Usual Suspects


Christopher McQuarrie - 1999
    One of a hand-picked selection of some of the most popular and cult-worthy titles on Faber and Faber's extensive list of film scripts.

The Underpants


Steve Martin - 2002
    One Sunday morning they fall to her ankles right in the middle of town--a public scandal! Mortified, Theo swears to keep her at home until she can find some less unruly undies. Amid this chaos he's trying to rent a room in their flat. The prospective lodgers have some underlying surprises of their own. In The Underpants, Steve Martin brings his comic genius and sophisticated literary style to Carl Sternheim's classic 1910 farce. His hilarious new version was staged by Artistic Director Barry Edelstein, and opened in March '02 on Off-Broadway to critical acclaim.

Four Screenplays: Studies in the American Screenplay


Syd Field - 1994
    In a field being transformed by technology, Syd  Field shows you what works and why and how to find  new ways to create a truly outstanding film using  four extraordinary examples: Thelma &  Louise, Terminator 2: Judgement  Day, The Silence Of The  Lambs, and Dances With  Wolves.

The Rivals


Richard Brinsley Sheridan - 1775
    Two of them—The School for Scandal and The Rivals—are among the funniest in the English language.The Rivals, brimming with false identities and with romantic entanglements carried on amid a cloud of parental disapproval, satirizes the pretentiousness and sentimentality of the age. It features a cast of memorable characters, among them the lovely Lydia Languish, whose pretty head has been filled with nonsense from romantic novels; Capt. Jack Absolute, a young officer in love with Lydia; Sir Anthony Absolute, Jack's autocratic father; Sir Lucius O'Trigger, a fiery Irishman; and Jack's provincial neighbor, Bob Acres, a bumptious but lovable country squire in love with Lydia.Hoping to win Lydia's affection, Captain Jack woos the pretty miss by pretending to be a penniless ensign named Beverley, an act that nearly incites a duel with Acres. His actions also provoke serious objections from Lydia's aunt, Mrs. Malaprop, a misspeaking matron whose ludicrous misuse of words gave the English language a new term: malapropism. Ultimately, the hilarious complications are resolved in a radiant comic masterpiece that will entertain and delight theater devotees and students of English drama alike.

Into the Woods


Stephen Sondheim - 1987
    Henry III, Time

This is Where I Leave You


Jonathan Tropper - 2003
    There is, however, one conspicuous absence: Judd's wife, Jen, whose affair with his radio- shock-jock boss has recently become painfully public. Simultaneously mourning the demise of his father and his marriage, Judd joins his dysfunctional family as they reluctantly sit shiva and spend seven days and nights under the same roof. The week quickly spins out of control as longstanding grudges resurface, secrets are revealed and old passions are reawakened. Then Jen delivers the clincher: she's pregnant...“Often sidesplitting, mostly heartbreaking...[Tropper is] a more sincere, insightful version of Nick Hornby, that other master of male psyche.”—USA Today NOW A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE STARRING JASON BATEMAN, TINA FEY, JANE FONDA, AND ADAM DRIVER

Arsenic and Old Lace


Joseph Kesselring - 1939
    

Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story


John Yorke - 2013
    Many of us love to tell them, and even dream of making a living from it too. But what is a story? Hundreds of books about screenwriting and storytelling have been written, but none of them ask 'Why?' Why do we tell stories? And why do all stories function in an eerily similar way? John Yorke has been telling stories almost his entire adult life, and the more he has done it, the more he has asked himself why? Every great thinker or writer has their theories: Aristotle, David Hare, Lajos Egri, Robert McKee, Gustav Freytag, David Mamet, Christopher Booker, Charlie Kaufman, William Goldman and Aaron Sorkin - all have offered insightful and illuminating answers. Here, John Yorke draws on these figures and more as he takes us on a historical, philosophical, scientific and psychological journey to the heart of all storytelling.What he reveals is that there truly is a unifying shape to narrative - one that echoes the great fairytale journey into the woods, and one, like any great art, that comes from deep within. Much more than a 'how to write' book, Into the Woods is an exploration of this fundamental structure underneath all narrative forms, from film and television to theatre and novel-writing. With astonishing detail and wisdom, John Yorke explains to us a phenomenon that, whether it is as a simple fable, or a big-budget 3D blockbuster, most of us experience almost every day of our lives.

