A review by gurudyne
Save the Cat! Goes to the Movies: The Screenwriter's Guide to Every Story Ever Told by Blake Snyder

1.0

There were a couple of good points in here, but nothing you wouldn't get from another book like "Story: Substance, Structure, Style and The Principles of Screenwriting" by McKee, which is much more thorough as it includes an analysis of screenwriting as an art. All Snyder's advice revolves around crafting scripts for marketability which, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing EXCEPT for two things. One, he's only ever written two scripts that have made it to film: "Stop...Or My Mom Will Shoot" and "Blank Check". Two, he equates marketability with quality and as if that point weren't stupid enough, he hammers on and on about how bad of a script Memento was because of its low opening weekend.

There's acknowledging the business side of an artistic market and then there's being a shill. Snyder's the latter and this is a handbook on how to follow in those footsteps.