Movie Speak: How to Talk Like You Belong on a Movie Set

An oral tradition gathered and passed down for more than a hundred years, the language of moviemaking, like other secret lexicons, is the only accepted way of communicating on a set—and is all but unknown to the outside world. Technical, odd, colorful, mysterious, the working language of movies sheds light not only on the hugely complex process of making a film, but on the invisible hierarchies of a set, the unspoken etiquette between cast & crew, & the evolution of a process that's endlessly fascinating.

Movie Speak is a book about language, but through language also a book about what it’s really like to be a director or a producer or an actor or a crew member. An Oscar-winning producer (The Sting), actor (who worked with Spielberg, Coppola, & Sydney Pollock), & director (Five Corners, Flyboys, My Bodyguard, & more), Tony Bill has been on sets for more than 30 years & brings a writer's love of language to this collection of hundreds of film terms.

A futz. A cowboy. A Brodkin & a double Brodkin (a.k.a. screamer). Streaks ’n tips, a Lewinsky, Green Acres, rhubarb, a peanut, a Gary Coleman, snot tape, twin buttes, manmaker (and why you can yell for one if needed for a grip, but must whisper if it's for Tom Cruise)—these are the tricks of the trade