Read

"I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on, I go into another room and read a book." -- Groucho Marx

Granted, when Mr. Marx was later finding success as the host of "You Bet Your Life," he qualified the above quote with, "...now that I'm a part of television ... I don't mean a word of it." I assume the latter statement is all in good Groucho contradictory fun.

I watch TV. I enjoy TV. I'm not one of the pretentious dramatists who claims to be above boob-tube drivel. Whether indulging in a new episode of "Lost" or "Two and a Half Men", popping in a DVD of a movie that promises to be 'one of the year's best', watching Season 4 of "Friends" for the seventh time, or cringing at my Minnesota semi-professional sports teams (seriously, I don't think we have an actual professional team, do we? Wait... the Gophers are good this year), there are times when the dancing HD pixels are the only thing on which I am willing to focus.

But usually I'd rather read. At the end of each day, I want self affirmation of at least nominal accomplishment. Having three or four nonfiction books going at a time gives me ample opportunity to further educate my diminutive mind, not to mention my subscriptions to Creative Screenwriting, Script, and MovieMaker magazines. Then there are the myriad worthwhile online resources hidden amongst all the obdurate Internet distractions - I'm looking at you, Facebook!

When my desire to work in television and movies professionally overtook my own common sense, I set out to find what would be commonly regarded as the best books on any and all subjects pertaining to the entertainment industry. Instead of finding Steven Spielberg's list of recommended books on producing and Tom Hanks' acting book recommendations and Ron Howard's list of suggested director books, I found little to no canonical reference to books about the industry.

In light of this deficiency, I offer in the next post, a non-exhaustive list of entertainment industry books I have read and a simple ranking for each.