Lew Hunter's *Screenwriting 434*

Has anyone here read Screenwriting 434 by Lew Hunter? If so, what do you think?

IMHO, it's a bit of a mystery, because Hunter apparently had a successful career as a TV writer, and yet his prose skills leave much to be desired. Many times I have to re-read his strangely-worded sentences two and three times to try and figure out what he means. And this from a man who makes a point of stressing clarity.

Much more annoying than that, however, is that he repeatedly inserts his TV movie Fallen Angel in lists of the all time great theatrical releases, like Casablanca and Citizen Kane. He'll be listing these famous, classic films, and then suddenly his TV movie will appear in the list. What purpose does this serve? Surely he doesn't put his TV movie on a par with these legendary films?

He also takes up half the book with one of his own TV movie scripts, ostensibly for the purpose of teaching; but I would much rather learn from a known theatrical film script that was a big hit, so I could study how the pros did it--not some unknown (albeit successful) TV writer.

Nothing against Hunter, he was a successful TV writer and he does have some good things to say. But if he touted his own material less and yielded the floor to the master screenwriters, I think the book would be much better.

Anyone else care to comment on this book?