I'm writing a screenplay and was wondering what books I should get?

Question

I'm writing a comedy screenplay that I hope to adapt film and I was wondering what books I should make highest priority to get.

I was looking at a few of these:

The Power Filmmaking Kit: Make Your Professional Movie on a Next-to-Nothing Budget by Jason Tomaric

Swimming Upstream: A Lifesaving Guide to Short Film Distribution by Sharon Badal

The Independent Filmmaker's Law and Business Guide: Financing, Shooting, and Distributing Independent and Digital Films by Jon M. Garon

The Guerilla Film Makers Handbook by Chris Jones, Genevieve Jolliffe

The complete idiots guide to screen writing

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Having taught screenwriting, I'm not sure any book will help you enough to be worth the time you put into reading it.  Getting peer reviews would help much more.  Just start cranking the script out.  If you plan to submit it to agents, get the Microsoft screenplay template for Word from their website; it's free.  Also, check the formatting guidelines from the AMPAS website; this will help you avoid most rookie script mistakes.

Best of luck.