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Persona & Shame
Ingmar Bergman - 2002
He is known for masterpieces of controlled human emotion, exploring every facet of the personality in relentless detail. He wrote: "I had the possibility of corresponding with the world around me in a language that is literally spoken from soul to soul."These two screenplays, liberally illustrated with production stills featuring actors, including his favourite actress, ex wife, Liv Ullman, are classics of the screen. They will be sought after by film students, and lovers of his films, New interest in Bergman is being generated by the recent release of Faithless, Liv Ullman's 2001 masterpiece, with a screenplay by Bergman.Born in Sweden in 1918, Ingmar Bergman is still contributing to his canon of work.
Synecdoche, New York: The Shooting Script
Charlie Kaufman - 1900
A figure of speech inwhich a part is used for the whole, as in the screen for movies.From Charlie Kaufman, perhaps the most distinctive screenwritingvoice of our generation, comes a visual and philosophicadventure of epic proportions. Much as he did with hisgroundbreaking scripts for Being John Malkovich, Adaptation,and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kaufman twists andsubverts the form and language of film as he delves into themind of a man who, obsessed with his own mortality, sets outto construct a massive artistic enterprise that could give somemeaning to his life. Starring Philip Seymour Hoffman,Samantha Morton, Michelle Williams, Catherine Keener,Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest, Jennifer Jason Leigh, HopeDavis, and Tom Noonan, and directed by Kaufman,Synecdoche, New York is an epic story of grand artistic ambitionsand creative madness.This Newmarket Shooting Script® Book includes:Exclusive introduction by Charlie KaufmanComplete Shooting ScriptExclusive Q&AColor photo sectionComplete cast and crew credits
Johnny Mnemonic
William Gibson - 1981
He carries other people's memories, millions of them, downloaded into his brain... Working out of Beijing, he is hired to carry a package to the States. The hundreds of gigabytes stashed in his head are far beyond his capacity, but as long as he gets downloaded quickly they won't do him any permanent harm...But headaches are the least of Johnny's problems. The Americans aren't the only ones who want the data. The Yakuza are after Johnny too. Not all of him, though. All they need is his cryogenically frozen head...In Johnny Mnemonic, the science-fiction guru of our age brings his acid-drenched tale of the near future to the screen for the first time. Containing William Gibson's original short story, his full script and exclusive stills from the film, this classic of the cyberpunk era expresses the unique vision of the author who was the first to see his way into tomorrow...
Clerks & Chasing Amy
Kevin Smith - 1997
Clerks was the independent film success story of 1994, winning the Prix de la Jeunesse and the International Critics Week Award at Cannes, and the Filmmakers' Trophy at Sundance. Set in the everyday world of a New Jersey QuickStop and its adjacent video store, the film revolves around the obsessions, love lives, and friendships of the clerks. Janet Maslin of the New York Time called it "a buoyant comedy...and exuberant display of ingenuity," and Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times raves, "Clerks is boisterous and irreverently funny...an example of what is best and most hopeful about the American independent film scene."
The Apocalypse Now Book
Peter Cowie - 2000
At a screening at Cannes in May 1979, Francis Ford Coppola said simply, "There wasn't a truthful thing written about [the film] in four years." That year at Cannes, Apocalypse Now won the Palme d'Or, going on from there to worldwide acclaim and etching itself in the memories of audiences with unforgettable sequences like the dawn helicopter attack scored to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" or Lt. Colonel Kilgore's chilling "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." Here, generously illustrated with evocative stills from the film and revealing photographs from the set, is the story behind the movie where Vietnam met Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It is the extraordinary saga of Coppola and his crew and actors-who included Marlon Brando, Robert Duvall, Harvey Keitel, Martin Sheen, Dennis Hopper, and Harrison Ford -- battling hurricanes in the jungles of the Philippines, the calamity of a lead actor's heart attack, and crises both psychological and financial . . . in the end giving rise to a modern film classic.
Adventures in the Screen Trade
William Goldman - 1983
Two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter and the bestselling author of Marathon Man, Tinsel, Boys and Girls Together, and other novels, Goldman now takes you into Hollywood's inner sanctums...on and behind the scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All the President's Men, and other films...into the plush offices of Hollywood producers...into the working lives of acting greats such as Redford, Olivier, Newman, and Hoffman...and into his own professional experiences and creative thought processes in the crafting of screenplays. You get a firsthand look at why and how films get made and what elements make a good screenplay. Says columnist Liz Smith, "You'll be fascinated.
