Cinematic Political Thought: Narrating Race, Nation, and Gender. By Michael J. Shapiro. New York: New York University Press, 1999. 176p. $55.00 cloth, $18.50 paper

Writing on the outskirts of Hollywood, where my college campus episodically turns into a set location for the filming of West Wing or, most recently, Pearl Harbor, I have picked up a few pointers about the biz just by keeping my ears perked. “Talk to me, babe! Luv ya. My agent will get back to you on that. What's my motivation?” And so on. Clichés and formulas do matter, however, in such a large-scale collaborative enterprise because often they provide the underlying rules of the game. The first rule of screenwriting, any insider knows, is that you must hook your reader on page one. If you do not grab your audience right from the start, even before the opening credits roll, the rest of the spec script will surely get tossed, and the movie will never get made.