The "Green Pastures," a 1936 black folk-classic film, has long captured the attentions of audiences both black and white. It is a picture to be appreciated not merely for its entertainment value or cinematic techniques but also for its place in the history of American social change. We are now offered the best guide to our understanding of both, with Thomas Cripps's substantial introduction and learned annotations of the script, along with the accompanying shooting script itself, never before published.

Kenneth Horne, Kenneth Williams, Betty Marsden and Hugh Paddick star in 16 episodes of the anarchic 1960s radio comedy. Round the Horne arrived on BBC radio in 1965, bringing laughter to Sunday lunchtimes throughout the land. Over the course of sixteen weekly episodes it carved a niche in the history of broadcast comedy, a sketch show which prodded the boundaries of propriety and innuendo. At its heart was the suave and upstanding Kenneth Horne, around which revolved the multiple naughty personas of Kenneth Williams, Betty Marsden, Hugh Paddick and Bill Pertwee. Among the parade of regular characters were Julian and Sandy, the camp couple of resting thespians happy to turn their hands to anything, Rambling Syd Rumbo the musical cordwangler, Fiona and Charles the passionate duo, and J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock the world's dirtiest man. Meanwhile regular film parodies, spoof sagas and musical interludes peppered the mix. Round the Horne earned its place in the annals of comedy history, and is fondly remembered today as a groundbreaking series that influenced many more to come. Here the entire first series can be enjoyed once again, along with a PDF booklet featuring cast biographies and a full series history. 8 CDs. 8 hrs 21 mins.

If there is one skill that separates the professional screenwriter from the amateur, it is the ability to rewrite successfully. From Jack Epps, Jr., the screenwriter of Top Gun, Dick Tracy, and The Secret of My Success, comes a comprehensive guide that explores the many layers of rewriting. In Screenwriting is Rewriting, Epps provides a practical and tested approach to organizing notes, creating a game plan, and executing a series of focused passes that address the story, character, theme, structure, and plot issues. Included are sample notes, game plans, and beat sheets from Epps' work on films such as Sister Act and Turner and Hooch. Also featured are exclusive interviews with Academy Award (R) winning screenwriters Robert Towne (Chinatown) and Frank Pierson (Dog Day Afternoon), along with Academy Award (R) nominee Susannah Grant (Erin Brockovich).

The screenplays of award-winning playwright John Patrick Shanley have earned him a reputation as a gifted writer with a great range and imagination. His movies Moonstruck, Five Corners, and Joe Versus the Volcano have starred such Hollywood luminaries as Cher-who took home an Oscar for her performance in Moonstruck-Nicolas Cage, Jodie Foster, John Turturro, Meg Ryan, and Tom Hanks. This collection showcases Shanley's talent for creating dialogue that is true to his characters and his ability to tell their stories in eccentric and intensely humorous situations.

Othello, the general of the Venetian army, holds much power and influence but becomes the target of an insidious plot to steal his coveted position. He is overcome with paranoia and enthralled with rumors of his wife's potential infidelity. Othello has fallen in love with a senator's daughter, Desdemona, and the two secretly marry. Their partnership generates shock and confusion as Desdemona was also loved by Roderigo, who'd already asked for her hand. Othello's ensign, Iago, is envious of the general and is spurned when he promotes the young Cassio to a higher position. This marks the beginning of a plot in which Iago plans to destroy Othello's personal and professional life. He attacks his marriage by stoking the flames of jealousy, insinuating Desdemona's infidelity. This leads to a violent confrontation with a morbid outcome. Othello is one of William Shakespeare's most well-known plays. It tackles multiple topics including race, gender, politics and revenge. It's a gripping drama that details the dangers of greed, envy and their inescapable consequences. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of Othello is both modern and readable.

