The Talented Mr. Ripley: A Screenplay
Anthony Minghella - 2000
A young man with no direction of his own, Ripley has been commissioned by Dickie's father, a wealthy industrialist, to journey to Italy and persuade the prodigal playboy home to America.However, on arrival, Ripley is instantly captivated with Dickie's charmed existence: the Amalfi coast, the jaunts to Rome, the first-class hotels, and the beautiful expatriate who completes the triangle. Dickie is amused by his new acquaintance -- never suspecting the dangerous extremes to which Ripley will go to make this lifestyle his own.
Writing Movies for Fun and Profit: How We Made a Billion Dollars at the Box Office and You Can, Too!
Robert Ben Garant - 2011
Well…maybe not the best of them, but certainly the most successful. (If you’re aiming to win an Oscar, this is not the book for you!) But if you can type a little, and can read and speak English—then you too can start turning your words into stacks of money! This is the only screenwriting book you will ever need (because all other ones pretty much suck). In these pages, Garant and Lennon provide the kind of priceless tips you won’t find anywhere else, including: -The art of pitching -Getting your foot in the door -Taking notes from movie stars -How to get fired and rehired -How to get credit and royalties! And most important: what to buy with the huge piles of money you’re going to make! Writing Movies for Fun and Profit will take you through the highs and lows of life as a professional screenwriter. From the highs of hugging Gisele Bündchen and getting kung fu punched by Jackie Chan to the soul-crushing lows of Herbie: Fully Loaded. Read this book and you’ll have everything you need to make your first billion the old-fashioned way—by “selling out” in show business! A portion of the authors’ proceeds from this book are being contributed to the USO of Metropolitan Washington, a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to serving active duty military members and their families in the greater Washington, DC, region.
The Golden Turkey Awards
Harry Medved - 1980
Here is a celebration (illustrated in glorious black and white) of the best of the worst cinematic catastrophes -- the shimmering stars, the dreadful directors, and the dubious dialogue that made these movies so abysmal.Remember John Travolta as a melting monster in The Devil's Rain? Henry Fonda as a fearless bee battler in The Swarm? Mary Tyler Moore as a heartsick nun in love with Elvis Presley in Change of Habit? How about Scuttlebutt the Talking Duck in Everything's Ducky?See if you can guess the winners in each of the 30 award categories -- from The Most Obnoxious Child Performer of All Time to the Life Achievement Awards: Worst Actor, Actress, and Director. Applaud the winner in a national poll for The (very) Worst Film of All Time and The Worst Films Compendium, an annotated index of the best of the unbelievable baddies.MC'd by the Brothers Medved--Harry, author of The Fifty Worst Films of All Time, and Michael, author of What Really Happened to the Class of '65? -- The Golden Turkey Awards is a cornucopia of cinemediocrity.WARNING: Over 425 actual films are described in this book, but one is a complete hoax. Can you find it?
The Making of Outlander: The Official Guide to Seasons 1 & 2
Tara Bennett - 2016
Spanning the first two seasons of the Starz network sensation, The Making of Outlander leads readers behind the scenes and straight into the action as cast members, writers, producers, musicians, costume designers, set decorators, technicians, and more share the many adventures and challenges they face to make this sweeping saga come alive on the screen.In exclusive interviews, the show's stars, including Caitriona Balfe (Claire), Sam Heughan (Jamie), and Tobias Menzies (Frank Randall/Black Jack Randall), discuss the daunting task of embodying some of fiction's most beloved characters--and satisfying the high expectations of devoted Outlander readers. Executive producer and showrunner Ronald D. Moore looks at the inner workings of the writers' room, shares his crew's travels to the authentic overseas locations, and chronicles the brainstorming, building, breakneck pacing, and boundless energy that make everything from the show's architecture to its outfits period-perfect. In addition, the book examines all the Outlander episodes through exclusive interviews with their writers and directors, providing fascinating facts into the making of each hour.Best of all, The Making of Outlander offers a veritable feast of lavish photographs--including an array of images spotlighting the stars in all their characters' grandeur and up-close personal portraits. Featuring an introduction by Diana Gabaldon herself, this magnificent insider's look at the world of the Outlander TV series is the companion all fans will want by their side.
Hedwig and the Angry Inch: Complete Text & Lyrics to the Smash Rock Musical – Broadway Edition
John Cameron Mitchell - 2014
This new edition contains the updated book and lyrics from the smash Broadway production starring Neil Patrick Harris of John Cameron Mitchell and Stephen Trask’s landmark American musical.
Licence to Thrill: A Cultural History of the James Bond Films
James Chapman - 1999
The saga of Britain's best-loved martini hound (who we all know prefers his favorite drink "shaken, not stirred") has adapted to changing times for four decades without ever abandoning its tried-and-true formula of diabolical international conspiracy, sexual intrigue, and incredible gadgetry.James Chapman expertly traces the annals of celluloid Bond from its inauguration with 1962's Dr. No through its progression beyond Ian Fleming's spy novels to the action-adventure spectaculars of GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies. He argues that the enormous popularity of the series represents more than just the sum total of the films' box-office receipts and involves questions of film culture in a wider sense.Licence to Thrill chronicles how Bond, a representative of a British Empire that no longer existed in his generation, became a symbol of his nation's might in a Cold War world where Britain was no longer a primary actor. Chapman describes the protean nature of Bond villains in a volatile global political scene--from Soviet scoundrels and Chinese rogues in the 1960s to a brief flirtation with Latin American drug kingpins in the 1980s and back to the Chinese in the 1990s. The book explores how the movies struggle with changing societal ethics--notably, in the evolution in the portrayal of women, showing how Bond's encounters with the opposite sex have evolved into trysts with leading ladies as sexually liberated as Bond himself.The Bond formula has proved remarkably durable and consistently successful for roughly a third of cinema's history--half the period since the introduction of talking pictures in the late 1920s. Moreover, Licence to Thrill argues that, for the foreseeable future, the James Bond films are likely to go on being what they have always been, a unique and very special kind of popular cinema.
