Journal of Screenwriting - Volume 12, Issue 1, 2021

The second film in writer–director Christina Kallas’s New York trilogy, which includes 42 Seconds of Happiness (2016) and Paris is in Harlem (forthcoming), The Rainbow Experiment (2018) portrays the powerful but flawed American experiment. Its script chronicles the desires and tawdry failures of teachers, administrators, parents and students of many hues, ethnicities and gender preferences tearing at each other on one horrific day, beginning with an explosion and ending with a double shooting – or so it seems. The implication is that gun violence has become so familiar that it almost fades into the background of collective despair. However, with a world-view that recalls David Lynch and a narrative that imbeds this school saga within its densely urban setting, Kallas counters the seemingly inevitable choices available in this fractured system. An evolving alternative scenario rests its faith on the arrogant but potentially redemptive young. The comically inflected, tragic linear story is scripted in non-linear flashbacks, crosscuts and elaborate split-screens. The film provides portals to an internal reality that posits that life choices, like a movie plot, can be reversed. Overall, The Rainbow Experiment reinforces Kallas’s emergence as a potent and bold voice, redefining and recontextualizing modern film genres.

The article studies how domestic screenwriters and directors are exploring the web series format that started actively developing in Russia only five years ago. Both series produced for major internet platforms and indie projects created by independent studios in the past five years are reviewed. The article analyses how Russian authors understand and take into account in their work the specifics of the new field, as well as the format-forming features of web series that have developed abroad. Such aspects as the lack of censorship, freedom from severe restrictions on story genres and heroes’ types have a significant impact on the dramaturgy of native web series. Those are the things that determine the attractiveness of this new format for experienced Russian authors moving to the internet from related fields: cinema and television. The results of the study show that Russian dramatists and directors rely on foreign experience of creating web series, but at the same time they try to modify certain features of this format and sometimes manage to find their own unique solutions.

This study examines the adaptation of the novel The Godfather into screenplays by author Mario Puzo and director Francis Ford Coppola. Combining translation and adaptation studies, we regard this adaptation as a case of ‘collaborative self-translation’, a concept that has so far been rarely applied beyond translations studies, and use a model designed for the study of adaptation to analyse it. However, we expand the model by applying it to screenplays, and examining prequel and sequel, which are mainly present in the second and third screenplays of the trilogy. In addition to calling attention to the screenplay as a vital stage in the transformation of a literary work into a film, this article shows that the adaptation model can be a valuable tool to systematically analyse adapted screenplays, thus expanding the methodological repertoire of both adaptation and screenwriting studies. Moreover, it was found that the combined discussion of adaptation, sequel and prequel may contribute to an understanding of the complex relations between them and the source. Based on these theoretical insights, we show that through merging the creative powers of Puzo and Coppola, the screenplays shed new light on social, family and cultural themes that appear to some extent in the novel, taking the conventions of the crime genre in new and surprising directions.

Serial storytelling dominates the international TV landscape, yet the terms used to describe this form as distinct from ‘series’ vary across industry, scholarship and popular media. While many scholars have observed the series/serial ‘divide’, none of them have done so from the vantage point of screenwriting practice. This article argues there is both the scope and a need to provide clearer definitions for discussion of TV drama screenwriting, particularly as it intersects with extant notions such as ‘complex’ and ‘quality’ TV. In this article, we consolidate the literature on the series/serial and provide our own terms to describe contemporary trends in serial storytelling – finite, infinite and franchise – terms that we hope speak more directly to the screenwriter and screenwriting scholar.

This article analyses the screenwriting of Boonie Bears: To the Rescue (2014), a film version of the Chinese 3D animated adventure TV series, Boonie Bears. The child-oriented principle of storytelling is one of the most distinctive features of full-length Chinese animated films, especially those produced over the past decade. Within this context, Boonie Bears: To the Rescue epitomizes how Chinese animators are striving to expand the scope of their target audience from children to parent–child groups through the development of narrative competence. This article explores how the arrangement of narrative techniques helps to attract young parents (in their late 20s and early 30s) to cinemas while also retaining the child audience. These endeavours are primarily represented by the refiguration of Logger Vick, the main antagonist in the Boonie Bears animated TV series, who is transformed from a thoroughly wicked villain to a living, ordinary person who could be considered to be the ‘spokesperson’ for young Chinese adults. In this way, the screenwriting techniques in the film strike a responsive chord in the hearts of its adult viewers, thereby broadening the range of its original (TV series) target audience.

Performing memories is a way of working through and reconstructing the self. Films that draw on autobiographical experiences are a way of working through and constructing narratives of the self. How can memory work be applied to the writing and filmmaking process? Can memory work, with its focus on personal and embodied experience, lead us to a more truthful account of our individual histories and ourselves? In addressing these questions, I draw on sociological and memory studies into autobiographical memory in my examination of the screenwriting work of Australian actor/writer Daniel Monks. Monks’ films Marrow (2015) and Pulse (2017) are adapted and developed from the author’s personal memories and experiences. Identifying as disabled and queer, Monks’ work straddles the fact-fiction divide, enabling the social and personal to dynamically interact, producing drama narratives where the body is the primary site for retelling and sharing with an audience his need to be seen. My study includes original drafts of screenplays, produced films and interviews with Monks on his writing and development processes. Demonstrating how Monks uses and refigures his body within a cinematic landscape, I aim to promote discussion on how individual memories function as dynamic and interconnected sources for the screenwriter/filmmaker.

Review of: The Art of Screen Adaptation: Top Writers Reveal Their Craft, Alistair Owen (2020)

Harpenden: Old Castle Books Ltd., 288 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-85730-227-4, p/bk, £18.99

ISBN 978-0-85730-228-1, ebook, £7.59

Review of: The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist, Julien Gorbach (2019)

West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 504 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-55753-865-9, h/bk, $32.95

Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures (Jewish Lives), Adina Hoffman (2019)

New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 264 pp.,

ISBN 978-0-30018-042-8, h/bk, $26

Review of: Slay the Dragon: Writing Great Video Games, Robert Denton Bryant and Keith Giglio (2015)

Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 232 pp.,

ISBN 978-1-61593-229-0, p/bk, $26.95

Review of: Da criação ao Roteiro: Teoria e Prática (‘From creation to script: Theory and practice’), 5th ed., Doc Comparato (2018)

Sao Paulo, SP: Summus Editorial, 720 pp.,

ISBN 978-8-53231-113-9, p/bk, $84.87