I gave Naked Screenwriting three stars on Goodreads. Besides being in serious need of being cut down to a more manageable size, some of the interviews took place in the 1990s and had little to do with the current state of the movie-making business.

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

**I received and voluntarily read an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

I've read tons of screenwriting books, but I'm always on the lookout for the chance to read some more. Lew Hunter has been known for his great advice for decades, some the chance to read this book was awesome.

I do wish there had been even more screenwriters chosen to be added to this book, maybe some of the most recent Oscar/Emmy/Golden Globe winners or even some of the Marvel writers as they have had some of the most impact on the industry in recent years.

Overall, this book does a great job of taking some of the most famous screenwriting advice and condensing it all down into one book.

[Zachary Curtis · Rating 4 out of 5]

love this book, though at first i didn't because i sought an aid to the screenwriting process. this book is not that, imo, but valuable as a companion to the sometimes (often) solitary life of writing. i found it helpful to hear other voices, quite accomplished, who've wrestled with and won against those forces that can dog a writer.

[BJ Kellogg · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best of the best screenwriters tell their stores of structure and plot. Lew Hunter is a master teacher but sometimes his interruptions of the narrative throws the interview off track.