"Given the indignities to which they are subjected, screenwriters can be  forgiven if they feel under-appreciated or consigned to the bottom of  the Hollywood totem pole. Now, it's payback time. This entertaining  companion to Peter Hanson and Paul Robert Herman's book of the same name  gives writers the first and last word on their craft and making it (or  not) in the business. "I think the public would be shocked to see how  many movies that end up horrific started out as pretty good screenplays  or at least screenplays you can see why the studio made this movie,"  says Mark D. Rosenthal, who wrote the unfortunate Superman IV: The Quest  for Peace. The impressive roster of scribes includes Shane Black  (Lethal Weapon), Larry Cohen (It's Alive), Frank Darabont (The Shawshank  Redemption), Naomi Foner (Running on Empty), William Goldman (Butch  Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), and Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver). The  shared wisdom and Us vs. Them war stories ("them" being directors,  development executives, studio heads, and actors) provide a revelatory  look at the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune (and misfortune)  that even the most successful writers suffer. The stories range from the  good (on September 3, 2006, Justin Zacham got married and the next  morning flew to L.A. to go to Jack Nicholson's house to work on his  script for The Bucket List with Jack, Morgan Freeman, and Rob Reiner),  the bad (Michael January laments that the movies he writes go direct to  video or cable), and the ugly (Genevieve Turner laughs that the  notorious hack Uwe Boll's film of her script for Bloodrayne "blows").  Save for illustrative film clips from such movies as Get Shorty, The  Last Tycoon, and Barton Fink that introduce each section of the  documentary, Tales from the Script is all talking heads, but these heads  make their living telling stories, so it seldom flags. A writer writes,  so perhaps not even Stephen Susco's reality check--that of the 38  scripts he's written only three have been produced--is likely to deter  anyone determined to enter the profession. As one writer states, "It's a  hard way to make an easy living." --Donald Liebenson