ABSTRACT
Even though the screenplay has been in existence since the first scenarios of the early twentieth century the form has received little academic attention. This is mostly because film has been seen as part of an industrial and technological process, in which the screenplay is considered merely the first stage towards the final product, the feature film, and therefore not on a creative par with the stage play, prose or poetry, which are more immediate creative forms with a less complex production process. Yet most producers and directors acknowledge the crucial role of the screenplay hence Hitchcock’s often quoted mantra was ‘the script, the script, the script’ (Truffaut 1986: 56). Despite this fact academic attention has been diverted towards the director and the final stages of film production rather than the study of the screenplay. Somewhat ironically, because of the general interest in writing in this form, there are a plethora of publications on the subject of how to write a screenplay but there has been a meagre amount of published academic work which analyses the screenplay itself. There is though a growing recognition of the paucity of research on the subject and an acknowledgement of the importance of the screenplay as a form in itself which exists independently from the film. Academic periodicals such as the Journal of Media Practice have described the area as under-researched and the Journal of British Cinema and Television published a special issue devoted to aspects of screenwriting, pointing out that, ‘discussion of screenwriting is a notable blind spot in both British cinema and television studies’ (Cook and Spicer 2008: 213). Indeed it would appear this imbalance is now beginning to be redressed and in the last year two important books on the subject have been published: Steven Maras’s Screenwriting: History, Theory and Practice (2009), which gives an overview of the subject area, and Steven Price’s The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism (2010), which, as well as discussing theory and authorship, applies textual analysis as a method of studying the screenplay; in addition the Journal of Screenwriting was founded with the aim of encouraging research in the area. These new publications indicate a surge of interest in the subject and it would therefore seem an opportune time to publish an anthology whose aim is to highlight the screenplay as an area of academic study, clearly connected to the study of film but also with a separate existence. The book explores a range of approaches to studying the screenplay, often from very
different perspectives, giving a sense of the depth and breadth of the subject area. The contributors are widely recognized experts in their field and the anthology is divided into four sections; first, the history and development of the screenplay; second, craft and process in the screenplay; third, alternatives to the mainstream screenplay; and fourth, theoretical and critical approaches. It is hoped the reader will find the anthology a stimulating mix of historical perspective and theoretical analysis of this fascinating and complex form.
