Film Comedy

While other books give you tips on how to “write funny,” this book offers a paradigm shift in understanding the mechanics and art of comedy and the proven, practical tools that help writers translate that understanding into successful commercial scripts. The Hidden Tools of Comedy unlocks the unique secrets and techniques of writing comedy. Kaplan deconstructs sequences in popular films and TV that work and don’t work and explains what tools were used (or should have been used).

B. Rosenberger Rosenberg, neurotic and underappreciated film critic (failed academic, filmmaker, paramour, shoe salesman who sleeps in a sock drawer), stumbles upon a hitherto unseen film by an enigmatic outsider - a film he’s convinced will change his career trajectory and rock the world of cinema to its core. His hands on what is possibly the greatest movie ever made, a three-month-long stop-motion masterpiece that took its reclusive auteur 90 years to complete, B. knows that it is his mission to show it to the rest of humanity.

Carter - Relationships - who needs 'em? Fortunately, as far as my options go...well, let's just say I'm used to getting what I want, whenever I want it. Unless your name happens to be Sawyer Burke. Sawyer - I've always been a relationship guy. I never understood the urge to bed a different guy every night. Unfortunately, I can't get Carter James out of my head. I told myself I hate him - and I should. He's everything I'm not - loud, sassy...and more than a little annoying. But I want him too, and he's made no secret of wanting me.

Released in 2004, iconic teen comedy Mean Girls remains as relevant now as ever. But what made an adaptation of a parenting guide by SNL writer Tina Fey so successful? And why, two decades later, can we all just not stop quoting it? Drawing on revealing interviews with the director, cast and crew, Jennifer Keishin Armstrong takes us behind the scenes of the film’s genesis, production and release.

In I'll Have What She's Having, entertainment journalist Erin Carlson tells the story of the real Nora Ephron and how she reinvented the romcom through her trio of instant classics. With a cast of famous faces including Reiner, Hanks, Ryan, and Crystal, Carlson takes listeners on a rollicking, revelatory trip to Ephron's New York City, where reality took a backseat to romance and Ephron - who always knew what she wanted and how she wanted it - ruled the set with an attention to detail that made her actors feel safe but sometimes exasperated crew members.

Screenwriter Megan Silver is a waitress in an L.A. burger joint, and her life is going nowhere fast. But she has an idea worth a million dollars - if only she can get someone to read her script. Supermodel Roxana Felix is the richest, bitchiest catwalk queen of them all. But it's not enough; she wants to be a movie star, and she'll let nothing get in her way. Studio president Eleanor Marshall is the most powerful woman in Hollywood, yet the romantic inside her longs for love - and a baby.

Caddyshack is one of the most beloved comedies of all time, a classic snobs vs. slobs story of working-class kids and the white-collar buffoons that make them haul their golf bags in the hot summer sun. It has sex, drugs, and one very memorable candy bar, but the movie we all know and love didn't start out that way, and everyone who made it certainly didn't have the word classic in mind as the cameras were rolling.

In It's Only a Movie, the incomparable Mark Kermode took us into the weird world of a film critic's life lived in widescreen. Now, The Good, The Bad and the Multiplex takes us into the belly of the beast to ask: 'What’s wrong with the modern movie business – and how can we make it right?'

An in-depth celebration of the romantic comedy’s modern golden era and its role in our culture, tracking the genre from its heyday in the ’80s and the ’90s, its unfortunate decline in the 2000s, and its explosive reemergence in the age of streaming, featuring exclusive interviews with the directors, writers, and stars of the iconic films that defined the genre.

Robert Altman - visionary director, hard-partying hedonist, eccentric family man, Hollywood legend - comes roaring to life in this rollicking cinematic biography, told in a chorus of voices that can only be called Altmanesque.

