SCREENPLAYS The Best Websites To Download & Read Screenplays

The Best Websites To Download & Read Screenplays


20 sites

FILM SCREENPLAY American Hustle [2013]

American Hustle [2013]


Screenplay from Sony Pictures, written by Eric Warren Singer and David O. Russell


No date.


Mentioned on Plotbot, the online screenwriting site.


In the side bar under screenplays for ease of later access

FILM ADAPTATION And Its Discontents

Part 1: The Process and Reception of Book to Film Adaptations


Part 2: The Process and Reception of Book to Film Adaptations


Part 3: The Process and Reception of Book to Film Adaptations


Steve McCarthy, Motion Brothers, 8 Sept 2014

‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’: The Peak of British Comedy

‘Monty Python and the Holy Grail’: The Peak of British Comedy


Love a film longform. A pleasing long, compendious one from Cinephilia and Beyond with all those juicy bits about how the film was made.


Add to the pleasure a really pleasant surprise – a facsimile final draft [note the thee hole binder] of the script! Read it in the page, though it’s not comfortable. Better to find the little pdf link to download it.

At the bottom of the script the now famous letter from producer Mark Forstater to Mike White, another producer, the story of which is told in I would like to retain ‘fart in your general direction’ in Letters of Note.

Google Forstater to follow the other story of what happened when Forstater as producer of The Holy Grail, attempted to get more royalties much later on as a result of the stage adaptation Spamalot making oodles.

FILM SCREENPLAY 10 Scripts to Read Before You Die

10 Scripts to Read Before You Die


Cameron Cubbison


in


Screencraft


17 January 2013


Two of my favourite films in there: Chinatown and Network.

I’m not saying I’m going to wade through Forrest Gump as a script. Or even The Godfather. Films are sometime just fine as films. Chinatown’s one joke still stands up in print, but what you don’t get, even with the stage directions, is the wonderful way the 4 characters are framed in the main shot.

I’ve linked to the Network script somewhere. That is well worth reading. The film is so fast and furious, half the clever bits are missed. You saw Network yonks ago, know it’s good and think you might like to watch it again? Do so, then immediately read the script. That’s my advice.

This is the starting point for thinking about one’s favourite scripts. Or rather one’s favourite films. Bear in mind as I have said dozens of times in posts, that most of the scripts you find online thinking they scripts are actually dialogue transcriptions, which are naturally a fraction of what a script it. It is possible to add in one’s own mise en scene and instructions because the film is familiar. Instructive to do so for a transcription and then get the script proper!


This is of course merely the start point for a ramble through the web for similar offerings.

Here’s a starter:


10 Essential Screenplays Every Aspiring Screenwriter Must Read


As becomes immediately apparent: is it scripts because you write scripts or scripts because you are curious to see the undercarriage of films you love? Or scripts of films that didn’t do justice to the subject and you want to pick at like a large scab to help to see where you thought things went badly wrong. Not that you were going to re-write it yourself…

I tweeted a frantic series about The Imitation Game over many weeks leading up to the Awards season, trying to demonstrate with bits of script how it didn’t deserve an award. No one showed any interest whatsoever. It was a popular film and box-office, but no self-respecting member of the filmoscenti was going to be seen wasting time on that!!

Graham Moore’s screenplay had praise heaped upon it in some quarters. I began to see the elements of a Hollywood story about a scriptwriter there. Not that hasn’t been done so often in various ways. The cynic in me quickly imagining someone was already scribbling a synopsis about a young Hollywood newby desperately trying to work up script from a difficut subject, wondering if he’s taken on too much, can he sell the idea, can he deliver (all things Graham had talked about in his 100s of interviews). I could see possibilities myself and started to rough out a few ideas – a riff on Altman’s The Player. Hey, that’s worth a read. The script of The Player, that is.

(How often, scriptwriters explain, the script is not the film and what you write rarely gets to screen…whereas the novel is your work alone.)

I have linked to The Imitation Games script too, which is a real script in facsimile, from the Harvey Weinstein site. (Never can be sure if scripts are final scripts without doing a bit of research..) I thought it had a lot of questions to answer, both in structural terms and in the way it played liberties with the known facts of the life portrayed, which had me scratching my head through the screening. And showed despite research obviouly having been done (in this case Andrew Hodge’s long biography of Turing), obvious elements were left out altogether because it was a Hollywood script. Comparing the various other attempts at Turing films is instructive too.

FILM The Imitation Game vs. The Imitation Game

The Imitation Game vs. The Imitation Game




other


Why Can’t Movies Capture Genius?
–Three films about British brains show the trouble of bringing otherworldly intelligence to the big screen. You can show J.M.W Turner’s paintings or Alan Turing’s computer but never get inside their minds.


Clive Irving, Daily Beast, 14 Dec 2014


Why Are We So Obsessed With Geniuses on Film?


John Powers, Vogue, November 25, 2014


3 approaches


Our Genius Problem
–Why this obsession with the word, with the idea, and with the people on whom we’ve bestowed the designation?


Marjorie Garber, Atlantic, 23 Mar 2011

FILM SCRIPT The English Patient [1996] – Almásy’s Bosphorus

Almásy: Well, a thing is still a thing no matter what you place in front of it.

Every night I cut out my heart. But in the morning it was full again.

“Um, Maddox, that place — that place at the base of a woman’s throat, you know, the hollow, here. Does it have an official name?”

“In case you’re still wondering, this is called a suprasternal notch”

How often should one re-watch The English Patient?

I’d recommend a 2 to 2 1/2 year interval. Lawrence of Arabia about 3.

Screenplay

The English Patient “Red Original” [someone might enlighten us as to what red refers to..]

The English Patient (1996) “movie script, Revised Draft. 28th August, 1995.”

Adaptation

The Lion of Literary Adaptation: How Anthony Minghella’s ‘The English Patient’ Became as Enduringly Definitive as It Has Been Challenging by Christine Spines, Word & Film, 4 October 2011

FILM SCRIPT WES ANDERSON The Grand Budapest Hotel

At the Movies – Michael Wood

The Grand Budapest Hotel


LRB, Vol. 36 No. 8, 17 April 2014


The Grand Budapest Hotel

Screenplay by Wes Anderson


pdf/ pp. 122