RECOMMENDED READING

Tony’s Recommended Reading List​

The following is a list of excellent books for writers, screenwriters, directors, producers, actors and artists of any age or experience.  They are listed in no specific order, category or preference, with the exception of the first one, and cover a variety of topics pertaining to the creative arts and the business of making movies.  It’s perhaps a lifetime worth of reading.  Enjoy!

THE BEST BOOK ON WRITING & DRAMATIC LITERATURE EVER WRITTEN

THE ART OF DRAMATIC WRITING
by Lajos Egri
This timeless classic should be read and studied and memorized by every writer, director, actor and producer. Astonishingly clear and precise. Focuses on the fundamental principles contained in all dramatic literature of lasting value and importance. No other book on writing can even be compared to it, and it’s sited by nearly every major dramatist of the 20th Century as “the book” on writing. 
​Mr. Egri also wrote another excellent book on writing, The Art of Creative Writing.

Here’s the rest of the list

• Kazan On Directing, by Elia Kazan.
• Kazan: The Master Director Discusses His Films, by Jeff Young
• Making Movies, by Sydney Lumet
• A Life, by Elia Kazan. Elia Kazan’s autobiography.
• Elia Kazan Interviews, edited by William Baer. Conversations With Filmmakers Series.
• Kazan on Kazan, interview with Michael Ciment
• An American Odyssey Elia Kazan and American Culture by Thomas H. Pauly
• An American Odyssey by Elia Kazan, edited by Michael Ciment
• Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman
• Which Lie Did I Tell: More Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman
• William Goldman: Four Screenplays, by William Goldman
• The Big Picture: Who Killed Hollywood? And Other Essays, by William Goldman
• Tennessee Williams and Elia Kazan: A Collaboration in the Theatre by Brenda Murphy
• Notebooks by Tennessee Williams, edited by Margaret Bradham Thorton
• John Ford: Interviews, edited by Gerald Peary, Conversations with Filmmakers Series
• Conversations With Wilder, by Cameron Crowe & Karen Lerner
• Billy Wilder: Interviews, edited by Robert Horton, Conversations with Filmmakers Series
• Hitchcock, by Francois Truffaut, with collaborator Helen G. Scott.
• Stella Adler on Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekov, edited by Barry Parris
• Stella Adler on America’s Master Playwrights: Eugene O’Neill, Clifford Odets, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Edward Albee, et al., by Stella Adler
• The Collected Works of Harold Clurman, Edited by Marjorie Logia and Glenn Young
• On Directing, by Harold Clurman
• Sanford Meisner on Acting by Sanford Meisner with Dennis Longwell (This is the only book on Sanford Meisner to get, forget the rest of them.)
• The Art of Acting by Stella Adler
• Mad As Hell: The Life and Work of Paddy Chayefsky by Shaun Considine
• The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Screenplays Volume 2 by Paddy Chayefsky
• The Collected Works of Paddy Chayefsky: The Television Plays by Paddy Chayefsky
• Rewrites, by Neil Simon. An autobiography.
• The Play Goes On: A Memior, by Neil Simon
• Timebends: A Life, by Arthur Miller. An autobiography.
• Conversations With Arthur Miller, Edited by Matthew C. Roudane
• Arthur Miller A Collection of Critical Essays, Edited by Robert W. Corrigan
• The Theater Essays of Arthur Miller, Edited by Robert A. Martin
• Zen in the Art of Writing: Releasing the Creative Genius Within You, by Ray Bradbury
• Film Directing Fundamentals: From Script to Screen, by Nicolas Preferes
• Film Directing Fundamentals, Third Edition: See Your Film Before Shooting by Nicholas Preferes
• Where I Live: Selected Essays, by Tennessee Williams, edited by Bob Woods & Christine R. Day
• Conversations With Tennessee Williams, Edited by Albert J. Devlin
• The Kindness of Strangers, A Biography of Tennesse Williams, by Donald Spotto
• A Life of William Inge: The Strains of Triumph, by Ralph F. Voss
• Screenwriters of Screen-Writing: The Best in the Business Discuss Their Craft by Joel Engel
• Oscar-Winning Screenwriters on On Screenwriting: The Award-Winning Best in the Business Discuss Their Craft by Joel Engel
• Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting, by Syd Field
• Conversations with Screenwriters by Susan Bullington Katz
• The Writer Got Screwed, by Brooke Wharton
• Breakfast with Sharks: A Screenwriter’s Guide to Getting the Meeting, Nailing the Pitch, Signing the Deal, and Navigating the Murky Waters of Hollywood, by Michael Lent
• Story, by Robert McKee
• Hollywood Screenwriting Director Fall 2012: A Specialized Resource for Discovering Where & How to Sell Your Screenplay by Jesse Douma
• The Mystic of the Theatre: Eleonora Duse, by Eva Le Gallienne
• Poetics, by Aristotle
• Aristotle’s Poetics for Screenwriters, by Michael Tierno
• Tales from the Script: 50 Screenwriters Share Their Stories, by Peter Hanson and Paul Robert Herman
• The Screenwriter’s Bible, by David Trotter. Very good to learn more on screenplay format.
• On Screen Directing, by Edward Dmytryk
• Hawks On Hawks by Joseph McBride
• Scorsese on Scorsese Edited by David Thompson and Ian Christie
• Directors on Directing Edited by Toby Cole and Helen Krich Chinoy
• Conversations With Filmmakers Series includes editions of interviews with: Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Sidney Lumet, Quentin Tarantino, Woody Allen, George Lucas, Howard Hawks, Spike Lee, Roman Polanski, Martin Ritt, Clint Eastwood, Orson Welles, John Huston, Steven Soderbergh, Danny Boyle, The Coen Brothers, Ridley Scott, Martin Scorsese, Liv Ullman, Arthur Penn, Brian DePalma, Sam Peckinpah, George Stevens, Jane Campion, Robert Altman, George Cukor, Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, Alfred Hitchcock, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Fred Zinnemann, Jean-Luc Goddard, Franois Truffaut, Igmar Bergman, Federico Fellini, Bernardo Bertolucci, and more.  It is an excellent series!
• Fifty Filmmakers: Conversations With Directors from Roger Avary to Steven Zaillian by Andrew J. Rausch
• Searching for John Ford by Joseph McBride
• John Ford, Revised and Enlarged by Peter Bogdanovich
• John Ford, The Man and His Films by Tad Gallagher
• Conversations With Robert Evans: Lawrence Grobel, by Lawrence Grobel
• The Time Is Ripe, Clifford Odets 1940 Journal: With an Introduction by William Gibson
• Clifford Odets: American Playwright, by Margaret Brenman-Gibson
• When Do I Start: A Memoir, by Karl Malden & Carla Malden. An autobiography
• Fyodor Dostoyevsky: A Writer’s Life, by Geir Kjetsaa
• Dramatic Technique by G. P. Baker
• George Pierce Baker and the American Theatre by Wisner Payne Kinne
• Theory and Technique of Playwriting by John Howard Lawson
• The Playwrights Speak Edited by Walter Wager
• Playwrights on Playwriting: From Ibsen to Ionesco Edited by Toby Cole
• Playwrights on Playwriting, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, et al. by Arthur Williams
• The Artist’s Way, by Julie Cameron
• Real Life Drama, by Wendy Smith
• The Fervent Years, by Harold Clurman
• The Writer’s Guide to Query Letters by Wendy Burt-Thomas
• How to Write a Great Query Letter: Insider Tips and Techniques for Success by Noah Lukeman
• The Writer’s Guide to Query and Cover Letters by Gordon Bugett