Query: screenplays as literature?--multiple responses

From: Lizie, Arthur <[email protected]>

Hi,

We just got a course proposal addressing this topic for our film studies
minor. The instructor is using "Script Culture and the American Screenplay"
by Kevin Alexander Boon as the primary text.

Arthur

Arthur Lizie, Ph.D.
Chair, Dept. of Communication Studies
Professor, Film, Video & Media Studies
Bridgewater State University - Maxwell Library 215J
508-531-2170 [email protected]
**********

From: *Paul Schulte* <[email protected]>

Hi Tony,

Yours is not a goofy question.  It has come up before.  I had an extended
debate with several librarians over this very issue.

Although I am from the theatre, I think it is a fallacy to think plays are
literature.  Teaching Shakespeare as literature has ruined Shakespeare for
more students than it has helped.  The worst way to approach a play is to
read it.  The best way is to see it in production.  Aristotle was trying to
classify what made a great play, not what made great literature.
Personally, I would see plays either taken out of literature courses or
replaced with productions of those plays.  Reading plays is an art form that
is both taught and learned.  Reading plays from the 17th century is painful
for everybody.  I speak from experience as a Ben Jonson scholar.
The primary excuse for reading the play rather than seeing a production or
doing a production is that teachers can do the reading at least.  With Ben
Jonson, no one understands the humor these days.

Screenplays are for a visual medium.  Show it, don't say it.  The first
movies had no dialogue.  Then there were title cards.  Finally sound.  Much
of the dialogue today is called 'laying pipe.'  The characters are laying
the necessary exposition that the audience needs to understand the
motivations of the characters.  This does not make for great literature.
There are very few screenplays with dialogue startling enough to perk up my
ears.  The few that do are adaptations of books or plays where someone else
has written the dialogue first.  Having said that, I do own a copy of Woody
Allen scripts that were put in book form and that I enjoyed, having first
seen the movie.  I vote that screenplays are NOT literature and should not
be read in any class other than the film school. I also vote that plays by
returned to the theatre department where they can be treated properly.

Paul Schulte
Arizona Educational Consultants
Gilbert, AZ

**********

From: *Kassel, Michael* <[email protected]>

I did a paper on Barry Levinsons "Avalon"

******

From: *Leo Enticknap* <[email protected]>

 Screenplays have been published in written form at least since Faber
and Faber started a series in the '70s and the Madison Center for Film
and Theater research started one (edited by Tino Balio, if I remember
correctly), based mainly on Warners script, at around the same
time.

Tony Jackson asks:

> if they aren't taught as lit, why not?

At that point I'm guessing that they were a particularly valuable source
for study and research, because the only way you could get to see the
films themselves were on a rented 16mm non-theatrical print (difficult
and expensive) or an off-air VHS (only available if you, or someone you
knew, had recorded the movie off-air, and thus only if it had been
broadcasted). In today's technological context, it is now so easy to get
hold of a digital copy of virtually every mainstream movie which
survives, that you wouldn't want to go to a written screenplay unless
you needed to specifically for some other reason.

While early draft screenplays are still an object of interest if they
differ from the
finished film significantly (e.g. the Faber edited screenplay of 'Greed'
documents in detail the scenes that in filmed form were burnt on
Thalberg's orders, and thus is all that remains of them), I'm guessing
that they are less so in comparison to stage plays in their written
form, because in the case of the latter they are interpreted in multiple
ways and by multiple performers (and are thus the definitive statement
of the initial author's personal vision), whereas most screenplays are
only filmed once and by one cast and crew (Gus van Sant's remake of
'Psycho' being the only exception that comes immediately to my
mind).

To take another analogy: I've just finished learning Reubke's
Sonata on the 94th Psalm. During that process I listened to several
recordings of it, with multiple performer/organ combinations. Virgil Fox
playing it on a monster Aeolian-Skinner megaorgan is going to sound very
different from me playing it on a little local church organ with only
one 32ft speaking stop (he puts his hands and feet in the right place,
for one thing!), yet without the written score we have no way of knowing
how he translated Reubke's composition into an actual performance; there
is no common denominator for analysing and understanding the creative
decisions that went in to the several dozen recoridngs of this piece
that exist. But a written screenplay (especially if it's an initial
draft, and not a cutting continuity) is not going to tell us much about
what ends up on the screen, especially as the screenwriter is just one
of many creative forces involved, in most cases. It will tell us
something meaningful about the overall production process when used in
conjunction with other evidence, but studying it in isolation is
probably not going to be a very useful exercise in the case of most
films.

Leo

---
Leo Enticknap
Institute of Communications Studies
2.35,
Clothworkers' Building North
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
United
Kingdom
Tel. +44 (0)113 343 5853 - office, direct line
Fax +44 (0)113
343 5808
Skype: leo_enticknap
Web: Leo on the UoL/ICS Website [1] | on
academia.edu [2] | personal website [3]
NEW BOOK: Film Restoration [4]
(forthcoming, Palgrave Macmillan)
Links:
------
[1]
http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/people/leo-enticknap
[2]
http://leeds.academia.edu/enticknap
[3] http://www.enticknap.net
[4]
http://www.palgrave.com/products/title.aspx?pid=344520

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