Description

The Director Should’ve Shot You: Memoirs of the Film Trade by Alan Dean Foster

Hardcover – Centipede Press – Jun 2021 – 272 pages

Few people have aggravated as many major film studios as author Alan Dean Foster.

A Grand Master of Media Tie-In Fiction (for both original tie-ins and novelizations), Foster comes to any project with experience, professionalism, and a certain…directness that makes him a reader’s favorite and, occasionally, a director’s chagrin.

Like the time Alan tried to fix Alien 3 only to be told “No, Thank you!” Or the time that a vice-president at Universal studios banned Foster from any dealings with The Chronicles of Riddick when the film’s star invoked the author’s name in a debate with the director over re-shoots. Oh, and then there was this one time Alan saw the first ever screening of Star Wars with Alice Cooper.

Yes, that Alice Cooper!

Foster traces his beginnings from UCLA…including almost writing for Adam West’s Batman…to his first fiction sales. Along the way, Foster brings his indomitable wit and humor to each disappointment and success as he builds a best-selling career. Now a veteran author with over 130 books — many with such recognizable names as Star Trek, Terminator, and The Thing — the stories behind those stories are collected here for the first time.

This memoir provides an insider’s glimpse into how studio marketeers hire, and often discard, the writers they’ve brought in to help sell their movies, television series, or video games. Not one to mince words, Foster presents an unabashed narrative of almost fifty years translating script to prose, prose to script, and lumps he’s taken along the way.

The Director Should’ve Shot You shines a spotlight on the film industry like never before, and once you read Alan’s first-hand accounts, you’ll never see your favorite films the same way again!