Seabiscuit: The Screenplay


Gary Ross - 2003
    Now, here is the complete shooting script of this extraordinary film from Universal Pictures, Dreamworks Pictures, and Spyglass Entertainment, featuring a foreword from "Seabiscuit" author Laura Hillenbrand and thirty full-color still photos from the motion picture. An American epic of triumph and perseverance set during the Great Depression, this stunning adaptation brilliantly dramatizes the story of the three men and the down-and-out racehorse that took them and the entire nation on the ride of a lifetime.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri


Martin McDonagh - 2018
    When his second-in-command, Officer Dixon, a mother's boy with a penchant for violence, gets involved, the battle between Mildred and Ebbing's law enforcement threatens to engulf the town.Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri is a darkly comedic drama from Martin McDonagh.The film won Best Drama Motion Picture - Drama and Best Screenplay at the Golden Globes 2018.

William Shakespeare's The Phantom of Menace


Ian Doescher - 2015
    The entire saga starts here, with a thrilling tale featuring a disguised queen, a young hero, and two fearless knights facing a hidden, vengeful enemy.'Tis a true Shakespearean drama, filled with sword fights, soliloquies, and doomed romance... all in glorious iambic pentameter and coupled with twenty gorgeous Elizabethan illustrations. Hold onto your mini-chlorians: The play's the thing, wherein you'll catch the rise of Anakin!

Chinatown


Robert Towne - 1998
    Jake Gittes is a successful 'bedroom dick': a private eye specialising in cases of marital infidelity. Paradoxically he might also be the last truly ethical man in a corrupt town. Lured into an investigation of the death-by-drowning of City Water Commissioner Hollis Mulwray, Gittes gets more than usually entwined with his new client, Mulwray's enigmatic widow Evelyn. He then finds himself crossing swords with Evelyn's redoubtable father, the aging business magnate Noah Cross, who has professional and personal reasons of his own for wanting both Hollis and Evelyn silenced.Academy Award-winner for Best Original Screenplay of 1974, Robert Towne's Chinatown is widely regarded as the finest American movie script of the post-war years. Complex in narrative design, infused with the sordid real-life history of Los Angeles' economic growth and unmistakably adult in its updating of the trademark violence and sexual intrigue of film noir, on the page Chinatown still shines - and cuts - like a blade.

her


Spike Jonze - 2013
    Heartbroken after the end of a long relationship, he becomes intrigued with a new, advanced operating system, which promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right, individual to each user. Upon initiating it, he is delighted to meet "Samantha" , a bright, female voice, who is insightful, sensitive and surprisingly funny. As her needs and desires grow, in tandem with his own, their friendship deepens into an eventual love for each other.

Man of La Mancha


Dale Wasserman - 1966
    That current is best identified by its catch-labels--Theater of the Absurd, Black Comedy, the Theater of Cruelty--which is to say the theater of alienation, of moral anarchy and despair. To the practitioners of those philosophies Man of La Mancha must seem hopelessly naive in its espousal of illusion as man's strongest spiritual need, the most meaningful function of his imagination. But I've no unhappiness about that. "Facts are the enemy of truth," says Cervantes-Don Quixote. And that is precisely what I felt and meant."--Dale Wasserman, from the Preface.

Writing Home


Alan Bennett - 1994
    This revised and updated edition includes new material from the author, including more recent diaries and his introduction to his Oscar-nominated screenplay for The Madness of King George. A chronicle of one of the most important literary careers of the twentieth century, Writing Home is a classic history of a life in letters.