Andrew+Mosquera's+Unfamiliar+Genre+Project+Annotated+Bibliography

//Scripts//

//The Maltese Falcon.// Screenplay by John Huston. Dir. John Huston. Perf. Humphrey Bogart, Mary Astor. 1931. MGM/UA Home Video, 1992. VHS. Screenplay at []

This is the first real screenplay I have ever read in full and in pure form. I had watched the film //Maltese Falcon// long ago but I only recently found this online text of the actual screenplay. I love Bogart’s films and I wanted to discover in the original texts what makes film noir so cool. I learned from this model that the exhaustive details regarding camera and sound and all of the other effects of film are not always written in the screenplay. Only the opening shots and major transitions are noted in this text. When I mentioned the focus on filming mechanics in my proposal I must have been thinking of the focus of storyboards instead. It is interesting to note how the stage direction for the actors is not very cut and dry but relies more on poetic license and invites the players to enact metaphors: e.g. “he smiles like a pleasant Satan.” Another important facet of screenplays is the opening character description. Having watched the original film I could quickly detect small deviations from the long descriptions in the text. This makes me think that the screen-playwright at this introductory point has an important role in determining the casting (and often consequential success) of the forthcoming motion picture.

“Burned.” //Law and Order//. Screenplay by Siobhan Byrne. Dir. Constantine Makris. Perf. Jerry Orbach, S. Epatha Merkerson, Sam Waterston. NBC, November, 1997. Script at: //[]//

I have always been rather cynical about the worth of television dramas and have always preferred reading a book over watching TV. I must confess that Law and Order is the one cop drama with whose fan base I can affiliate. My grandmother would watch this show all of the time but I only began to appreciate it recently. I have noticed how very formulaic this series is. At the same time it is a successful television drama that has lived over a decade and has several branching series. Writing a screenplay is inextricable from the economic end of literature. What sells? In a way, a mass audience of our era would prefer (or can only afford) a quick half hour to an hour of some intellectual engagement with a story. The long and dedicated gestation of following a novel with its complicated plot and multiple characters appeals to a shrinking class of public consumers. So, here we have a drama that engages the intellect with mystery and insight into the world of justice, but at the same time never violates the slothful expectation of the “obvious” ending. Here we have a drama that enacts consistently a nice paradox of obvious stock characters who have intriguing personal back-stories (not really so surprising but embellished as such). Here we have also simple, psychopath criminals who shock us with a sudden revelation of an understandable motive (rather contrived at moments too). This series is a strange little (big commercial success) contradiction of art and mass product. I assume that every commercial artist, screen-writers included, aspires to an artistic quality yet must sacrifice some ambition for public acclaim. Perhaps, it is those commercial artists that produce something so widely consumed who have the right to describe their work as art.

“Agony.” //Law and Order//. Screenplay by Cathy McCormack. Dir. Constantine Makris. Perf. Jerry Orbach, S. Epatha Merkerson, Sam Waterston, Angie Harmon. NBC, November, 1998. Script at: http://leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Law_&_Order/Law_&_Order_9x05_-_Agony.pdf

I learned that the secret to this drama pulling viewers along is limiting expository scenes to half a page at best and limiting important scenes to three pages at best. The best screenplays will move quickly.

"See One, Do One, Teach One." //Rizzoli and Isles.// Screenplay by Janet Tamaro. Dir. Michael M. Robin. Perf. Angie Harmon, Sasha Alexander. TNT, July 2010. Script at: http://www.zen134237.zen.co.uk/Rizzoli_and_Isles/Rizzoli_and_Isles_1x01_-_Pilot.pdf

Interesting season premier. It does a good job of minimal exposition of the main characters and still leaves viewers wondering enough about Rizzoli to watch another one. The high tension of the gruesome crimes is a nice way to keep viewers hooked from the start. It was smart also to have the crime endanger the protagonist directly. I thought I would do the same in my play.

//Television//

//“//Untethered.” //Law and Order: Criminal Intent Season 7.// Writ. Warren Leight, Charlie Rubin, Diana Son. Dir. Ken Girotti. USA. December, 2007.

I cite the //Criminal Intent// series here as the version of the overly formulaic production that reads more like a story than a scenario. I appreciate in this series how the viewer, ever eager to know the “back-stories”, is gratified gradually through the circumstantial workings of “business”. I would want to write screenplays that feature more than just stock characters enacting the obvious conclusions to their type-casting.