Cuando El chavo del ocho se estrenó en los años 70, el programa ofrecía un retrato poco común de la vida de la clase trabajadora que resonó en la gente de toda América Latina. En el pico de su popularidad, 350 millones de personas lo sintonizaban cada semana. Y durante casi 50 años, el legado de “el chavo” se mantuvo vivo a través de una creciente base de fans multigeneracional y sus retransmisiones diarias. Hasta 2020, cuando El Chavo dejó de emitirse repentinamente.

New York Times best-selling author, comedian, and actor Patton Oswalt shares his entertaining memoir about coming of age as a performer and writer in the late '90s while obsessively watching classic films at the legendary New Beverly Cinema in Los Angeles. Between 1995 and 1999, Patton Oswalt lived with an unshakeable addiction. It wasn't drugs, alcohol, or sex. It was film.

Mel Brooks' own words telling all about the players, the filming, and studio antics during the production of this great comedy classic. The audiobook is alive and teeming with hundreds of photos, original interviews, and hilarious commentary. Young Frankenstein was made with deep respect for the craft and history of cinema-and for the power of a good schwanzstucker joke. This audiobook will also rely on interviews with gifted director of photography Gerald Hirschfeld, Academy Award-winning actress Cloris Leachman, and veteran producer Michael Gruskoff.

Sir Peter Ustinov's beautifully crafted autobiography is told with exquisite wit and insight. From his birth in April 1921, it spans his extraordinary career as actor, playwright, film star, and director, confirming his early belief that he is 'irrevocably betrothed to laughter'. Ustinov's renowned gift for mimicry is exploited to the full in Dear Me. Eccentric relatives, school masters, sergeant majors, and manic Hollywood moguls are all brought unforgettably to life.

The holiday film A Christmas Story, first released in 1983, has become a bona fide Christmas perennial, gaining in stature and fame with each succeeding year. Its affectionate, wacky, and wryly realistic portrayal of an American family's typical Christmas joys and travails in small-town Depression-era Indiana has entered our imagination and our hearts with a force equal to It's a Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street.

Die Welt scheint sich gegen Emma Corrigan verschworen zu haben. Erst versagt sie bei einem wichtigen Kunden, mit dem ihre Firma eine Kooperation entwickeln wollte, und dann gerät ihr Flugzeug in so heftige Turbulenzen, dass Emma ihr letztes Stündlein gekommen sieht. Aber vor ihrem vermeintlichen Ableben macht sie noch reinen Tisch: Jedes Geheimnis, jede kleine Notlüge, jede Heimlichkeit, derer sie sich schuldig fühlt, bricht aus ihr heraus.

Kathi ist im siebten Himmel. Sie hat einen Job in der Fernsehproduktion ergattert und bekommt ihren ersten Auftrag. Für die Doku-Soap „Bauernhochzeit“ soll sie das Brautpaar Cindy und Patrick mit der Kamera bei den Hochzeitsvorbereitungen begleiten. Doch am Set erwartet sie eine böse Überraschung: Bräutigam Patrick ist Kathis erste große Liebe! Sie hat die Erinnerung an den gutaussehenden Tierarzt viele Jahre mühsam verdrängt. Plötzlich ist es, als hätte sie erst gestern in seinen Armen gelegen.

The Cocoanuts is a 1929 pre-Code musical comedy film starring the Marx Brothers (Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Zeppo). Produced for Paramount Pictures by Walter Wanger, the film also stars Mary Eaton, Oscar Shaw, Margaret Dumont and Kay Francis. The first sound film to credit more than one director (Robert Florey and Joseph Santley), it was adapted to the screen by Morrie Ryskind from the musical play by George S. Kaufman. Five of the film's tunes were composed by Irving Berlin, including "When My Dreams Come True," sung by Oscar Shaw and Mary Eaton.

Africa Screams is a 1949 American adventure comedy film starring Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, directed by Charles Barton and written by Earl Baldwin, that parodies the safari genre.

Beat the Devil is a 1953 adventure comedy film directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida in her American debut.