It was lovely to fly home from a week of visiting cousins in Cleveland to find our mail deliverer had dropped off a copy of the latest book containing a chapter I wrote. Once again, it’s the
Screenwriting Research Network for the win, since it was a meeting with the 2 editors – Andrew Kenneth Gay and Ann Igelstrom – at one of our wonderful conferences several years ago that made it possible. We ended up talking over the tea break or lunch, who remembers, about our research, and I ended up talking about one of my favorite early female screenwriters – Dorothy Parker – and Voila! They invited me to turn that conversation into a chapter. And if you look at the other chapters and the international array of authors writing them, you’ll see how honored I am to be among them.
My chapter is called “Dorothy Parker: The Creative Genius Behind the Film Franchise “A Star is Born”. I’ve been researching, reading and writing about Parker’s foray into Hollywood since writing my dissertation on “Married with Screenplay: A Study Of Married Screenwriting Teams And The Films They Wrote” which covered the careers and filmography of Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell, Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, and Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin.
I hope you enjoy reading about the genius of Dorothy Parker – sometimes students don’t know that the most recent version of Star is Born, starring Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper, is the 3rd remake of the 1937 original – and that the original did not include music at all.
As always, such academic texts are pricey – meant for libraries mostly – so if you’d like to read it, ask your college or local library to buy a copy, and then you’ll be providing it to all the other patrons of those libraries.
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Global Screenplay Theory offers a comprehensive introduction and overview of screenplay theory as applied in the analysis of numerous screenplays from an international, multi-author perspective, including both leading and emerging scholars in the field. Each section includes 6-8 case studies of theory applied in the analysis of a landmark screenplay.
The sections are divided thematically, with sections addressing the Screenplay as Narration and Focalisation, the Screenplay as Narrative Structure, the Screenplay as Cinematic Language and the Screenplay as Creative Practice. With both theorists and practitioners contributing to this volume, the focus is on the actual screenplay as opposed to analysis of the final film. The essays contribute to a new era in screenplay theory, providing valuable insights not only into the particular screenplays under analysis but also into the range of ways in which such analysis can be approached, representing a wide range of theoretical perspectives. – Bloomsbury.com
