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Citizen Kane by Herman J. Mankiewicz


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101-greatest-screenplays

Collected Screenplays 1: Jokes / Gummo / julien donkey-boy


Harmony Korine - 2002
    This collection of three screenplays displays his defiantly unorthodox approach to film form, as well as the unclassifiable imaginative energy that drives all of his work.

Magnolia: The Shooting Script


Paul Thomas Anderson - 2000
    The complete Oscar RM -nominated screenplay by the writer/director of Boogie Nights, featuring an exclusive introduction by Anderson, and never-before-published interview in which he discusses the themes and relationships explored in Magnolia, plus a 16-page photo section with 45 color and b&w movie stills and behind-the-scenes photographs.

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.

Fight Club: The Screenplay


Chuck Palahniuk - 2001
    Together with Tyler Durden – part-time projectionist, banquet waiter, soap-maker and anarchic genius – he creates Fight Club, where he and men like him can get away from their work-dominated, consumer-driven, image-obsessed lives.Soon there are fight clubs in basement bars across the country; men with cuts, bruises, stitches and missing teeth wherever you look. Tyler Durden has become an urban legend – but when he invents Project Mayhem, things begin to escalate. There’s only one thing to do: shut down Fight Club. But have they created a monster they can't control?This full-cast BBC radio dramatisation of Chuck Palahniuk's visceral, unflinching novel stars Patrick Kennedy as the Narrator, Sam Hazeldine as Tyler and Elaine Cassidy as Marla.Cast:The Narrator...Patrick KennedyTyler Durden...Sam HazeldineMarla Singer... Elaine CassidyBig Bob...Martin ShermanDoctor/Boss...Nigel WhitmeyRecruit One...Danny MahoneyMechanic...John SchwabTed...Sam DaleGlenda...Jane SlavinChloe...Ayesha AntoineDramatised by Tracey Malone and Ed WhitmoreProduced by Heather LarmourDuration: 1 hour approx.

Ubik: The Screenplay


Philip K. Dick - 1985
    Dick's screenplay adaptation of one of his signature novels available for the first time in more than twenty years. Copies of the first edition of Ubik: the Screenplay now fetch more than $100 on the collector's market, when you can find them. In addition, the screenplay features an ending that differs markedly from that of the novel."Dick included far more parenthetical description and interpretation than can be standard for screenplays, and so we have here his considered, after-the-fact portraits of Glen Runciter, Ella Runciter, Joe Chip, Pat Conley, and Ubik itself. And too, with a facility that's scarce among novelists, he smoothly adapts his story to the wider, deeper ranges of the film medium. The Ubik 'ads' are much more effective as actual intrusions than as chapter headings, the soundtrack becomes a central element (and makes us wonder what music Dick would have chosen to complement some of his other novels), and he presents the dysfunctions in time and perception even more effectively when he imagines them enacted on a movie screen. In some ways, in fact, it almost seems as though we're getting a purer version of UBIK—something closer to the original conception than the text of the novel." -- Tim Powers, from his foreword

Winter Light


Ingmar Bergman - 1997
    

Red Zone: China's Challenge and Australia's Future


Peter Hartcher - 2021
    

Blue Surge


Rebecca Gilman - 2002
    What Rebecca Gilman makes of this familiar scenario is something startlingly real and compelling, delving deeply into the small space that can divide a feeling of hope from one of hopelessness, as Curt and Sandy both try to get a foothold in the American dream of a house, a job, a life, a relationship with another human being.Gilman's previous play, Boy Gets Girl, was acclaimed by Time magazine as the best play of 2000, saying that "with Spinning into Butter, her play about race relations on campus, Rebecca Gilman gave notice that she was a playwright to watch. And with this intense drama of a woman's encounter with a stalker, she became one to hail . . . It's not just a gripping play but also an important one." Marked by Gilman's characteristically sharp delineation of character, pitch-perfect dialogue, and effortless use of humor that is both biting and silly, Blue Surge is a worthy successor to these plays--an intimate look at the class struggle in America today as well as a brilliant example of the dramatic craft from one of today's most accomplished practitioners. It will have its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in the spring of 2001.

The Counselor: A Screenplay


Cormac McCarthy - 2013
    But this is no ordinary screenplay. This is a work of extraordinary imagination which draws on many of the themes of McCarthy's work as well as taking it to new dark places. It is also written with great descriptive passages counteracting the dialogue, so the reader is given the full experience of the McCarthy prose. It is the story of a lawyer, the Counselor, a man who is so seduced by the desire to get rich, to impress his fiancée Laura, that he becomes involved in a drug-smuggling venture that quickly takes him way out of his depth. His contacts in this are the mysterious and probably corrupt Reiner and the seductive Malkina, so exotic her pets of choice are two cheetahs. As the action crosses the Mexican border, things become darker, more violent and more sexually disturbing than the Counselor has ever imagined.

