Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1. In Scott MacDonald, ed., Screen Writings: Scripts and Texts by Independent Filmmakers (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), p. 22. 2. In MacDonald, p. 19. 3. See in particular Steven Maras, Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice (London: Wallflower, 2009), p. 82. 4. Tom Stempel, FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1991), p. 62. 5. Marc Norman, What Happens Next: A History of American Screenwriting (London: Aurum, 2008), p. 42. 6. Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund, The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930–1960 (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1980). 7. Lizzie Francke, Script Girls: Women Screenwriters in Hollywood (London: British Film Institute, 1994). 8. Richard Corliss, Talking Pictures: Screenwriters in the American Cinema [1974] (New York: Overlook, 1985). 9. David Bordwell, The Way Hollywood Tells It: Story and Style in Modern Movies (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006); Kristin Thompson, Storytelling in the New Hollywood: Understanding Classical Narrative Technique (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). 10. Maras, pp. 1–2. 11. David Bordwell, Janet Staiger and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985); Janet Staiger, ‘Blueprints for Feature Films: Hollywood’s Continuity Scripts’, in Tino Balio (ed.), The American Film Industry, rev. ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), pp. 173–92. 12. Alexander Schwarz, Der Geschriebene Film: Drehbücher des Deutschen und Russischen Stummfilms (Munich: Diskurs Film, 1994). 13. Colin Crisp, The Classic French Cinema, 1930–1960 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993). 14. Kristin Thompson, ‘Early Alternatives to the Hollywood Mode of Production: Implications for Europe’s Avant-Gardes’, in Lee Grieveson and Peter Krämer (eds), The Silent Cinema Reader (London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 349–67. 15. Staiger, ‘Blueprints’, p. 178, n. 8 and n. 9. 16. For an extensive discussion, see Maras, pp. 117–29. 17. Claudia Sternberg, Written for the Screen: The American Motion-Picture Screenplay as Text (Tübingen: Stauffenburg Verlag, 1997), pp. 71–76. 18. Sternberg, p. 74. 19. Torey Liepa, ‘Entertaining the Public Option: The Popular Film Writing Movement and the Emergence of Writing for the American Silent Cinema’, 239 240 Notes in Jill Nelmes (ed.), Analysing the Screenplay (London: Routledge, 2011), pp. 15–16. 20. Maras, p. 91. 21. John Emerson and Anita Loos, How to Write Photoplays (New York: James A. McCann, 1920), p. 19. 22. The New Stenographer, scenario by J. Stuart Blackton [1911], Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 23. Maras, p. 91. 24. Frances Marion, How to Write and Sell Film Stories (New York: Covici-Friede, 1937), p. 372. 25. Janet Staiger, ‘Dividing Labor for Production Control: Thomas Ince and the Rise of the Studio System’, Cinema Journal 18.2 (1979), p. 20, emphasis added. 26. B. F. Barrett, ‘A Talk with C. Gardner Sullivan’, Motography 16.23 (1916), p. 1237; quoted in Torey Liepa, ‘The Devil in the Details: Thomas Ince, Intertitles, and the Institutionalization of Writing in American Cinema’, in Cynthia Lucia, Roy Grundmann, and Art Simon, (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell History of American Film, vol. 1: Origins to 1928 (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2012), p. 279. 27. Ann Martin and Virginia M. Clark, ed., What Women Wrote: Scenarios, 1912–1929 (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1987), p. viii. 28. Marion, p. 374. 29. Janet Staiger, ‘The Hollywood Mode of Production, 1930–60’, in David Bordwell, Janet Staiger, and Kristin Thompson, The Classical Hollywood Cinema: Film Style and Mode of Production to 1960 (London: Routledge, 1985), p. 146. 30. Maras, p. 91. 31. Ibid. 32. Broadway (Universal, 1929), Screen Play and Dialogue Arrangement by Edward T. Lowe, Jr., Cinema-Television Library, USC. 33. Gold Diggers of Broadway (WB, 1929). Undated continuity, ‘Screen Play by Robert Lord’, AMPAS unpublished scripts collection, MHL. 34. Maras, p. 86. 35. Steven Maras, ‘In Search of “Screenplay”: Terminological Traces in the Library of Congress Catalog of Copyright Entries: Cumulative Series, 1912–20’ (2009), Film History 21.4, pp. 346–58. 36. Maras, Screenwriting,p.6. 37. Facsimile reproduction in The Bride of Frankenstein, Universal Filmscripts series: Classic horror films—Vol. 2 (Absecon, NJ: MagicImage Filmbooks, 1989). 38. Jeff Rush and Cynthia Baughman, ‘Language as Narrative Voice: The Poetics of the Highly Inflected Screenplay’, Journal of Film and Video 49.3 (1997), p. 29. 39. Claus Tieber, Schreiben für Hollywood: Das Drehbuch im Studiosystem (Vienna: Lit Verlag GmbH, 2008). 40. For critiques of the ‘blueprint’ analogy, see Maras, Screenwriting, pp. 123–29; Steven Price, The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010), pp. 44–47; Kathryn Millard, ‘After the Typewriter: The Screenplay in a Digital Era’, Journal of Screenwriting 1.1 (2010), pp. 14–15. Notes 241 41. Jean-Claude Carrière, The Secret Language of Film, trans. Jeremy Leggatt (London: Faber, 1995), p. 150. 