An Eclectic Collection of Fiction That Inspired Film
"Memento," "All About Eve," "Rear Window," "Rashomon," and "2001: A Space Odyssey" are all well-known and much-loved movies, but what is perhaps a lesser-known fact is that all of them began their lives as short stories. "Adaptations" gathers together 35 pieces that have been the basis for films, many from giants of American literature (Hemingway, Fitzgerald) and many that have not been in print for decades (the stories that inspired "Bringing Up Baby," "Meet John Doe," and "All About Eve").
Categorized by genre, and featuring movies by master directors such as Steven Spielberg, Stanley Kubrick, Robert Altman, Frank Capra, and John Ford, as well as relative newcomers such as Chris Eyre and Christopher Nolan, "Adaptations" offers insight into the process of turning a short story into a screenplay, one that, when successful, doesn't take drastic liberties with the text upon which it is based, but doesn't mirror its source material too closely either. The stories and movies featured in" Adaptations" include:
-Philip K. Dick's "The Minority Report," which became the 2002 blockbuster directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Tom Cruise
-"The Harvey Pekar Name Story" by reclusive graphic artist Harvey Pekar, whose life was the inspiration for" American Splendor," winner of the 2003 Sundance Grand Jury Prize
-Hagar Wilde's "Bringing Up Baby," the basis of the classic film "Bringing Up Baby," anthologized here for the first time ever
-"The Swimmer" by John Cheever, an example of a highly regarded story that many feared might prove unadaptable
-The predecessor to the beloved holiday classic "A Christmas Story," "Red Ryder Nails the Hammond Kid" by Jean Shepherd
Whether you're a fiction reader or a film buff, "Adaptations" is your behind-the-scenes look at the sometimes difficult, sometimes brilliantly successful process from the printed page to the big screen.

Crafting Short Screenplays That Connect, Fifth Edition, stands alone among screenwriting books by emphasizing that human connection, though often overlooked, is as essential to writing effective screenplays as conflict. This ground-breaking book will show you how to advance and deepen your screenwriting skills, increasing your ability to write richer, more resonant short screenplays that will connect with your audience. Award-winning writer and director Claudia Hunter Johnson teaches you the all-important basics of dramatic technique and guides you through the challenging craft of writing short screenplays with carefully focused exercises of increasing length and complexity. In completing these exercises and applying Johnson's techniques and insights to your own work, you will learn how to think more deeply about the screenwriter's purpose, craft effective patterns of human change, and strengthen your storytelling skills. This 20th Anniversary Edition features 11 short screenplays, including Academy Award winning Barry Jenkins' (Moonlight, If Beale Street Could Talk) luminous short film, My Josephine, and an accompanying companion website that features the completed films and additional screenplay examples. The book has also been expanded and updated to include two new award-winning screenplays Killer Kart and The Great Wall of Vicky Lynn. and a brand-new chapter exploring the use of genre in the short film. An absolute must-have resource for students of screenwriting.

This book seeks to reshape the way that writers think about constructing their story, looking at the subject from the inside out. Often practitioners and theorists examine work through the separate lenses of character and/or structure and then bring them together. Within this book, authors Hughes and Wilkes argue that character is structure and one without the other makes for a dissatisfying narrative. Through detailed case studies on films that span all genres, from mainstream franchises like The Hunger Games (2012-2015) and Shrek (2001-2010) to art house films such as Toto Le Heros (1991) and Eraserhead (1977), the authors reveal the dramatic imperative behind the central choices or dilemmas faced by every protagonist in every classic feature length narrative. They argue there is only one of five choices that any writer must make in inventing that key transition from the protagonist's ordinary world into the adventure that will form the heart of their story. Using the universal language of folk and fairy stories, this book gives writers and students a clear framework through which they can reference and improve their own storytelling. In doing so, it enables both the novice and experienced screenwriter to tell their story in the most authentic and impactful way, while keeping their protagonist at the heart of the narrative.