When it appeared in 1960, the inspired fun of Francois Truffaut's Shoot the Piano Player shocked and delighted critics and audiences around the world. Its sudden shifts of tone and mood, its willful play with genre stereotypes, and its hilarious in-jokes clearly signaled that Jean-Luc Godard's equally innovative Breathless of the same year was not a fluke. The two films heralded the arrival of the so-called New Wave, sharing with other New Wave films an insistence on low-budget, location shooting and, above all, on cinema as the personal statement of an author. These films had a tremendous impact on all cinematic practice. Peter Brunette's introduction to this book gives us new insight into the film, based in part on revisualizing it in terms of recent postmodern and poststructuralist thinking. He argues, in effect, that Truffaut was one of the directors who paved the way for a postmodern aesthetic. The volume also contains a complete and accurate continuity script of the film (based on the authoritative, wide-screen version), a series of interviews with Truffaut (including one by Helene Laroche Davis, previously unpublished), a large number of reviews and essays, a filmography, and selected bibliography. Peter Brunette is a professor of English and film studies at George Mason University. He is the author of Roberto Rossellini and co-author of Screen/Play: Derrida and Film Theory.

What is it that makes humans engage with a dramatic narrative? Is it linked to our primitive selves, contained within our instinctive experience? This innovative text argues that understanding how and why our human instincts are brought into play as we watch screen drama is the key to writing it. Analysing four powerful instincts - willpower, logic, morality and emotion - Sam North explores how they determine our level of involvement in their drama, and how screenwriters can use them to develop their craft. Including a variety of both well-known and less famous examples, from The Shawshank Redemption to Samira Makhmalbaf's The Apple, this book offers a fresh new approach to thinking about, discussing and writing screenplays.

Widely considered the darkest and most intriguing of the central Star Wars trilogy, The Empire Strikes Back deepens the exploration of mythic themes first essayed in A New Hope. From its opening amid a besieged Rebel stronghold on the ice planet Hoth to its finale on Bespin, the floating city run by gambler Lando Calrissian, Empire charts Luke Skywalker's travails on the arduous path to becoming a Jedi Knight - a journey that culminates in a punishing face-off with Imperial warlord Darth Vader, and Luke's realisation of the dreadful truth about the fate which befell his father Anakin. Derived from George Lucas's original story, the screenplay was composed by Leigh Brackett (veteran writer for Howard Hawks and Robert Altman) and Lawrence Kasdan (who soon afterwards established himself as a director with Body Heat and The Big Chill). Together, they produced a psychologically complex piece of epic storytelling, treasurably enhanced by the verbal jousting - and the affecting romance - between Han Solo and Princess Leia.

Loaded with extras, the official screenplay book tie-in to the uproarious American hit comedy from Fox Searchlight--a family on the verge of a breakdown.
In 2000, screenwriter Michael Arndt had no credits, no agents, no publishing history when he took a year off to write "a salable script" that got him an agent and a deal fourteen months later, and, five years after that, one of the big hits of 2006. Exclusive to this book are the complete shooting script, Arndt's introduction and scene notes about his filmmaking experience, and a humorous essay "How to Write a Sundance Hit in Nine Easy Steps." Also included are the full credits and a 12-page color photo section.
Brazenly satirical yet deeply human, "Little Miss Sunshine" introduces the Hoovers, whose trip from Albuquerque to Redondo Beach, California, to a pre-pubescent beauty pageant results not only in comic mayhem but in death, transformation, and a moving look at the surprising rewards of being losers in a winning-crazed culture. A runaway hit at the Sundance Film Festival, where it played to standing ovations, the film strikes a nerve with everyone who's ever been awestruck by how their muddled families seem to make it after all.
The Hoover family members are played by Greg Kinnear, Toni Collette, Steve Carell, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano, and Alan Arkin. When they pile into their rusted-out VW bus and head west on a three-day tragicomic journey to the Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant, the entire misfit family will change in ways they could never imagine. 12-page color photo insert.

"The Marriage of Maria Braun" is the fourth volume in the Rutgers Films in Print Series and the most contemporary of those to appear in it thus far. Because of the enormous influence of New German Cinema and the importance of Fassbinder himself, the film is already considered a classic. "Maria Braun" is its director's attempt to recount and assess postwar German history through the personal example of his main character, played brilliantly by Hanna Schygulla. It is also a tribute to the Hollywood directors of the women's movies of the thirties and forties. Maria, and in the loose allegory Fassbinder has constructed, Germany itself, in their cold acquisitiveness and materialism, melodramatically rise from the ashes of World War II only to veer toward an inevitable doom that takes the film full circle, recalling the film's opening shots of a city reduced to rubble.

