I’m doing something a little different this week. In lieu of a book review, I’m shamelessly plugging my good friend and former college roommate’s new book, “Rewrite Man: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Warren Skaaren”.

Alison and I met 33 years ago at Notre Dame. She was a Jersey girl who loved movies. Now she calls Austin home, but she is still fascinated by the film industry. She moved to Texas soon after undergrad, earned a PhD, taught, worked as a film critic and has now written two books. I’m so proud of her! She’s an excellent researcher and writer, so I have no doubt this book is well crafted.

Here’s the publisher’s summary:

“In Rewrite Man, Alison Macor tells an engrossing story about the challenges faced by a top screenwriter at the crossroads of mixed and conflicting agendas in Hollywood. Whether writing love scenes for Tom Cruise on the set of Top Gun, running lines with Michael Keaton on Beetlejuice, or crafting Nietzschean dialogue for Jack Nicholson on Batman, Warren Skaaren collaborated with many of New Hollywood’s most powerful stars, producers, and directors. By the time of his premature death in 1990, Skaaren was one of Hollywood’s highest-paid writers, although he rarely left Austin, where he lived and worked. Yet he had to battle for shared screenwriting credit on these films, and his struggles yield a new understanding of the secretive screen credit arbitration process—a process that has only become more intense, more litigious, and more public for screenwriters and their union, the Writers Guild of America, since Skaaren’s time. His story, told through a wealth of archival material, illuminates crucial issues of film authorship that have seldom been explored.”

It’s for sale on Amazon.

Congratulations, Alison!