Home Detention (Draft Three)

<p>Original screenplay.</p>

Home Detention (Draft Three)

<p>Original screenplay.</p>

Analyzing Jordan Peele's Get Out With Fanonism

The colonial discourse racially defined the others and distinguished between people regarded as barbarous, infidels, and savage, such as the inhabitants of America and Africa. The formal abolition of slavery has not been the solution for Blacks, but they have often been subjected to the domination of sovereign ideology at different social life levels. The dominant ideology in USA is also influential in representing Blacks in the cultural industry. This chapter examines the 2017 film Get Out, directed by Jordan Peele, as an example of the recent diversity positive trend in Hollywood. Peele is the first Black screenwriter to win the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. The film was analyzed by Roland Barthes's semiotics theory and Frantz Fanon's critical theory Fanonism. This research shows that Get Out is truly a Black renaissance in Hollywood. The signs of racism skillfully placed in the film were analyzed by focusing on denotative and connotative meanings, and the racial oppression faced by African-Americans throughout history was revealed by regarding Fanonism.

Chapter 25

Cary Grant and Betsy Drake’s marriage limped forward for two years after his affair with Sophia Loren. In the midst of this, Loren arrived in Hollywood and Grant began pursuing her again, asking her to marry him. He was finishing Kiss Them for Me (1957) at the time. Producer Jerry Wald had been trying to film this Second World War story for years, but it was only when Grant signed to star in it that the project got the green light. Grant enjoyed working with the film’s director, Stanley Donen, but he was ill-suited to play a soldier having weekend leave in San Francisco. The film was one of the very few flops in his later career. He then made Houseboat (1958). Drake had written the original screenplay thinking that she and Grant might star in the film together. At Grant’s request, the studio assigned other writers to rewrite it as a vehicle for Sophia Loren. The comedy, about an Italian nanny falling in love with her boss, culminates in their marriage. This was a difficult scene for the stars to film after Loren refused Grant’s own proposal. Indiscreet (1958), directed by Stanley Donen and co-starring Ingrid Bergman, was a happier production. This delightfully sophisticated romantic comedy benefits from Donen’s imaginative direction and from location shooting that captures the glamour of the London setting.

ReFocus: The Films of Michel Gondry

The acclaimed French auteur behind the mind-bending modern classic Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Michel Gondry has directed innovative, ground-breaking films and documentaries, episodes of the acclaimed television show Kidding and some of the most influential music videos in the history of the medium. In this book, a range of international scholars offers a comprehensive study of this significant and influential figure, covering his French and English-language films and videos, and framing Gondry as a transnational and transcultural auteur whose work provides insight into both French/European and American cinematic and cultural identity. With detailed case studies of films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004), Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2005), The Science of Sleep (2006), Be Kind Rewind (2008), Mood Indigo (2013) and Microbe & Gasoline (2015), the book examines significant themes throughout Gondry’s filmography including surrealism, adaptation, memory, dreams, play and African-American identity. The book compares Gondry to other filmmakers including Wes Anderson and Jean Vigo, allowing for an understanding of how Gondry’s films might compare with both his global contemporaries and his predecessors in French and international cinema. Furthermore, the book demonstrates how Gondry’s work in narrative film, documentary and music video represents significant innovation in narrative, visual aesthetic, and genre.

The Big Goodbye

Sight & Sound's #1 Film Book of 2020 Chinatown is the Holy Grail of 1970s cinema. Its ending is the most notorious in American film and its closing line of dialogue the most haunting. Here for the first time is the incredible true story of its making. In Sam Wasson's telling, it becomes the defining story of its most colorful characters. Here is Jack Nicholson at the height of his powers, embarking on his great, doomed love affair with Anjelica Huston. Here is director Roman Polanski, both predator and prey, haunted by the savage murder of his wife, returning to Los Angeles, where the seeds of his own self-destruction are quickly planted. Here is the fevered deal-making of 'The Kid' Robert Evans, the most consummate of producers. Here too is Robert Towne's fabled script, widely considered the greatest original screenplay ever written. Wasson for the first time peels off layers of myth to provide the true account of its creation. Looming over the story of this classic movie is the imminent eclipse of the '70s filmmaker-friendly studios as they gave way to the corporate Hollywood we know today.

Reanimating Saint Paul: From the Literary to the Cinematographic Stage

In several of his writings on the relation between film and language, Pasolini discusses the possibility of a moment in which a screenplay can be considered an autonomous object, “a work complete and finished in itself.” In the first part of this essay, I will reflect on the concept of the screenplay in a larger context and more specifically, Pasolini’s writings on the ontological status of the screenplay as a “structure that wants to be another structure.” The case of Saint Paul is thought-provoking, precisely because this original screenplay was never turned into an actual film. Despite this, Pasolini argues that the screenplay invites – or perhaps even forces – its reader to imagine, to visualize, the film it describes. Pasolini’s ideas on the function of language as a means to conjure up images are central to this act of visualization. In the second part of this essay, I will attempt an act of visualization. This endeavor to visualize Saint Paul as a possible film is hinged upon a careful reading of the screenplay. I analyze the opening and closing sequences outlined in the screenplay to visualize the possible filmic expression of its protagonist Paul.

Spike Jonze’s Screenwriting: The Screenplay

This original screenplay presents a fictional dialogue with Spike Jonze, drawing much of its content from interviews, speeches made by Jonze, and other writings concerning the nature of screenwriting. The dialogue traverses a consideration of the writing process and themes of Jonze’s two original screenplays: Her and Where the Wild Things Are.