Next Stop Hollywood: Short Stories Bound for the Screen

by Steve Cohen

Historically, short stories were a rich source of successful movies and significant films. Classics such as Rear Window, High Noon, Psycho, All About Eve, and Blade Runner began as short stories. Unfortunately, many of the major venues for discovering new talent—The Saturday Evening Post, Colliers, and Mademoiselle—are gone. Today, short stories are again becoming an important basis for major motion pictures and television, with films such as Brokeback Mountain, Good Will Hunting, and Minority Report.

One reason short stories are making a Hollywood comeback is Next Stop Hollywood, an organization dedicated to finding both new talent and terrific material. This volume, selected by more than sixty movie-buff readers and advised by an editorial board of Hollywood insiders, collects X stories that blah blah [read the introduction to find out the point of the anthology].  For more information, visit the website at www.nextstophollywood.org.

Genres: Short Stories

352 pages, Paperback

First published May 29, 2007

Reviews

[Justin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Its an anthology of short stories bound for the screen. I picked it up to read the two stories by my friend Perry Glasser and have enjoyed most of the stories in the collection.

Perry's stories comprise of plots that keep the pages turning, and a style that is subtle and empathetic. Perry paints details like a painter feathering the canvas with his brush, bringing life to the story and the reader into its place.

Both stories feature women in different stages of separation from harmful men, one a drug dealer and another a white supremacist. And both stories draw characters with aching empathy, and tangible realism.

[Russell Bittner · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, I've read only the novella-length "An Age of Marvels and Wonders" and "Mexico," both by Perry Glasser. These two stories alone would justify the purchase of the anthology.

Perry has a narrative style and mastery of dialogue as smooth as the best of 'em. His characters come right off the page and into the reader's mind within a matter of paragraphs, and words (as challenge rather than as facilitator to the sheer enjoyment of the story) disappear within seconds. Higher praise I couldn't pay to any writer worth his nom or his plume.

If Perry's stories are any indication of the general tenor of the book, I very much look forward to reading the rest of it.

[Mickey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick, fun read, like reading a book of 15 trailers, running from sci-fi to feel-good dramas, from horror to tearjerker. It's especially fun if you try to cast the would-be movies in your head as your reading. (Popular fic; 330 pages)

[tomlinton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first story
"An Age of Marvels and Wonders"
by Perry Glasser
was marvelous
if a bit overextended
Two for here
and thirteen to go