This volume contains the editor's introduction, a chronology of the the years 1943-1954, a biographical sketch of Fassbinder, the full transcript of the film as released, notes on the shooting script, interviews with the scriptwriter and director, commentary on Douglas Sirk by Fassbinder, reviews, commentaries by Thomas Elsaesser and Sheila Johnston, a filmography, and a bibliography.

A gripping BBC Radio 4 full-cast dramatisation of Neil Gaiman's bestselling and much-loved novel When his father dies, Fat Charlie Nancy discovers that not only was the late Mr Nancy actually the god Anansi, but that he also has a long-lost brother, Spider, who is everything Fat Charlie is not. When Spider begins to take over Fat Charlie's life, flat and even his fiancee Rosie, Fat Charlie is forced to make a pact that lands him in trouble with the gods themselves... Anansi Boys is a story of love, laughter, music and murder, old gods and new tricks that takes Fat Charlie from his home in South London to Florida, the Caribbean, and the very Beginning of the World itself. Or the End of the World. Depending on which direction you're coming from. Jacob Anderson stars as Charlie, and he has written and performed a specially commissioned song - 'Charlie's Song' - which forms part of the magical fabric of Anansi Boys. Dramatised for Radio 4 by the award-winning Dirk Maggs (Neverwhere, Good Omens, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), the stellar cast of this series also includes Joseph Marcell, Lenny Henry, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, Adjoa Andoh,Julie Hesmondhalgh and Julian Rhind-Tutt, as well as a cameo appearance from Neil Gaiman himself. Duration: 3 hours 15 mins

Die Drehbuchforschung ist ein junges, sich rasch entwickelndes internationales Forschungsfeld. Der Sammelband fuhrt Forschungen aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum zusammen, die sich mit dem Drehbuch als schriftliches Artefakt und als Teil des Produktionsprozesses auseinandersetzen. Neben grundlegenden theoretischen Konzepten der Drehbuchforschung stehen historische und archivbasierte Analysen sowie gegenwartsbezogene Problemstellungen im Vordergrund. Praxisnah finden ausserdem Akteure und Ablaufe der Drehbuchentwicklung sowie Fragen der Dramaturgie Beachtung. Der Sammelband verschafft somit einen UEberblick uber die Bandbreite interdisziplinarer Ansatze des Forschungsfeldes und veranschaulicht das Erkenntnispotential der aktuellen Drehbuchforschung.

The greatest love poetry in the English language provides the springboard for master playwrights' never-before-published works about the triumphs and tragedies of the heart.

The sonnets and plays in Loves' Fire are the seeds and fruit of an extraordinary project: seven sonnets by Shakespeare, newly envisioned for the stage, in one-act plays by seven brilliantly gifted contemporary playwrights.

Shakespeare's sonnets of romantic and sexual love are timeless, for they are not bound to any particular setting or to either sex. These seven plays, each paired with the sonnet that inspired it, are startling not only in the variety of their mood, content, and setting, but also in their unusual interpretation. For example, Wendy Wasserstein's version of Sonnet 94 is a one-act play set in the Hamptons, where a well-to-do couple is getting ready for a society benefit; Eric Bogosian creates a story of sexual jealousy and obsessiveness from Sonnet 118; and composer William Finn has transformed Sonnet 102 into a song about an artist attempting to paint his lover -- and failing.These seven new works, commissioned and produced by the Acting Company, will be performed in June. Brought together in this slender volume with the sonnets, they form a unique tribute to Shakespeare -- a rich and marvelously entertaining celebration of the modern playwrights' adoration of the Bard.

The complete and unexpurgated scripts of one of the most celebrated comedy series ever. Published in its entirety for the first time and illustrated, The Complete Fawlty Towers will appeal to the millions of fans who have suffered through endless PBS fundraisers waiting for the next episode--and anyone who has survived a package holiday tour. Fawlty Towers is the hotel of every traveler's nightmare. Basil Fawlty--ill-tempered, henpecked, and conniving--tries in vain to be master of his house under the disapproving and ever-watchful eye of his wife, Sybil. The hotel offers service by Manuel, the incompetent Spanish waiter whose feeble grasp of English makes for hilarious misunderstandings, and Polly, the unflappable chambermaid who is Fawlty Towers' only sane employee. Meals are scorched in the kitchen while adulterers consort upstairs and chaos reigns all around. For countless fans, Fawlty Towers is the best-loved bad hotel in the world, and with publication of The Complete Fawlty Towers they will all have a chance to relive its outrageous awfulness.

