Word: screenplays
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Whether you loved it or hated it, 1995's most infamous film--Kids, a day in the life of sex-crazed, drugged-up New York skaters--signaled the debut of an interesting, if not innovative, new talent. In his shockingly realistic screenplay, Harmony Korine, a Californian Jew who left home at the age of 16, captured the verbal rhythms and psychological nihilism of adolescents living at the fringe. In his 1997 directorial debut, Gummo, Korine attempted to "push humor to extreme limits" by provoking random passers-by into fistfights and then filming the results with hand-held cameras. The filmmaker...
Wallace had persuaded Mann to let him see an early version of the screenplay. Now he has called to ask for factual corrections and other changes in scenes that make him look vainglorious or blind to journalistic ethics. "His language is very acute," recalls Mann. "Stunningly funny and smart and ironic. He gave this long speech. I told him I'd have to use it in the film!" Which Mann did. It became an onscreen outburst that Wallace delivers sarcastically to Bergman, his once devoted younger colleague: "Oh, how fortunate I am to have Lowell Bergman's moral tutelage...
...feet tall. Though watching Cusack stoop down and stumble around the office hallways is funny, the film knows how dull these sorts of gags could become, and puns lamely on the "low overhead" of the floor enough to make the lameness itself the joke. Fundamentally, Charlie Kaufman's offbeat screenplay is less interested in visual punning than in sickly toying with the characters themselves...
...storyline, which is based on the actual journey made by 73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth), seems right up Lynch's alley---quirky and Midwestern, with a lawnmower thrown in for good measure. Interestingly enough, Lynch was initially opposed to directing The Straight Story. But after reading the screenplay written by Mary Sweeney and John Roach, Lynch was won over: "[I] wasn't interested in it. I never thought I would make this story, but the screenplay turned me around. I loved...
...This departure from the usual techniques of biography is hardly the last, as one discovers throughout the book. Morris revives an old Victorian form with a dialogue chapter, frequently lapses into screenplay scripts, letters, diary entries, speeches, interviews, scrapbook pages and author's notes. This varied format lends a vibrant immediacy to Reagan's life, one which would be hard to recreate within the confines of traditional biography. Morris, who thinks in terms of music, has infused the text with references to music--from "The Old Rugged Cross," Reagan's favorite hymn, to Liszt's Faust Symphony...