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Title: American Beauty: The Shooting Script (Newmarket Shooting Scripts) by Alan Ball, Sam Mendes ISBN: 1-55704-404-X Publisher: Newmarket Press Pub. Date: 01 October, 1999 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.66 (62 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: "American Beauty Proves to Be Beautiful Once Again"
Comment: After seeing this brilliant film, I picked up a copy of the shooting script. I had hoped it would contain the original ending but it is instead a word for word copy of the lines from the film. Which is not a bad thing. After seeing this movie which won five Academy Awards including Best Screenplay, I could pick up the script and "watch" the movie over and over again in my mind and invision the talented actors appear on screen while I read. Even if you haven't seen the film, the script is an excellent tale of suburbian lifestyle that is delivered with a darkness and humor that is hard to dislike. It is a perfect literary work for anybody because there is at least one character that the reader can totally relate with. Discover the beauty of "American Beauty" which challenges us to "Look Closer."
Rating: 5
Summary: American Beauty is absolutely the best movie of the decade!
Comment: Watching the film at the Razorback 6 Cinema in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I was completely, like the rest of the fifty or so people also watching the film, completely entranced! No, mesmerized is more like it. As a 36 year old aspiring screenwriter confronting my own mid-life crisis, I was literally blown away by the film's raw, emotional power. Kevin Spacey was an absolute marvel. Aside from the magnificent score, beautiful cinematography, and first-rate ensemble acting, this is the best screenplay I have ever read. The delicious irony present in all the characters is utterly remarkable. Of all the fine characters throughout the story, it is perhaps Chris Cooper's colonel which stood out the most. As an abusive, homophobic, ex-military man who is surely not as he seems, he delivers an inspiring performance that leaves audiences gasping with horror. Hats off also to first-time film director, Sam Mendes, and what most certainly will be the first of many Best Director awards. "American Beauty" is filmmaking at the highest level. I, nor anyone else, will ever be the same. Thanks very much for giving us a film we will cherish for generations to come!
Rating: 3
Summary: ***** for the text, * for production values of the book
Comment: If you have seen the movie, and were deeply touched by it, as seems inevitable, owning this screenplay is definitely worthwhile. Without having to put on the DVD, you can relive particular moments by just leafing through the pages. Alan Ball's script won multiple awards, and rightly so: it is a masterpiece of dramatic writing, merging the comical, the tragic and the spiritual in ways rarely seen in present day (American) film.
Yet this book isn't all it could, and in my view should, have been. It really offers very little besides the literal text of the final movie version (including some of Annette Bening's and Kevin Spacey's improvisations). Other film scripts I own include in-depth information about genesis, casting, production etc., loads of good still and behind-the-scenes photography, as well as discarded scenes and earlier versions of scenes. None of that here, even though several parts of the film were drastically altered during the filming. There is a 2-page intro by Mendes that adds nothing to the information contained on the DVD, if you own that; and the same goes for the even shorter afterword by Ball (who, on the DVD commentary track, isn't able to get a word in edgewise with Mendes, and so remains something of an enigma). Then there are a few grainy black and white stills that are an insult to the brilliant cinematography of the movie - and that's it. For makers of a film so ostentatiously concerned with the relativity of material things, it does seem like a rather cheap way to squeeze some extra bucks from it...
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Title: Good Will Hunting : A Screenplay by Ben Affleck, Matt Damon ISBN: 0786883448 Publisher: Miramax Pub. Date: 25 December, 1997 List Price(USD): $11.95 |
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Title: Pulp Fiction by Quentin Tarantino ISBN: 0786881046 Publisher: Miramax Pub. Date: 01 December, 1994 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Shawshank Redemption: The Shooting Script (A Newmarket Screenplay) by Frank Darabont, Stephen King ISBN: 1557042462 Publisher: Newmarket Press Pub. Date: March, 1996 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Chinatown and the Last Detail: 2 Screenplays by Robert Towne ISBN: 0802134017 Publisher: Grove Press Pub. Date: December, 1997 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Screenwriter's Bible: A Complete Guide to Writing, Formatting, and Selling Your Script by David Trottier ISBN: 1879505444 Publisher: Silman-James Press Pub. Date: August, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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