Query: Screenplays as literature?--multiple responses

From: *Lou Coatney* <[email protected]>

If plays are literature, screenplays then qualify as such by definition.
(Shakespeare
  isn't literature?)

There may be major performance differences from the screenplay as written,
just as there
  can be for musical compositions ... and plays.

Lou Coatney
after July 1st 2013 to be living at
Bjerklundsbakken 22
1911 Flateby
Norway
[email protected]


www.CoatneyHistory.com
http://LCoat.tripod.com
(Free/educational mil/nav history boardgames, cardstock model ship plans,
etc.)

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From: *Hester Joyce* <[email protected]>
Date: Sun, Nov 3, 2013 at 5:06 PM

This recent publication may be of interest - a Special Issue of the
Australian online Journal TEXT featuring unpublished/unmade screenplays

http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue19/content.htm

Cheers

Hester Joyce
Senior Lecturer, Media: Screen + Sound
FHuSS  | La Trobe University | Bundoora VIC 3086
T: 03 9479 1422 | F: 03 9479 1434 | E: [email protected]| W:
www.latrobe.edu.au
facebook.com/latrobe

CRICOS Provider 00115M

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From: *Gerow Aaron* <[email protected]>


To add to Joanne Bernardi's post, screenplays have been published in Japan
as reading material since at least the 1920s. In the late 1930s, there was
even a "scenario literature" movement, backed by prominent critics like
Kitagawa Fuyuhiko (himself a famous modernist poet), which produced such
works as the 7-volume "Shinario bungaku zenshu" (1936-37). Another
12-volume set came out in 1955-1956 under the title "Nihon shinario bungaku
zenshu." Even today, the monthly journal "Shinario" publishes 3-4 scripts
an issue.

One aspect to note is that scenario literature included not only produced
screenplays but unproduced ones as well. Akutagawa Ryunosuke, the author of
Rashomon, wrote a couple of screenplays that were only meant to be read as
literature (we translated one in issue 22 of the Review of Japanese Culture
and Society). Prominent literary figures were involved with film from the
1920s, with Tanizaki Jun'ichiro writing scripts for Taikatsu (Joanne has
written about this), and Nobel Prize winner Kawabata Yasunari working on
the production of A Page of Madness (please refer to my book on the film).
Kawabata's script for the film was published at the time and is included in
his complete works.

There were debates about whether scripts were literature in the 1930s, but
while I cannot summarize the arguments here, they did involve very
intelligent discourse about the relation of film and word.

Aaron Gerow
Professor
Film Studies Program/East Asian Languages and Literatures
Director of Graduate Studies, East Asian Studies
Yale University
320 York Street, Room 311
PO Box 208236
New Haven, CT 06520-8236
USA
Phone: 1-203-432-7082
Fax: 1-203-432-6729
e-mail: [email protected]
website: www.aarongerow.com

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