//The Woman In Green.// __The Classic Sherlock Holmes Collection.__ Screenplay by Bertram Milhauser. Dir. Roy William Neill. Perf. Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Hillary Brooke. 1945. Pop Flix. 2009. DVD.

The next step in understanding screenplays is the see one in action. I watched this classic mystery movie in full with the intention of studying the genre. One predominant trait of film and screenplay— one that is dying out in modern cinema is the foregrounding of dialogue. In terms of strict entertainment, the most enjoyable scenes were involved the verbal repartee of Holmes and Watson. The visual information served to, once again, mislead the viewer to suppose something “in plain sight”. However, only when characters began to talk—indeed, even right when they started talking, one begins to unravel the mystery. This binary is an interestingly effective technique to employ in the writing of a successful screenplay.

“SWAK.” //NCIS: Second Season.// Writ. by Donald Bellisario. Dir. Denis Smith. CBS. May, 2005.

First off, I can’t stand NCIS! But again, there is something so simple about it that enraptures the common viewer. Just like so many other “low-brow” (I hate to sound high-brow as much as I hate to sound low-brow) mass produced entertainment, this series holds its audience by its formula. I sat down one night after work with my family and said “News or Cop show?” I did not delay to make the decision on everyone’s behalf and so I located NCIS on the USA channel. It’s time for genre immersion! I noticed that the real appeal this show has is the characters. The case is sometimes a bit too complicated, sometimes way too obvious. There is even the ever eagerly expected (so painfully nerdy, to me!) digression over the technological capabilities of modern forensics that piques the base faculty of curiosity. However, what was most commented on and appreciated by others during this view-study was the (slavishly) habitual actions and reactions of the characters. Perhaps it is the investment that a viewer has from growing with a character or perhaps it is the gratification of a viewer’s expectation that entertains them. It seems that a successful screenplay ought to capitalize on the cheap humor and the quirks that give stock characters their power on an audience. I would also infer from this that oftentimes the looseness of the screenplay is beneficial for allowing certain genius actors to generate their own persona that could drive a series to success. I have heard of several drama where the secondary character becomes the focus of the audience simply by his less defined role and his actor’s better skill.

//Chinatown.// Screenplay by Robert Towne. Dir. Roman Polanski. Perf. Jack Nicholson, Faye Dunaway, John Huston. Paramount Pictures, 1974. DVD.

Firstly, Nicholson is great. This is a nice PI film, an example of masterful intertwining of intrigues. The film is interesting in that a small case unveils a greater mystery. I thought of using this plot device for one of my revisions.

//Books//

Myers, Walter Dean. //Monster.// New York: Amistad/Harper Collins. 2001.

//Monster// was my first experience reading a kind of screenplay although Myers’ story is more of a mixed genre including journal entries, photographs, and narrative within the screenplay. Myer’s story, aimed at young adult audience, interestingly hooks the attention of this reluctant reading demographic by revealing the closeness of novel to film. This text is a great example of that transition. This novel follows the young Steve Harmon who is implicated in a murder trial. While the journal entries bring us an intimate sympathy for the helpless boy, the screenplay of the novel effectively holds the reader at bay and by genre format mimics the distant impersonal regard with which the public habitually condemns African American suspects such as Steve Harmon. It seems that the function of a screenplay is, therefore, to bring the production “in the know” while distancing the audience from the secrets to the emotional tricks and sensory torque played upon them.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Gold-Bug”. “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” //Complete Tales and Poems.// New Jersey: Castle Books. 2002.

My secondary aim in the unfamiliar genre project is to tackle the mystery. Real, living, clever, naturally flowing fiction has always been my weakness in writing. I am much more comfortable screwing words together into a formalist block of contrivance, but here, in the mystery, is where truly clever authors have to make something unknowable become obvious, something unbelievable become logical. Mystery authors have to walk this fine line between poetic contrivance and realist narrative. I for one could never solve a mystery. Poe’s tales of “ratiocination”, as they are called, are considered by some scholars to be the foundation for the mystery stories of later generations. These tales are not strictly mystery stories but they deal with the athletically logical deductions of a mystery by a lay man of mental prowess. Looking back on all of the mysteries I have read or watched I can easily detect this strenuous process of deduction at the foundation for the common mystery text. Often,

as mentioned above, the screenplay makes places an additional distance between the viewer/reader and this “ratiocination” at work in the mind of the detective. Indeed, in Poe’s written texts, an account of this deduction is not given until the last part of the story.