In these twenty-one interviews, filmmaker Peter Greenaway expresses his film aesthetic and discusses his combat with the dominant Hollywood style of filmmaking. His films have run unmistakably against the main current of present cinematic practice, from the short film Windows in the mid-seventies, to his more popular but nonetheless challenging films such as A Zed and Two Noughts and The Pillow Book in the nineties.

In this collection the ever-controversial Greenaway discusses his philosophies of film, art, aesthetics, literature, and reality, criticizing and even condemning the standard fare of what he calls Hollywood cinema. For him such films tell stories or they translate literature with its linear narrative onto a medium that he feels should be preeminently visual. He finds that, instead of foregrounding the image and the composition of visual elements as in the long history of painting, Hollywood-style directors seem mesmerized by the "and then and then" narrative.

In these provocative interviews Greenaway tells of his ambition to make cinema a medium based more on image than on narrative. He explains his painterly approach in The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover, defends his use of total nudity of both sexes, and declares that traditional literary-based cinema is dead. He believes that the most creative imaginations, the most innovative technologies, and the greatest financial resources are being devoted to television and the Internet and that Hollywood moviemaking is no longer in the vanguard.

During the late Seventies and Eighties a new logo began to jostle for space with the more traditional landmarks on high streets throughout Britain. It was the badge of a remarkable Third World Bank...the BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International).BCCI soon become a global corporate empire with former US Presidents, ex-British Prime Ministers and a range of dictators on its payroll, all helping with promoting the company. Tariq Ali was the first public voice to warn that the Bank was not all it seemed to be. Indeed, many of its own employees called BCCI the "Bank of Crooks and Cheats Incorporated". Some political analysts also predicted the companys collapse. The Bank finally imploded amidst a welter of scandal. This revealing screenplay presents an account of the rise and fall of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. Here, Ali reveals how BCCI lasted so long, how financial regulators failed to see what was going on and how BCCI pioneered a mode of operation that prepared the way for an even greater financial cataclysm, the fall of Enron.

Full Length, Comedy / Characters: 3 male, 4 female

Scenery: Interior

Neil Simon's first Broadway comedy smash. Alan Baker, a 30-ish swinging bachelor with time, money and women to spare, welcomes rebellious and eager 21-year brother Buddy into his den of iniquity while their horrified parents can only watch and pray. This farcical 60's romp became a hit movie starring Frank Sinatra.

"A slick, lively, funny comedy."-The New York Times

If history is told by the victors, the story of war is usually told by the blokes. Now it's the 'sheilas' turn. Nearly a thousand Australian women had a part in the Vietnam War as entertainers, typists, consular staff and army nurses. Their experiences were extraordinary and they have now been brought to life in this collage of true stories. The one thing these women have in common is that their lives were changed forever by Vietnam. And for many of them it was the most vital and alive they had ever felt. These are the voices of those who were actually there; ordinary woman revealing how they survived a war and discovered what they believed in.

Robert De Niro at Work is the first critical study to examine how Robert de Niro, perhaps the finest screen actor of his generation, works with screenplays to imagine, prepare and denote his performance. In categorising the various ways in which De Niro works with a screenplay, this book will re-examine the relationship between actor and text. This book considers the screenplay as above all a working document and a material object, present at every stage of the filmmaking process. The working screenplay goes through various iterations in development and exists in many versions on set, each adapted and personalised for the specific use of the individual and their role. As the archive reveals, nobody works more closely with the script than the actor, and no actor works more on a script than De Niro.

Anna Kornbluh provides an overview of Marxist approaches to film, with particular attention to three central concepts in Marxist theory in general that have special bearing on film: "the mode of production," "ideology," and "mediation." In explaining how these concepts operate and how they have been used and misused in film studies, the volume employs a case study to exemplify the practice of Marxist film theory. Fight Club is an exceptionally useful text with which to explore these three concepts because it so vividly and pedagogically engages with economic relations, ideological distortion, and opportunities for transformation. At the same time, it is a very typical film in terms of the conditions of its production, its marketing, and its popularity. Adapted from a novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the film is a contemporary classic that has lent itself to significant re-interpretation with every shift in the political economic landscape since its debut. Marxist Film Theory and Fight Club models a detailed cinematic interpretation that students can practice with other films, and furnishes a set of ideas about cinema and society that can be carried into other kinds of study, giving students tools for analyzing culture broadly defined.