Almost Famous (Screenplays)
Cameron Crowe - 2000
Set in 1973 and starring Frances McDormand, Billy Crudup, and Noah Taylor, Crowe's new film tells the story of a fifteen-year-old boy whose dream of becoming a rock journalist comes true when Rolling Stone sends him on tour with the up-and-coming rock band Stillwater—loosely based on Led Zeppelin—over the objections of his protective mother. Crowe brings the same wry humor he brought to Jerry Maguire as well as the brilliant evocations of teen life that animated his earlier cult film Fast Times at Ridgemont High to chronicle and celebrate a pivotal moment in rock history—and one teenage boy's place in it.
Stanley Kubrick's Clockwork Orange
Stanley Kubrick - 1972
As Kubrick comments in his introduction: “I have always wondered if there might be a more meaningful way to present a book about a film. To make, as it were, a complete graphic representation of the film, cut by cut, with the dialogue printed in the proper place in relation to the cuts, so that within the limits of still photos and words, an accurate (and I hope interesting) record of a film might be available… This book represents that attempt.”Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick, based on the novel by Anthony Burgess.
Goodfellas: Screenplay
Nicholas Pileggi - 1990
Young Henry dreams that one day he too might be a professional 'wiseguy' - a 'goodfella'. His wishes come true with remarkable speed once he teams up with renowned hoodlum Jimmy Conway and his alarmingly psychotic pal Tommy DeVito. Henry embarks on an everyday life of crime which takes him from rags to gaudy riches, in and out of the federal penitentiary and under the unwelcome spotlight of the FBI. As the 1970s turn sour Henry finds himself at the sharp end of the cocaine trade, increasingly adrift from his extended mobster 'family' and forced to make a tough decision about his future . . .The film that re-established Martin Scorsese's eminence among American directors after years of professional difficulties, GoodFellas is a tour de force which lays bare the crude and venal motives which drive a happy band of thieves and murderers.
Rushmore
Wes Anderson - 1999
It is a refreshingly offbeat comedy about young Max Fish, a precocious pupil at a conservative private school. He is a live wire, a teenager full of madcap entrepreneurial schemes that usually in failure. His personal life becomes similarly complicated when he falls for his elegant teacher, Rosemary Cross, and finds himself vying for her favor with Herman Blume-who is portrayed in the film by Bill Murray-the wealthy father of two of his classmates. Max ultimately proves himself a figure of some tenacity as he negotiates the minefield of love, desire, and adolescence.At the Toronto Film Festival, Screen International called Rushmore "a real charmer filled with surprise twists and emotions that avoid sentimentality . . . A little gem."
Collected Screenplays 1: Blood Simple / Raising Arizona / Miller's Crossing / Barton Fink
Ethan Coen - 2002
Of the scripts included here, Barton Fink--an intense look at the psychological ruin of a New York playwright trying to make it in 1940s Hollywood--is a masterful culmination of these themes.
The Complete Fawlty Towers
John Cleese - 1988
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.
The Seinfeld Scripts: The First and Second Seasons
Jerry Seinfeld - 1998
George. Elaine. Kramer. We've followed their misadventures for nearly ten years on Thursday nights. Here, finally, are the scripts of the first two seasons that will take you back to the beginning of Seinfeld.Featuring the first 17 episodes ever aired, The Seinfeld Scripts contains all the great lines that have kept us laughing for years: the pilot episode, "The Seinfeld Chronicles," where it all began; George introduces his importer/exporter altar ego Art Vanderlay in "The Stakeout"; Kramer becomes obsessed with cantaloupe in "The Ex-Girlfriend"; Jerry and George meet Elaine's dad in "The Jacket"; is Jerry responsible for a poor Polish woman's death when he makes "The Pony Remark"?; Jerry and Elaine decide to become intimate again in "The Deal"; what will George do when he is banned from the executive bathroom in "The Revenge"?; and Jerry, George, and Elaine wait for a table in "The Chinese Restaurant."It's all here: the award-winning writing of Seinfeld, "the defining sitcom of our age". Created by Larry David and Jerry Seinfeld.Elaine: My roommate has Lyme disease. Jerry: Lyme disease? I thought she had Epstein-Barr syndrome? Elaine: She has this in addition to Epstein-Barr. It's like Epstein-Barr with a twist of Lyme disease. George: She calls me up at my office she says, "We have to talk." Jerry: The four worst words in the English language. Kramer: What a body. Yeeaaah...that's for me. Jerry: Yeah and you're just what she's looking for, too--a stranger, leering through a pair of binoculars ten floors up.