42. Osip Brik, ‘From the Theory and Practice of a Script Writer’, trans. Diana Matias, Screen 15.3 (1974), p. 99. 43. Nathalie Morris, ‘Unpublished Scripts in BFI Special Collections: A Few Highlights’, Journal of Screenwriting 1.1 (2010), pp. 197–98. 44. Ian W. Macdonald and Jacob U. U. Jacob, ‘Lost and Gone for Ever? The Search for Early British Screenplays’, Journal of Screenwriting 2.2 (2011), p. 162. 45. Thompson, ‘Early Alternatives’, p. 350. 1 Prehistory of the Screenplay 1. Steven Maras, Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice (London: Wallflower, 2009), p. 29. 2. Tom Stempel, FrameWork: A History of Screenwriting in the American Film, 2nd ed. (New York: Continuum, 1991), p. 5. 3. Edward Azlant, The Theory, History, and Practice of Screenwriting, 1897–1920, diss. (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University Microfilms International, 1980), p. 79. 4. Robert C. Allen, Vaudeville and Film 1895–1915: A Study in Media Interaction (New York: Arno Press, 1980), pp. 159, 212–13; cited in Tom Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, the Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, in Thomas Elsaesser, ed., Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative (London: BFI, 1990), p. 56. 5. Azlant, p. 65. 6. Ian W. Macdonald, ‘Disentangling the Screen Idea’, Journal of Media Practice 5.2 (2004), pp. 89–99. 7. Maras, pp. 171–72. 8. Quoted in Stempel, p. 7. 9. Anon., ‘The Confessions of a Scenario Editor’, Photoplay (August 1914), p. 166. 10. Cecil Hepworth, ‘Those Were the Days’, Penguin Film Review 6 (April 1948), pp. 33–39; reprinted in Harry M. Geduld, ed., Film Makers on Film Making (Indiana UP, 1967), pp. 26–32. 11. Stempel, p. 6. 12. Marshall Deutelbaum, ‘Structural Patterning in the Lumière Film’, Wide Angle 3:i (1979), p. 30. 13. Ibid., p. 35. 14. Georges Sadoul, ‘Lumière—the Last Interview’, Sight & Sound 17 (Summer 1948), pp. 68–70; quoted in Geduld, p. 24. 15. David Robinson, Georges Méliès: Father of Film Fantasy (London: BFI, 1993), p. 22. 16. Deutelbaum, p. 35. 17. Ibid. 18. Kemp R. Niver, The First Twenty Years: A Segment of Film History (Los Angeles: Artisan Press, 1968), p. 8. 19. Stempel, p. 3. 20. Patrick Loughney, ‘From Rip Van Winkle to Jesus of Nazareth: Thoughts on the Origins of the American Screenplay’, Film History 9.iii (1997), p. 279. 242 Notes 21. Ibid., p. 278. 22. Terry Ramsaye, A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture through 1925 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1926), p. 288. 23. Ibid., pp. 370, 366. 24. Stempel, p. 3. Loughney’s research shows that Jefferson’s Rip Van Winkle in fact has a stronger claim than either. 25. Loughney, p. 280. 26. Azlant, p. 64. 27. Noël Burch, ‘Primitivism and the Avant-Gardes: A Dialectical Approach’, in Philip Rosen, ed., Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 486–89. 28. Charles Musser, ‘The Early Cinema of Edwin Porter’, Cinema Journal 19.i (1979), p. 23. 29. George C. Pratt, Spellbound in Darkness: Readings in the History and Criti- cism of the Silent Film, vol. 1 (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 1966), pp. 36–37; Janet Staiger, ‘Mass-Produced Photoplays: Economic and Signifying Practices in the First Years of Hollywood’, Wide Angle 4.iii (1980), p. 18. 30. See Charles Musser, Thomas A. Edison Papers: A Guide to Motion Picture Catalogs by American Producers and Distributors, 1894–1908: A Microfilm Edition (Frederick, MD: University Publications of America, 1985), esp. pp. 11–15. 31. Complete Illustrated Catalog of Moving Picture Machines, Stereopticons, Slides, Films, Kleine Optical Company, Chicago (November 1905), pp. 256–57; reprinted in Pratt, pp. 23–24. The same outline of A Trip to the Moon is also printed in the Star Films catalogue (New York: 1904), p. 25. 32. Complete Catalogue of Genuine and Original ‘Star’ Films (Moving Pictures) Manu- factured by Geo. Méliès of Paris (New York: undated), n.p. It is more convenient to refer to film, rather than page, numbers in this catalogue, which con- tains several individually paginated ‘supplements’. The catalogue is formally undated, and the BFI tentatively dates it as ‘1907?’, but the films in the supplements are ‘copyright, 1904’, which seems the likelier date. 33. Quoted in Robinson, p. 26; my italics. 34. Elizabeth Ezra, Georges Méliès: The Birth of the Auteur (Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000), pp. 13–14, 17. 35. John Frazer, Artificially Arranged Scenes: The Films of Georges Méliès (Boston: G.K. Hall, 1979) pp. 109, 143–44. 36. Azlant, pp. 74–75. 37. Complete Catalogue, p. 25. 38. Faust and Marguerite: A New and Magnificent Cinematographic Opera in 20 Motion Tableaux,intheComplete Catalogue, supplement 16, pp. 2–8. In the original, each scene is described on a separate line, as is A Trip to the Moon. 39. Charles Musser, The Emergence of Cinema: The American Screen to 1907 (New York: Scribner’s, 1990), p.