Screenwriting: Creative Labor and Professional Practice analyzes the histories, practices, identities and subjects which form and shape the daily working lives of screenwriters. Author Bridget Conor considers the ways in which contemporary screenwriters navigate and make sense of the labor markets in which they are immersed. Chapters explore areas including: Screenwriting histories and myths of the profession Screenwriting as creative labor Screenwriters' working lives Screenwriting work and the how-to genre Screenwriting work and inequalities Drawing on historical and critical perspectives of mainstream screenwriting in the USA and UK, as well as valuable interviews with working screenwriters, this book presents a highly original and multi-faceted study of screenwriting as creative labor and professional practice. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorandfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9780203080771

Although children have proliferated in Spain's cinema since its inception, nowhere are they privileged and complicated in quite the same way as in the films of the 1970s and early 1980s, a period of radical political and cultural change for the nation as it emerged from almost four decades of repressive dictatorship under the rule of General Francisco Franco. In Inhabiting the In-Between: Childhood and Cinema in Spain's Long Transition, Sarah Thomas analyses the cinematic child within this complex historical conjuncture of a nation looking back on decades of authoritarian rule and forward to an uncertain future. Examining films from several genres by four key directors of the Transition - Carlos Saura, Antonio Mercero, Victor Erice, and Jaime de Arminan - Thomas explores how the child is represented as both subject and object, and self and other, and consistently cast in a position between categories or binary poles. She demonstrates how the cinematic child that materializes in this period is a fundamentally shifting, oscillating, ambivalent figure that points toward the impossibility of fully comprehending the historical past and the figure of the other, while inviting an ethical engagement with each.

Over 6000 different languages are used in the world today, but the conventions of media speak are far from universal and the complexities of translation are rarely acknowledged by the industry, audiences or scholars. Redressing this neglect, Speaking in Subtitles argues that the specific contingencies of translation are vital to screen media's global storytelling. Looking at a range of examples, from silent era intertitling to contemporary crowdsourced subtitling, and from avant-garde dubbing to the increasing practice of'fansubbing', Tessa Dwyer proposes that screen media itself is fundamentally translational field.

Two brand-new monologues in the Talking Heads series, as seen on BBC1 and iPlayer 'Given the opportunity to revisit the characters from Talking Heads I've added a couple more, both of them ordinary women whom life takes by surprise. They just about end up on top and go on, but without quite knowing how. Still, they're in good company, and at least they've made it into print.' Alan Bennett's twelve Talking Heads are acknowledged masterworks by one of our most highly acclaimed writers. Some thirty years after the original six, Bennett has written Two Besides, a pair of monologues. Each, in its way, is a devastating portrait of grief. In An Ordinary Woman, a mother suffers the inevitable consequences when she makes life intolerable for herself and her family by falling for her own flesh and blood; while The Shrine tells the story behind a makeshift roadside shrine, introducing us to Lorna, bearing witness in her high-vis jacket, the bereft partner of a dedicated biker with a surprising private life. The two new Talking Heads were recorded for the BBC during the exceptional circumstances of coronavirus lockdown in the spring of 2020, directed by Nicholas Hytner and performed by Sarah Lancashire and Monica Dolan. The book contains a substantial preface by Nicholas Hytner and an introduction to each, by Alan Bennett.

