Closet screenplay

Closet screenplay

Related to closet drama, a closet screenplay is a screenplay intended not to be produced/performed but instead to be read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group.

While any published, or simply read, screenplay might reasonably be considered a "closet screenplay," 20th and 21st century Japanese and Western writers have created a handful of film scripts expressly intended to be read rather than produced/performed. This class of prose fiction written in screenplay form is perhaps the most precise example of the closet screenplay.

This genre is sometimes referred to using a romanized Japanese neologism: "Lesescenario (レーゼシナリオ)" or, following Hepburn’s romanization of Japanese, sometimes “Rezeshinario.” A portmanteau of the German word Lesedrama ("read drama") and the English word scenario, this term simply means "closet scenario," or, by extension, "closet screenplay."[1]

Contents

Critical interest

Brian Norman, an assistant professor at Idaho State University, refers to James Baldwin's One Day When I Was Lost as a "closet screenplay."[2] The screenplay was written for a project to produce a movie, but the project suffered a setback. After that, the script was published as a literary work.

Lee Jamieson's article, "The Lost Prophet of Cinema: The Film Theory of Antonin Artaud"[3] discusses Artaud's three Lesescenarios (listed below) in the context of his "revolutionary film theory." And in French Film Theory and Criticism: 1907-1939[4], Richard Abel lists the following critical treatments of several of the Surrealist "published scenario texts" (36) listed in the example section below:

  • J.H. Matthews, Surrealism and Film (U of Michigan P, 1971), 51-76.
  • Steven Kovács, From Enchantment to Rage: The Story of Surrealist Cinema (Associated UP, 1980), 59-61, 157-76.
  • Linda Williams, Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (U of Illinois P, 1981), 25-33.
  • Richard Abel, "Exploring the Discursive Field of the Surrealist Film Scenario Text," Dada/Surrealism 15 (1986): 58-71.

Finally, in his article "Production's 'dubious advantage': Lesescenarios, closet drama, and the (screen)writer's riposte,"[5] Quimby Melton outlines the history of the Lesescenario form, situates the genre in a historical literary context by drawing parallels between it and Western "closet drama," and argues we might consider certain instances of closet drama proto-screenplays. The article also argues that writing these sorts of "readerly" performance texts is essentially an act of subversion whereby (screen)writers work in a performance mode only to intentionally bypass production and, thereby, (re)assert narrative representation's textual primacy and (re)claim a direct (re)connection with their audience.

The comments section of Melton's article also has an on-going discussion of the Lesescenario canon.[5] The list of examples below is based on "Production's 'dubious advantage,'" that discussion, and Melton's "Lesecenario Bibliography" at Google Docs.[6] The bibliography contains additional critical works concerned with individual Lesescenarios and/or the canon at-large.

Examples

Alphabetical by author last name.

A

  • The House, Man's Fate, Dedication Day (by James Agee)
  • Asakusa Park, The Life of a Stupid Man, Shadow, and Temptation (by Ryūnosuke Akutagawa)
  • Divine Comedy (by Haruhiko Arai, based on Kyojin Onishi's novel of the same name)
  • France America, or the Interrupted Film (by Robert Aron)
  • Eighteen Seconds, a screenplay, The Seashell and the Clergyman, Thirty Two, The Solar Plane, Two Nations on the Borders of Mongolia, The Master of Ballantrae (after the Robert Louis Stevenson novel of the same name), Flights, and The Butcher's Revolt (by Antonin Artaud)
  • Lost Children (by Marcel Aymé)

B

  • The Reader from Ames (by André Berge)
  • The Initiation (A Story of Adventure) (by François Berge)
  • The Second Departure (by Maurice Betz)
  • Le Dernier Empereur (by Jean-Richard Bloch)
  • Beautiful Weddings in the Street: A New Scenario on a Banal Theme (by Jacques Bonjean)
  • One Day, When I Was Lost: A Scenario Based on Alex Haley's The Autobiography of Malcolm X (by James Baldwin)
  • "Une Girafe" (by Luis Buñuel)
  • The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (by William S. Burroughs)

C

  • Secrets on the Island and Arletty, Young Woman from Dauphine (by Louis-Ferdinand Céline)
  • The End of the World, Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame and Atlantis (by Blaise Cendrars)
  • A Broken Foot: A Documentary (by Hendrik Cramer)

D

  • "The Reefs of Love," Midnight at Noon: A Study of Marvelous Modernity, and "There Are Bugs in the Roast Pork" (by Robert Desnos)
  • Pierre, or The Demon Unmasked (by André Desson and André Harlaire)
  • Savoir Vivre (by Jean-Paul Dreyfus and Bernar Lahy-Hollebecque)

