Blog Post 1. Script Reading

A Boy’s Life, better known by the name E.T., is a truly immersive read for someone that has read screenplays before. The imagery puts you right there as E.T. gets sick or as they fly, but I imagine its like reading Shakespeare for someone who doesn’t do it very often. Its takes a couple pages for your eyes to adjust to the “thou’s” and “Sire’s” the same as you have to adjust to the EXT.’s or the CLOSE’s. When you do adjust the thing that tends to happen is that you don’t read “interior Elliot’s room” as the scene starts so much as you build on the description that you’re already aware of from the previous scene. You don’t make that the first sentence of the scene, but rather allow the image of Elliot’s room to be the image in your head as the action is described. This is the thing that screenplays have uniquely to them, that so much of what is there is implied by the rigid formula of screenwriting. You have to infer much of the reading because its only related by the title of the scenes or once in the description of the character. Anyway to answer the question in the prompt, I didn’t think it was boring but I could understand how someone else did.

Questions:
Do you think that A Boy’s Life would be as good if it were a book or a play?
Why do you think it was M&M’s specifically that E.T. enjoyed so much?