As entertaining as it is enlightening, Creating Dialogue for TV: Screenwriters Talk Television presents interviews with five Hollywood professionals who talk about all things related to dialogue - from naturalistic style to the building of characters to swearing and dialect. Screenwriters/showrunners David Mandel (Curb Your Enthusiasm, Veep), Jane Espenson (Buffy, Battlestar Galactica, Once Upon a Time), Robert Berens (Supernatural), Sheila Lawrence (Gilmore Girls, Ugly Betty, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel), and Doris Egan (Tru Calling, House, Reign) field a linguist's inquiries about the craft of writing dialogue. This book is for anyone who has ever wondered what creative processes and attitudes lie behind the words they encounter when tuning into their favourite television show. It provides direct insights into Hollywood writers' knowledge and opinions of how language is used in television narratives, and in doing so shows how language awareness, attitudes and the craft of using words are utilised to create popular TV series. The book will appeal to students and teachers in screenwriting, creative writing and linguistics as well as lay readers.

You've got an idea for the next great screenplay. Maybe you're just getting started or perhaps you've spent time with other screenwriting books, and you have your hero's journey, plot twists, reversals, and cat-saving scenes all worked out. Either way, what stands between you and an outstanding finished screenplay are the blank pages that you must fill with cinematic life, energy, conflict, and emotion. So how on Earth do you do that? The secret is scenewriting. This thorough and effective guide will help the beginner and the professional master the most critical and overlooked part of the screenwriting process: the art and craft of writing scenes. With step-by-step instruction, and numerous exercises, you will learn how to transform an outline into a fully-developed script. Learn how to prepare scenes for writing, construct sparkling, naturalistic dialogue, utilize scene description and the unique structure of the screenplay format to maximum advantage, and polish your scenes so that your idea becomes the script you always imagined it could be. Through scenewriting, great ideas become brilliant scripts.

The screenwriter's GPS for writing a great screenplay! Avoid the wrong turns, dead ends, gaping p(l)otholes, and other obstacles commonly encountered when writing a screenplay. The Screenwriter's Roadmap: 21 Ways to Jumpstart Your Story keeps you on route and helps you reach your final destination: a completed screenplay that's full of surprises, emotionally resonant, and ready for the marketplace. Neil Landau, an established Hollywood screenwriter and script doctor, provides 21 questions for you to ask yourself as you write, to help you nail down your screenplay's story structure, deepen its character arcs, bolster stakes, heighten suspense, and diagnose and repair its potential weaknesses. These 21 vital questions have been field-tested and utilized in the creation of some of Hollywood's biggest blockbusters and critically acclaimed films. Each chapter is augmented by end of chapter "homework" assignments, examples from recent blockbusters and timeless classic films, as well as interviews with some of Hollywood's most successful screenwriters including Scott Z. Burns (Contagion), Tony Gilroy (The Bourne Legacy), Laeta Kalogridis (Shutter Island), David Koepp (Spider Man), Jeff Nathanson (Catch Me If You Can), Eric Roth (Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close), David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight Rises), , Billy Ray (The Hunger Games), Melissa Rosenberg (the Twilight trilogy), Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air), and many others.

An imagination of possibilities, of miscalculations, of futures off-kilter "Probability is a chimera, its head is true, its tail a suggestion. Futurologists attempt to compel the head to eat the tail (ouroboros). Here, though, we will try to wag the tail." -Vilem Flusser Two years after his Vampyroteuthis Infernalis, the philosopher Vilem Flusser engaged in another thought experiment: a collection of twenty-two "scenarios for the future" to be produced as computer-generated media, or technical images, that would break the imaginative logjam in conceiving the social, political, and economic future of the universe. What If? is not just an "impossible journey" to which Flusser invites us in the first scenario; it functions also as a distorting mirror held up to humanity. Flusser's disarming scenarios of an Anthropocene fraught with nightmares offer new visions that range from the scientific to the fantastic to the playful and whimsical. Each essay reflects our present sense of understanding the world, considering the exploitation of nature and the dangers of global warming, overpopulation, and blind reliance on the promises of scientific knowledge and invention. What If? offers insight into the radical futures of a slipstream Anthropocene that have much to do with speculative fiction, with Flusser's concept of design as "crafty" or slippery, and with art and the immense creative potential of failure versus reasonable, "good" computing or calculability. As such, the book is both a warning and a nudge to imagine what we may yet become and be.