Making a good script great is more than just a matter of putting a good idea on paper. It requires the working and reworking of that idea. This book takes you through the whole screenwriting process-from initial concept through final rewrite-providing specific methods that will help you craft tighter, stronger, and more saleable scripts. While retaining the invaluable insights that placed its first two editions among the all-time most popular screenwriting books, this expanded, revised, and updated third edition adds rich and important new material on dialogue, cinematic images, and point of view, as well as an interview with screenwriter Paul Haggis. If you are writing your first script, this book will help develop your skills for telling a compelling and dramatic story. If you are a veteran screenwriter, it will help you articulate the skills you know intuitively. And if you are currently stuck on a rewrite, this book will help you analyse and solve your script's problems and get it back on track.

The details of the plot are a closely guarded secret, though Joss himself has described it as "a straight-up, balls-out, really terrifying horror movie", adding, "it is not just a slasher in the woods. It's a little more complicated than that..." This exclusive companion book features an extended interview with Joss and Drew, the full script, and over 150 photos and stunning pieces of production art.

A collection of the screenplays of Paddy Chayefsky which is part of a four-volume set of his work. The screenplays contained in this volume are Marty, The Goddess and The Americanization of Emily.

The screenplay of the film that took the world by storm.

From the hit movie directed by Adrian Lyne, this is the original script with over 100 photos. From Rubin's introduction: The script presented here is not my initial screenplay but the final draft completed just before shooting. While close to the original, some significant scenes have been changed or cut. You will find them in the final chapter.

'If you decide to adapt a classic or much-loved book, your working maxim should be, 'How will it work best as a film?' However faithful it is to the original, if it's not interesting onscreen then you've failed.' - William Boyd in Story and Character: Interviews with British Screenwriters Hollywood. Netflix. Amazon. BBC. Producers and audiences are hungrier than ever for stories, and a lot of those stories begin life as a book - but how exactly do you transfer a story from the page to the screen? Do adaptations use the same creative gears as original screenplays? Does a true story give a project more weight than a fictional one? Is it helpful to have the original author's input on the script? And how much pressure is the screenwriter under, knowing they won't be able to please everyone with the finished product? Alistair Owen puts all these questions and many more to some of the top names in screenwriting, including Hossein Amini (Drive), Jeremy Brock (The Last King of Scotland), Moira Buffini (Jane Eyre), Lucinda Coxon (The Danish Girl), Andrew Davies (War & Peace), Christopher Hampton (Atonement), David Hare (The Hours), Olivia Hetreed (Girl with a Pearl Earring), Nick Hornby (An Education), Deborah Moggach (Pride & Prejudice), David Nicholls (Patrick Melrose) and Sarah Phelps (And Then There Were None). Exploring fiction and nonfiction projects, contemporary and classic books, films and TV series, The Art of Screen Adaptation reveals the challenges and pleasures of reimagining stories for cinema and television, and provides a frank and fascinating masterclass with the writers who have done it - and have the awards and acclaim to show for it.

Tales of horror have always been with us, from Biblical times to the Gothic novel to successful modern day authors and screenwriters. Though the genre is often maligned, it is huge in popularity and its resilience is undeniable. Marc Blake and Sara Bailey offer a detailed analysis of the horror genre, including its subgenres, tropes and the specific requirements of the horror screenplay.

Tracing the development of the horror film from its beginnings in German Expressionism, the authors engage in a readable style that will appeal to anyone with a genuine interest in the form and the mechanics of the genre. This book examines the success of Universal Studio's franchises of the '30s to the Serial Killer, the Slasher film, Asian Horror, the Supernatural, Horror Verite and current developments in the field, including 3D and remakes. It also includes step-by-step writing exercises, annotated extracts from horror screenplays and interviews with seasoned writers/directors/ producers discussing budget restrictions, screenplay form and formulas and how screenplays work during shooting.