Customer Reviews

Best American Screenplays 3: Complete Screenplays (Vol 3)

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This third volume in the Best American Screenplays series features the complete scripts of eight classic movies covering a wide range of genres, from the quiet character study of Horton Foote's "Tender Mercies" to the black comedy of Colin Higgins' "Harold and Maude" to the monumental epic of "The Godfather" and its sequel "The Godfather, Part II" scripted by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola, which means you have adaptations from popular novels as well as purely original works. The scripts also cover over a half-century of films, from 1940's "The Great McGinty" by Preston Sturges to 1992's "Unforgiven" by David Webb Peoples. You also have two very different scripts co-written by Billy Wilder with "Sunset Boulevard" (with Charles Brackett & D. M. Marshman, Jr.) and the film noir classic "Double Indemnity" (with Raymond Chandler). As collections of script go, this one is pretty hard to top. The scripts are presented in two columns to a page rather than in proper "script" form, so it is more like reading a newspaper than anything else. If you are interested in learning from the masters, teaching a class in playwriting or film studies, or simply love several of the films included herein, this collection will be of value to you. Certainly the price is what you would expect from a college "textbook" nowadays.

Great book with some crucial screenplays packed in. Can't believe they didn't put the script for Creepshow 2, but will settle for Godfather.