Customer Reviews

Elizabethtown (Screenplay)

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Although i realized i've had purchased a screenplay when i recieved it i thought is was good and it is nice to see pictures and read the director's notes about making the movie, really interesting

"sadness and dissapointment are really a personal victory in disguise."

Those lines in the foreward by Crowe made me buy the book. That and just how much the movie striked my curiousity. Even though the movie had a lukewarm affect on me, its intent resonated with me. Especially after I had a chance to read some of Crowe's interviews online. He's a brave man who refuses to shade his stubborn optimism in a world where cynicism is strangely fashionable. Crowe is smart enough to know that cynicism is really just a defense mechanism for souls as vulnerable as the characters he creates. Of all his movies, Elizabethtown has the most vulnerable souls bumping into each other. They are all guarded, but their defense is more transparent.

This comes through more when you read the screenplay than seeing the actual movie. While most Hollywood movies move at the speed of light, The movie for E-Town moves at the speed of life. It takes it time to work things out, just as life really does. Appropriately, the movie tests the patience of a person who is accostomed to fast moving, quick-cut dialouge and action. In the screenplay, you are invited to peel back the layers of the characters -- especially Claire -- by disceting their dialouge and looking between and behind words. For this reason, reading this movie is actually more enjoyable than watching it.

I've met "a Claire" before, and Crowe captures her perfectly in the script. She's good at playing the hot-potato with one-liners, and you realize it's a slight of hand to throw your attention off from the "real her." In the screenplay you're perfectly cued to recognize her real self breaking through when her and Drew have their TRUE breakthrough after their romantic breakthrough, and she says "You're an artist, man. Your job is to break barriers." Suddenly the fatigue of her sometimes overwhelming energy pays off.

I actually found myself getting emotional while reading the speech made by Hollie at the funeral. The best parts are, unfortunately, edited out of the movie. One in particular is when Hollie advises her once skeptic audience to "Give your gifts to the living," even if it means being embarrassing. This scene works so much better on the page than it did on the screen. In the screenplay, it reaches beyond a self-indulgence and into her audience. You get the message: She waited until her partner died before she discovered and shared her gifts.

Crowe definitely has a writers-wisdom about life and people. Most good writers do, but they don't often make it to the big screen. I look forward to his movies because I know he's willing to share that wisdom with his audience. Apparently there is even more of it to be found in his screenplays.

I'm sorry but this movie was absolutely awesome. What I loved most was that there wasnt a picture perfect romance it had all the insecurity and realness that can happen between two people. I really loved it and Im a guy that istens to gangster rap. If anyone knows who sings the song "I can turn a green sky blue" like he had on his ringtone please email me at [...] I came here looking for that but decided to post a review great great movie.

This is a "coffee table" book so it is larger than some people may expect. It contains beautiful photographs of the people and places involved in the movie. It provides little details about the filming including some off screen events. Anyone who is a fan of the movie will enjoy this book as it provides insight into the director's feelings and motivation in bringing this story to the screen.

If you are a fan of the movie (or of Orlando), this book is well worth the money it costs. It comes in a nice slip cover and has lots of excellent pictures both behind the scenes and actual shots from the movie itself. I was hesitant to buy this for the price, but now that I have it, I am so glad I did.

The story and the music is a perfect mixing and Cameron Crowe is a great director!
Beautiful places and nostalgic..

Drew Baylor learns the hard way that success is the only measure of a man, at least in the corporate world. And he has just proved himself a colossal failure, his athletic shoe design, touted as revolutionary, the embarrassment of The Mercury Shoe Corporation. After eight years spent working on the design, all of the orders have been returned, the company humiliated. Drew bravely falls on his sword to protect the company from further financial distress. Leaving his job, his whole world has changed from a dream to a nightmare. Even his girlfriend, another Mercury employee, turns her back on him, opting for greener pastures and a new employee hire with more potential. Drew is devastated but resigned.

Just when he thinks things couldn't get any worse, Drew receives a phone call that his father has died and he must go to Elizabethtown, Kentucky, and bring his father home to Oregon. Befriended on the airplane by an enthusiastic stewardess, Claire Colburn, the befuddled Drew revisits a past he can barely remember. Caught up in the family melodrama, Drew has no idea that Claire offers the means of his salvation, her insouciant manner a balm to his increasingly troubled spirit. This combination of unsettling road trip into the past and Drew's damaged sense of self offer him a new perspective, a journey that will alter his direction through life.

Subtleties are apparent in the play, as Crowe gives explicit stage directions, the rhythm of the story building, a contrast between the tensions of the funeral and Drew's need for a time out from family pressures. Not yet translated into specific personalities on screen, the manuscript lends itself to the imagination. The problem is that the story doesn't have resonance, the scattered scenes of family discussions over the disposition of the body, Drew's too-intense-too-soon relationship with Claire, his lack of connection to his father or the Kentucky relatives, all are as disconnected as overheard conversations, without inciting sufficient interest to care about these people or this young man. What may have been an intensely personal experience to the author just doesn't translate into a meaningful story. One man's awakening fails to speak a universal language. Crowe includes a few pages of an on-site diary from shooting the film. How ever admirable Crowe's intentions, Elizabethtown fails to inspire. Luan Gaines/ 2005.