The Business of Fancydancing: The Screenplay [Hardcover]

Sherman Alexie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003

Drama. Native American Studies. "One of the most vital of the younger writers. Watch this guy. He's making myth"--Joy Harjo. "Displays a mastery of language, a breadth of vision, and an astonishing range of voice and emotion"--Studies in American Indian Literature. "The high spirit of Crazy Horse is alive in this book and dances powerfully"--American Book Review. THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING is writer/director Sherman Alexie's first film since his 1998 smash success "Smoke Signals," which he wrote. A ceremony of poetry, song, dance, humor, grief and memory, THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING is the story of one man's art and life, and the messy collision between the two.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Sherman Alexie's poems, fiction, essays and films have won him an international following since his first book, THE BUSINESS OF FANCYDANCING, was published in 1992. SMOKE SIGNALS, the film he adapted from one of his short stories and co-produced, enlarged his audience still further. Alexie's awards include the Stranger Genius Award in Literature, the Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children's Literature in Fiction, and the National Book Award for Young People's Literature as well as honors and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Foundation, and a citation as "One of 20 Best American Novelists Under the Age of 40" from Granta magazine. An enrolled Spokane/Coeur d'Alene Indian, Alexie lives in Seattle with his wife and sons.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 158 pages
• Publisher: Hanging Loose Press; First Edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1931236283
• ISBN-13: 978-1931236287
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.1 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,564,839 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A fine movie, a great screenplay, a disappointing book, May 30, 2003

By 

Chris B "zerocard13" (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Business of Fancydancing: The Screenplay (Paperback)

I was fortunate enough to see Alexie's second movie, The Business of Fancydancing, three times in its run in Seattle, which should give you some idea of what kind of esteem I hold it. When I read on his website that plans were in the works to release the screenplay, I knew that I'd have to get it when it was released.

Having read it, I can safely say that if you enjoy reading screenplays to see how much the movie changed from page to screen, that this would be a good one to read. Unfortunately, the book has a very slipshod feel to it, from an uninspired cover design to far too many typographical errors, inconsistent formatting and what appear to be twenty some pages of repeated text towards the end of the book. This last is not a misbound signature, as the pages are numbered consistently throughout. Rather it looks as though someone accidentally pasted a large portion of the manuscript in just before printing.

All in all, I found the content of the book to be fascinating, but the actual presentation of it to be mediocre at best. I would love to find out that I have a bad copy but somehow I doubt that this is the case.