Rating: 
Summary: It took 8 years to make this?
Review: It took eight years to make Up Close and Personal, a movie about a television reporter and her mentor, starring Robert Redford and Michelle Pfeiffer. This book, by one of the screenplay writers, is a must for anyone who wants an example of just how absurd movie making can be. From the original story of Jessica Savitch, an ambitious and ultimately self-destructive young woman, Dunne's screenplay transforms over many years and many rewrites into a story that would get Disney's stamp of approval, which translates into "a feel good movie with an uplifting storyline". Often hilarious and at times moving, Monster gives you a real feeling for the time, skill, and patience it takes to create a screenplay. Just remember this is not an instructional guide to screenplay writing, see it rather as a cautionary tale. After reading this, you may wonder how movies get made at all.
Rating: 
Summary: Arrogant, sloppy, and I can't put it down
Review: John Gregory Dunne is an arrogant, name-dropping monster, himself. So much of the book is poisoned by his self-congratulatory tone. While he was a full participant in all of the events he recounts, he drips superiority as if he were floating (sneeringly) above the action rather than right down in it. The book is so lazily written. Abrupt, disjointed sections; his pacing and sense of time only confuse the reader. He indulges great detail on boring scenes that show himself off while he quickly glances over the scenes that would interest the reader the most. We have absolutely no sense of his wife, Joan Didion. We learn nothing about how he actually writes a script. Nevertheless, I couldn't put the darn thing down. I read it in a few hours and was captivated. It doesn't give nearly enough detail, the analysis is slight, the conclusions absent. But, somehow, I whipped through it and was glad I did. The subject matter is so fascinating that--while he forces us to peer at it through the haze of his ego--I still enjoyed looking. Perhaps more than anything, I enjoyed luxuriating in my hatred of the author.
Rating: 
Summary: Insufferable!
Review: No need to repeat what other negative reviewers have accurately stated. As my sainted Irish mother would have said: "The man is too full of himself."
Rating: 
Summary: Dunne is sterile, pompus and a Herculean name-dropper.
Review: The title "Monster" is unintentionally ironic, as Dunne, a priviledged WASP insider, suffers little, financially or at the hands of Hollywood. The only "Monster" in this story is his unquestioning ego, which dominates the narrative like a power-broker at a cocktail party. As a working screenwriter I've read the gamut of books on Hollywood. Some of the best, like "High Concept," and "The Gross," dish the dirt with a cold hand and are both gripping and informative; then there are first-person accounts like Max Adams' "The Screenwriter's Survival Guide," and the William Goldman books, which are self-mocking and full of personality as well as insight (although Goldman is a bit doddering). Dunne, however, plays his hand to his chest, disparages no one, most noticably HIMSELF or his wife (his writing partner/wife Joan Didion), and you learn little to nothing about the industry. Worse, Dunne drops more names than an usher retelling his evening at the Academy Awards. Futher running it out, Dunne often irrelevantly digresses into asides that serve only to pile on the list of the people he knows and places he's been. There are no real anecdotes, lessons or jokes involved with these mastubatory indulgences. Books like these thrive on the likability of the story teller, and if I saw Dunne at one of his many listed celebrity cocktail parties, I'd quickly turn the other way or leave. Truly the WORST and most dull of all the books I've read on the industry (other than Syd Field and his like). An utter waste of time. I returned it.
Rating:
Summary: Dunne is sterile, pompus and a Herculean name-dropper.