Natural Born Killers. The Original Screenplay
Quentin Tarantino - 1995
Mickey and Mallory Knox, outlaw lovers on the run, go on a killing spree of startling viciousness -- and find themselves transformed into cult celebrities by the tabloid media. The film, directed by Oliver Stone, departed significantly from Tarantino's original screenplay, so much so that Tarantino removed his name from the screenplay credits. Now available in America for the first time, the original screenplay offers fans and film buffs of all stripes the opportunity to compare Tarantino's original vision with Stone's version of the story of Mickey and Mallory.
The United States of Australia: An Aussie Bloke Explains Australia to Americans
Cameron Jamieson - 2014
Written for Americans, but equally amusing to anyone visiting the shores of the Great Southern Land, this book examines the relationship between Australia and the U.S., including how Australians view their American cousins. The author has plenty of experience of working and dealing with Americans. He is married to an American nurse and has lived his life within the massive cultural influence that America has shared with Australia since the Second World War. The author’s stories are brimming with empathy and jokes for his American audience. The book is written from the opinion of an Aussie Bloke and the easy-to-digest chapters are just long enough to leave the reader smiling and well informed.Topics include Blokes and Sheilas, Bloody Foster’s, Dangerous Creatures, Talking to Dogs, The GAFA, Speaking Strail-yun and Working for the Queen. Confused? You won’t be after reading this book!
Visit to a Small Planet
Gore Vidal - 1956
Visit to a Small Planet was first presented on February 7, 1957 at the Booth Theatre, New York City.The action of the play takes place in the house of Roger Spelding outside Manassas, Virginia.The time is next summer.Act IEarly evening of a summer's day.Act IIScene 1: The next morning.Scene 2: That evening.Act IIIAn hour later.
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues & My Own Private Idaho
Gus Van Sant - 1993
My Own Private Idaho charts the pilgrimage of a narcoleptic hustler who is searching for his long-lost mother in a world absent of love.
Dunkirk
Christopher J. Nolan - 2017
With Dunkirk, Nolan has gone back into the past and brought to life one of the momentous events of the twentieth-century - the evacuation of British troops from Dunkirk, telling the tale by land, sea, and sky.Dunkirk opens as hundreds of thousands of British and Allied troops are surrounded by enemy forces. Trapped on the beach with their backs to the sea, they face an impossible situation as the enemy closes in.The film features a prestigious cast, including Kenneth Branagh, Cillian Murphy, and newcomer Fionn Whitehead, with Mark Rylance and Tom Hardy.The screenplay is accompanied by a conversation about the film between Christopher Nolan and Jonathan Nolan, as well as selected storyboards.
The Magic Lantern
Ingmar Bergman - 1987
. . . At the editing table, when I run the strip of film through, frame by frame, I still feel that dizzy sense of magic of my childhood.” Bergman, who has conveyed this heady sense of wonder and vision to moviegoers for decades, traces his lifelong love affair with film in his breathtakingly visual autobiography, The Magic Lantern.More grand mosaic than linear account, Bergman’s vignettes trace his life from a rural Swedish childhood through his work in theater to Hollywood’s golden age, and a tumultuous romantic history that includes five wives and more than a few mistresses. Throughout, Bergman recounts his life in a series of deeply personal flashbacks that document some of the most important moments in twentieth-century filmmaking as well as the private obsessions of the man behind them. Ambitious in scope yet sensitively wrought, The Magic Lantern is a window to the mind of one of our era’s great geniuses.“[Bergman] has found a way to show the soul’s landscape . . . . Many gripping revelations.”—New York Times Book Review“Joan Tate’s translation of this book has delicacy and true pitch . . . The Magic Lantern is as personal and penetrating as a Bergman film, wry, shadowy, austere.”—New Republic“[Bergman] keeps returning to his past, reassessing it, distilling its meaning, offering it to his audiences in dazzling new shapes.”—New York Times“What Bergman does relate, particularly his tangled relationships with his parents, is not only illuminating but quite moving. No ‘tell-all’ book this one, but revealing in ways that much longer and allegedly ‘franker’ books are not.”—Library Journal
Before Sunrise & Before Sunset: Two Screenplays
Richard Linklater - 2005
They are immediately attracted. Despite knowing this may be the only time they will see each other, in the next few hours in the city of Vienna, they share everything and promise to meet again. Nearly a decade later, Jesse, now a novelist on a publicity tour, sees Celine in a bookstore in Paris. Again their time is short, and they spend it reestablishing the connection they experienced on their first meeting. Romantic, poignant, understated, and often profound, these two screenplays are sure to become classics in their own right.
Lulu on the Bridge
Paul Auster - 1998
It is the story of Izzy and Celia, two lonely, wounded, and mismatched strangers, transformed into soul mates by the uncanny powers of a phosphorescent stone. Destiny, as well as some bizarre and near-tragic circumstances, conspire to keep the lovers apart. But the audience and reader are privy to a grand and surprising finale that explains all. Thought-provoking, intriguing, and utterly romantic, Lulu on the Bridge offers a lyrical meditation on what distinguishes chance from fate, reality from illusion, and life from death. Following on the success of the screenplay cornpanion to Smoke and Blue in the Face, this book contains the shooting script; an interview with Paul Auster by Rebecca Prime; interviews with the producer, costume designer, editor, director of photography, and production designer; and stills from the film.