Winter is coming. Every Sunday night, millions of fans gather around their televisions to take in the spectacle that is a new episode of Game of Thrones. Much is made of who will be gruesomely murdered each week on the hit show, though sometimes the question really is who won't die a fiery death. The show, based on the Song of Fire and Ice series written by George R. R. Martin, is a truly global phenomenon. With the seventh season of the HBO series in production, Game of Thrones has been nominated for multiple awards, its cast has been catapulted to celebrity and references to it proliferate throughout popular culture. Often positioned as the grittier antithesis to J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Martin's narrative focuses on the darker side of chivalry and heroism, stripping away these higher ideals to reveal the greed, amorality and lust for power underpinning them. Fan Phenomena: Game of Thrones is an exciting new addition to the Intellect series, bringing together academics and fans of Martin's universe to consider not just the content of the books and HBO series, but fan responses to both. From trivia nights dedicated to minutiae to forums speculating on plot twists to academics trying to make sense of the bizarre climate of Westeros, everyone is talking about Game of Thrones. Edited by Kavita Mudan Finn, the book focuses on the communities created by the books and television series and how these communities envision themselves as consumers, critics and even creators of fanworks in a wide variety of media, including fiction, art, fancasting and cosplay.

With a foreword by Diane Negra and Jorie Lagerway As television has finally started to create more leading roles for women, the female antiheroine has emerged as a compelling and dynamic character type. Television Antiheroines looks closely at this recent development, exploring the emergence of women characters in roles typically reserved for men, particularly in the male-dominated genre of the crime and prison drama. The essays collected in Television Antiheroines are divided into four sections or types of characters: mafia women, drug dealers and aberrant mothers, women in prison, and villainesses. Looking specifically at shows such as Gomorrah, Mafiosa, The Wire, The Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy, Orange is the New Black, and Antimafia Squad, the contributors explore the role of race and sexuality and focus on how many of the characters transgress traditional ideas about femininity and female identity, such as motherhood. They examine the ways in which bad women are portrayed and how these characters undermine gender expectations and reveal the current challenges by women to social and economic norms. Television Antiheroines will be essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in crime and prison drama and the rising prominence of women in nontraditional roles.

The full scripts of award-winning Downton Abbey, season two including previously unseen commentary from Julian FellowesOpening in 1916, as the First World War rages across Europe, Season Two is the next dramatic installment of the much-loved, award-winning drama. The Crawley family and their servants play their parts on the front line and back at home as their lives are intensified by the strains of war.The shooting scripts give a fascinating view of how Julian Fellowes weaves his storylines of love, loss, and betrayal to captivate the audience. With key insights into the research and creative processes, this will appeal to fans and students alike.

A New History of British Documentary is the first comprehensive overview of documentary production in Britain from early film to the present day. It covers both the film and television industries and demonstrates how documentary practice has adapted to changing institutional and ideological contexts.

When Women Wrote Hollywood is a collection of 23 essays on the lives of female screenwriters from early Hollywood, whose bold, brash, brilliant words have enhanced our film experiences, but whose names have been left out of most film history textbooks. These essays explore the themes of their writing and the trajectories of each woman's career. From the more famous Anita Loos, Adela Rogers St. Johns and Lillian Hellman to the more obscure Gene Gauntier, Eve Unsell and Ida May Park, female screenwriters have created the stories we have loved for generation to generation including Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Ben Hur, and It's a Wonderful Life.

The screenplays to two films by one of the bright hopes of American independent film. Clerks is set in and about a convenience store in suburban New Jersey and revolves around the obsessions, love lives and friendships of the clerks who serve behind the counters. Chasing Amy - called 'comic Nirvana' by Rolling Stone - is about two friends who create a comic book together and how that relationship is tested when a woman comes between them. Kevin Smith has the ability to capture ordinary life in the raw and with a gentle humor that is completely captivating.