Review: The title "Monster" is unintentionally ironic, as Dunne, a priviledged WASP insider, suffers little, financially or at the hands of Hollywood. The only "Monster" in this story is his unquestioning ego, which dominates the narrative like a power-broker at a cocktail party. As a working screenwriter I've read the gamut of books on Hollywood. Some of the best, like "High Concept," and "The Gross," dish the dirt with a cold hand and are both gripping and informative; then there are first-person accounts like Max Adams' "The Screenwriter's Survival Guide," and the William Goldman books, which are self-mocking and full of personality as well as insight (although Goldman is a bit doddering). Dunne, however, plays his hand to his chest, disparages no one, most noticably HIMSELF or his wife (his writing partner/wife Joan Didion), and you learn little to nothing about the industry. Worse, Dunne drops more names than an usher retelling his evening at the Academy Awards. Futher running it out, Dunne often irrelevantly digresses into asides that serve only to pile on the list of the people he knows and places he's been. There are no real anecdotes, lessons or jokes involved with these mastubatory indulgences. Books like these thrive on the likability of the story teller, and if I saw Dunne at one of his many listed celebrity cocktail parties, I'd quickly turn the other way or leave. Truly the WORST and most dull of all the books I've read on the industry (other than Syd Field and his like). An utter waste of time. I returned it.
Rating:
Summary: A Monster in more ways than one.
Review: This book is one of the worst behind-the-scenes books I've ever read with regards to film making. Dunne often includes faxes and letters he sent back and forth to the film's principles - the grating tone of these letters spills into the rest of the book. The book reads more like a disjointed diary than a tale of industry politics.
Rating:
Summary: I'd rather eat lunch with Bill Goldman
Review: This book is to beginning screenwriters what ISLAND OF THE BLUE DOLPHINS is to 4th graders: required reading that could have been fascinating but isn't. The problem isn't just that this man name-drops with amusing regularity; it isn't even the extremes he goes to get in as many names as he can (e.g., opening to a random page: "Michelle Pfieffers's partner...was a woman named Kate Guinzburg. We had known her father, the publisher Tom Guinzburg, for years when he was president of Viking Press in New York, and we also knew her mother, the actress Rita Gam, and had worked with Sydney Lumet, who was Rita Gam's first husband.") You can't write a book about getting a movie made with celebrities in it without dropping a few names and revealing some really outrageous behavior on The Suits' parts. But what's annoying about Dunne is the attitude with which he drops the names and makes the revelations: He seems to be saying, NOT "Look at how outrageously these people are behaving" but rather "Look at how outrageously these people are behaving TO ME and my wife - obviously two of the most important people on the planet." He seems to want to make damn sure that we all know just how important he is. I'd heard this book was a straightforward account of the unreasonable process that a studio demanded of 2 writers. That's not true; at least a third of the text has nothing at all to do with UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL, but is more about the life of two very privileged, self-important people. In that case, it is really more of a general Life-In-The-Biz writer's memoir... and if that's what you're after, William Goldman is a far more affable fellow to sit down with. If Goldman had written a book like this, more or less detailing the development of any one of his scripts (he has chapters that do that in both his memoirs, but no single complete book), it would render MONSTER redundant - in which case MONSTER would get no stars from me at all.
Rating:
Summary: A tale of real life Hollywood
Review: This tale of life in Hollywood has a bit of dark humor mixed in with the tame tale of the making of the film 'Up Close and Personal'. The lives of the two writers become interwined with those of many Hollywood star directors and Corporations such as DISNEY (a real monster when it comes to movies) A real cautionary tale to try to help take away some of the happy mystique surrounding Hollywood writing, MONSTER is a good read for all those interested in writing for the greatest medium of all, movies
Rating: 
Summary: Hynotic...Warts and All
Review: This tough minded, funny book is a warts and all look at the process of screenwriting for a big studio; it's also as hypnotic as staring into a snake pit. Some of the other reviewers seem to be offended by Dunne's egotism and name dropping, but his honest inclusion of them seems to me to be part of the bigger picture. This IS how it's done; these ARE the kinds of behavior involved. Dunne spares no one, least of all himself. The result is very candid, like having drinks with a tired old veteran of the screen wars who has no illusions. Dunne doesn't overwrite like William Goldman (who grows harder to slog through year by year), and his honesty is refreshing. As for the high regard he holds himself and his wife (Joan Didion) in, well, who can write better? A few, but they haven't sat down to tell it all as Dunne has. I couldn't put this book down.
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