Boat of Longing


O.E. Rølvaag - 1974
    E. Rölvaag lyrically chronicles the experiences of Nils Vaag, a young Norwegian immigrant. Abandoning the life of a fisherman in Nordland, a region poor but full of mystical beauty, Nils emigrates to the New World in 1912. There he sweeps saloons, lives in a boardinghouse called "Babel" for the many languages used by its residents, and begins to find his way among the people of the city.The Boat of Longing was Rölvaag's favorite of all his books and the only one set in urban America. When it was first published in English in 1933, it received wide praise from American critics. This edition includes an introduction by Einar Haugen, professor emeritus of Scandinavian and Linguistics at Harvard University and author of a critical study of Rölvaag.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Screenplay


Graham Chapman - 1977
    In a series of sketches and animations, the Pythons recount scenes from the Grail legend in which the knights forsake their chorus line can-can dancing in Camelot for a higher aim. Typically, the Pythons set-up a 'historical' tale which is really a take on the modern world. Memorable scenes, like Graham Chapman's King Arthur battling with John Cleese's Black Knight until the latter is reduced limb by limb down to a speaking stump of a torso, capture both the hilarity and grotesque nature of brutality. In scene after scene King Arthur's men are led a merry chase through the countryside, encountering life on many different social levels. This screenplay edition contains just the script and is supplemented by stills from the film.

The Spanish Prisoner & The Winslow Boy


David Mamet - 1999
    His dialogue--abrasive, rhythmic--illuminates a modern aesthetic evocative of Samuel Beckett. His plots--surprising, comic, topical--have evoked comparisons to masters from Alfred Hitchcock to Arthur Miller. Here are two screenplays demonstrating the astounding range of Mamet's talents.         The Spanish Prisoner, a neo-noir thriller about a research-and-development cog hoodwinked out of his own brilliant discovery, demonstrates Mamet's incomparable use of character in a dizzying tale of twists and mistaken identity. The Winslow Boy, Mamet's revisitation of Terence Rattigan's  classic 1946 play, tells of a thirteen-year-old boy accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order and the tug of war for truth that ensues between his middle-class family and the Royal Navy. Crackling with wit, intelligent and surprising, The Spanish Prisoner and The Winslow Boy celebrate Mamet's unique genius and our eternal fascination with the extraordinary predicaments of the common man.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them: The Original Screenplay


J.K. Rowling - 2016
    Rowling's screenwriting debut is captured in this exciting hardcover edition of the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them screenplay.When Magizoologist Newt Scamander arrives in New York, he intends his stay to be just a brief stopover. However, when his magical case is misplaced and some of Newt's fantastic beasts escape, it spells trouble for everyone…Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them marks the screenwriting debut of J.K. Rowling, author of the beloved and internationally bestselling Harry Potter books. Featuring a cast of remarkable characters, this is epic, adventure-packed storytelling at its very best.Whether an existing fan or new to the wizarding world, this is a perfect addition to any reader's bookshelf.

The Granddaughter Project


Shaheen Chishti - 2021
    

The Hours


David Hare - 2002
    Dalloway -- a postmodern masterpiece whose minimal action takes place on a single June day in postwar London. The Hours progresses in fuguelike fashion: First we meet Clarissa Vaughan, a New York book editor dubbed "Mrs Dalloway" by her longtime friend and former lover Richard. Next, Cunningham presents Woolf herself, beginning work in 1923 on what is to become Mrs. Dalloway. And finally we are introduced to Laura Brown, a California housewife who is avidly reading Woolf's novel. Scenes from these three narratives are presented in recurrent identical succession: "Mrs. Dalloway," Mrs. Woolf, Mrs. Brown -- all bristling with connections and startling parallels. The "Mrs. Dalloway" strand is particularly rich, filled as it is with one-to-one correspondences to Woolf's novel. But the deepest and most important thing that The Hours shares with Mrs. Dalloway is "the feeling," as Woolf called it, "that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day." Cunningham's three women proceed through the day, through the hours, trying to keep themselves psychologically intact, like someone carrying a glass of water filled to the brim through a crowd and endeavoring not to spill it. They hesitate before plunging into the day because they know how hard it is to live in the world and remain identical with oneself. And they puzzle over a universal dilemma: how to bring the self into the world without its getting broken in the process. In The Hours, Michael Cunningham has explored this dilemma with an impressive and moving subtlety worthy of his great precursor. Benjamin Kunkel