Keeping in mind that I have never read professional screenplays before this class, I have so far been pretty impressed by all three scripts, "A Boy's Life", "The Apartment", and "Adaptation". In addition, none of these three scripts seem to have any sort of relativity to each other in any form other than they are screenplays.
"Adaptation" simply breaks the silence of the structure of an average script. Kaufman's authorial voice blatantly differs from Mathison's and Diamond's. Kaufman is writing the story through his own head. Simply enough, a screenplay about somebody writing a screenplay. What really amazed me was how well Kaufman's structure works. At first, once the John Malkovich scene appeared, I thought I was going to be confused for the rest of the screenplay. Reality caught up with me real fast, and I started to clearly understand what exactly was going on. I really did love the way the parallelism between each sub plot worked. I liked how as Kaufman is writing his screenplay about orchids and Orlean is writing her story as she gets personal with her character. The script is very well structured and too original, to the point where no other script will work as well as this one.
"The Apartment", written by Diamond was just a generic love script written in 1959. I don't have a lot more to say about it. However, Diamond's authorial voice is easygoing, nonchalantly peppy, and character based. This script was also written in more of a novel reading from with a lot of description and action lines.
"A Boy's Life", written by Mathison, had much more of an epic journey structure to it. Her authorial voice stands out nearly everywhere by expressing the plot and scene events in such an exciting manner. Her script was driven by character's actions and reactions to situations as well. She focused on what the character had to say more than description of characters, settings, and scenes.
Discussion Questions:
1) In class, I have noticed that some students believe scripts should have an engraved structure and if one script does not follow that structure it is wrong. Do you think that "Adaptation" was written awkwardly or poorly? Explain.
2) "Adaptation" is truly a one of a kind script. Do you think a script of this style and structure can be pulled off again?
1 comment:
I completely agree with you about Adaptation. I loved the way it was written, and after I got through the beginning, the story began to unravel and make sense. Because, like you, I've never read professional screenplays, I find it hard to find a really distinct authorial voice in pieces such as The Apartment or A Boy's Life. Adaptation is the exception, and clearly has a distinct voice. Don't get me wrong, all screenplays have an authorial voice, but some are more distinct than others.
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