Bulletproof: Writing Scripts that Don't Get Shot Down

The team of Diamond and Weissman have been writing movies and mentoring filmmakers for decades. In this practical guide, they take the aspiring writer by the hand and guide them through the logistics and tools of writing an attention-grabbing, audience-pleasing screenplay. Readers will learn the interests and needs of managers, agents, producers, executives, financiers, directors, and actors. Diamond and Weissman attribute their phenomenal success to a career-long focus on the motives and priorities of film sponsors and benefactors. Whether it’s a theatrical release or a streaming movie, a major, big-budget tent pole or an intimate, character-driven indie drama, Diamond and Weissman apply their time-tested approach. This fresh way of thinking will resonate with writers, industry professionals, and cinephiles excited to peek under the hood at what makes their favorite films tick. Bulletproof is the rare screenwriting instructional penned by authors with both massive credits and decades of business experience. It is poised to take its place as one of the must-reads of the genre.

David Diamond and David Weissman’s partnership is rooted in a 30-year friendship dating to their high school days in Philadelphia. The partners sold their first spec script, The Whiz Kid, to 20th Century Fox in 1994. They followed with a series of original ideas for comedies, including their first produced credit in 2000, Universal Pictures’ The Family Man starring Nicolas Cage and Tea Leoni. Diamond and Weissman next wrote the DreamWorks Pictures sci-fi comedy Evolution, directed and co-produced by Ivan Reitman. In 2005, the team partnered with Wedding Crashers producer Andrew Panay on a series of feature comedies that yielded five consecutive pitch sales and two additional produced credits: the 2009 farce Old Dogs (starring John Travolta and Robin Williams) and the 2010 romantic comedy When In Rome (starring Kristen Bell and Josh Duhamel). 2005 also marked the sale of their first television pitch to 20th Television and CBS; the resulting pilot starred John Leguizamo and Claire Forlani. More pilot sales at NBC, ABC, FOX, and TBS, for both half-hour comedies and one-hour dramas, followed. Together, Diamond and Weissman have conceived and contributed to over a dozen movies yielding a combined box office gross of over a billion dollars worldwide.