G

H

J

K

L

N

O

  • The Birth of the Emperor/Record of Ancient Matters (by Hideo Osabe)

R

S

  • Don't Put a Dog Outside: A Film without Words (by Claude Sernet)

T

  • Whispering Moon, (by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki)
  • The Unconquerable People, The Doctor and the Devils, Rebecca's Daughters, The Beach of Falesá, Twenty Years A-Growing, Suffer Little Children, The Shadowless Man, and Me and My Bike (by Dylan Thomas)

W

  • Reality Is What You Can Get Away With and The Walls Came Tumbling Down (by Robert Anton Wilson)

References

  1. ^ Sanseido's Concise Dictionary of Katakana Words. Tokyo, Sanseido, 1994
  2. ^ Norman, Brian. “Reading a ‘Closet Screenplay’: Hollywood, James Baldwin’s Malcolms, and the Threat of Historical Irrelevance." African American Review 39.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2005): 10-18.[1]
  3. ^ Jamieson, Lee. “The Lost Prophet of Cinema: The Film Theory of Antonin Artaud" Senses of Cinema 44 (27 August 2007).[2]
  4. ^ Abel, Richard. French Film Theory and Criticism: 1907-1939 (Princeton UP, 1993)
  5. ^ Melton, Quimby. January 2010. "Production's 'dubious advantage': Lesescenarios, closet drama, and the (screen)writer's riposte." SCRIPTjr.nl 1.1. http://scriptjr.nl/issues/1.1/productions-dubious-advantage.php (accessed November 21, 2009) [3]
  6. ^ Melton, Quimby. 6 February 2011. "Lesescenario Bibliography." Google Docs. https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ARA6WIHgRcNMZGM2OGJxNWhfMjlmeHh0NHZnbg&hl=en (accessed February 06, 2011) [4]

External links


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Closet drama — A closet drama is a play that is not intended to be performed onstage, but read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group. A related form, the closet screenplay, developed during the 20th century. Form Any drama in a written… …   Wikipedia

  • Screenplay — This article is about the media object. For other uses, see Screenplay (disambiguation). Main article: Pre production See also: Screenwriting Sample from a screenplay, showing dialogue and action descriptions A screenplay or script is a written… …   Wikipedia

  • The Closet (2001 film) — For the 2007 Chinese film of the same title, see The Closet. Infobox Film name = The Closet (Le Placard) image size = caption = US DVD cover director = Francis Veber producer = Patrice Ledoux writer = Francis Veber narrator = starring = Daniel… …   Wikipedia

  • The Last Words of Dutch Schultz — infobox Book | name = The Last Words of Dutch Schultz title orig = translator = image caption = 1981 Seaver Books paperback edition. author = William S. Burroughs cover artist = country = United States language = English series = genre =… …   Wikipedia

  • Ubik — infobox Book | name = Ubik title orig = translator = image caption = Cover of first edition (hardcover) author = Philip K. Dick illustrator = cover artist = country = United States language = English series = genre = Science fiction novel… …   Wikipedia

  • Darius James — (aka Dr. Snakeskin) is the black American author of That s Blaxploitation: Roots of the Baadasssss Tude (Rated X by an All Whyte Jury), an unorthodox, semi autobiographical history of the blaxploitation film genre, and Negrophobia: An Urban… …   Wikipedia

  • The Grudge — Infobox Film name = The Grudge caption = The Movie Poster director = Takashi Shimizu producer = Sam Raimi Robert Tapert writer = Stephen Susco starring = Sarah Michelle Gellar Jason Behr KaDee Strickland Clea DuVall Bill Pullman Rosa Blasi music …   Wikipedia

  • Barbara Harris (actress) — Infobox Actor name = Barbara Harris imagesize = 180px caption = birthdate = birth date and age|1935|07|25 birthplace = Evanston, Illinois, U.S. tonyawards = Best Actress in a Musical 1967 The Apple Tree Barbara Harris (born July 25, 1935) is an… …   Wikipedia

  • Strangers on a Train (film) — Infobox Film name = Strangers on a Train imdb id = 0044079 writer = Patricia Highsmith (novel) Whitfield Cook (adaptation) Czenzi Ormonde (screenplay) Raymond Chandler (screenplay) Ben Hecht (uncredited) starring = Farley Granger Ruth Roman Kasey …   Wikipedia

  • Poltergeist (film) — Infobox Film name = Poltergeist caption = Poltergeist original theatrical poster director = Tobe Hooper producer = Frank Marshall Steven Spielberg writer = Steven Spielberg Michael Grais Mark Victor starring = Craig T. Nelson JoBeth Williams… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”