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.The Lover (1992) adapts a novel by the French novelistMarguérite Duras, which is a recollection of a tragic love between her as a teenage girl and an older,wealthy Chinese man.They are divided by culture, race, and class.It is a powerful story of loss thathaunts two lives.The lyrics of an old French song express it: the pleasure of love lasts but a moment;the pain of love lasts a lifetime.Although Doubt (2008) is not about carnal love but spiritual love, it is nevertheless relevant becausethe caring of the priest accused by the head of the convent school of perverting a young black boy isprobably a true expression of love, agape not eros.The Greeks had a distinction between erotic loveand love that does not have a sexual dimension that is precious to human beings: the love of parentsfor children, of siblings for one another, of children for grandparents, and of friends for one another.The Duchess (2008) is a biographical portrait of a woman who finds herself in a loveless marriageto the richest and most powerful duke of eighteenth-century England.She must find the strength tobring up children, endure his mistress, and renounce her love of a future Prime Minister of Englandfor the sake of her children.Desire/LustEveryone understands desire.We mentioned lust as one of the seven deadly sins.Whether desire isa sin is a religious question, but it is certainly an inevitable component of human lives and a causeof endless pain and drama as well as a certain amount of happiness.In comedy, we imagine thehappy outcome of this force of attraction.In drama, we confront the ways in which this hormonallydriven emotion enters our lives and unleashes possessiveness, jealousy, pain, and even hate whenlove is spurned or rejected.The Lover (1992) expresses truthfully the strength of desire as a driver inhuman relationships.It is different because the characters know they are doomed.The girl deliber-ately destroys their potential for love until at the end she realizes that she really loved and was loved.Not many Hollywood films can go the distance with this kind of story.Great works of literature suchas Flaubert s Madame Bovary or Tolstoy s Anna Karenina deal with destructive adulterous love.AnnaKarenina has been filmed for movies and television at least a dozen times.Adulterous love inducesan instant situation of conflict, which can only resolve with unhappiness of one kind or another Drama 201because it can involve up to four people and any number of children.Nevertheless, it happens overand over again in real life and in the movies.Body Heat (1981), an original screenplay written by Laurence Kasdan, shows how a man can be set upby seduction into killing a woman s husband so that she can inherit his wealth, even though there isno intention on her part to continue the relationship.Controversy surrounded 9½ Weeks (1986), which explores eroticism and desire as a force of attractionand seduction without romance.The film involves a wealthy businessman who captivates a young,recently divorced woman.It tests extremes of trust and goes where most American films don t go.Themost radical exploration of desire as an all-consuming force of almost any film ever made is Japanesedirector Oshima s In the Realm of the Senses (1976).Initially banned in North America, it chroniclesthe true story of obsessive love and desire that leads to sexual mutilation and death by strangulationbecause the character seeks greater extremes of sexual pleasure.A weaker version of this theme would beMadonna s role as a woman charged with knowingly murdering a man by causing him to have a heartattack during extreme sex in Body of Evidence (1993).She later seduces her defense lawyer, who then isforced to question the innocence he is defending.Two Lovers (2008) shows us a young man who missesthe loving woman right under his nose and whom his family wants him to marry pursuing a more com-plex, mixed-up woman who is in a destructive affair with a married man.In Elegy (2008), an older manwho is a professor makes advances to an attractive female student but does not have the courage to followthrough when she responds.Lolita, the novel by Nabokov, was made into a movie twice in 1962 withJames Mason and in 1997 with Jeremy Irons.It tells the tragic attraction that a professor of French hasfor the daughter of the woman at whose house he boards because she recapitulates his teenage love whodied.It becomes an increasingly destructive relationship, initiated by the 15-year-old Lolita.The Reader(2008) explores the initiation into sexual love of a young teenager by an older woman who has him readto her.We find out that she is illiterate.Iin her trial for being a prison guard under the Nazi regime andparty to a massacre, she refuses to save herself by revealing her illiteracy.The young man doesn t speak upto save her.While she is in prison, she learns to read from the audio books he sends her.Although most movies discussed here are adapted from another source work, the glory of themedium is the original screenplay.Writing directly for the screen is a great craft and difficult to dowell.Citizen Kane (1941), written by Herman J.Mankiewicz and Orson Welles, is one of the great-est original screenplays ever written.Lawrence Kasdan is an accomplished writer/director.His BodyHeat (1981) is a flawless murder-mystery thriller.Jane Campion wrote and directed The Piano (1993)to international acclaim.One of the true talents of movie writing in America is Paul Schrader.Hiswriting and directing credits are numerous and include the original screenplay for Martin Scorsese sclassic Taxi Driver (1976).4 My favorite is Mishima (1985), about love and honor in a cross-culturallove affair in Japan involving an ex-GI.Don t forget to read William Goldman s original screenplayof Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), published in Adventures in the Screen Trade, 5 which tellsyou a lot about working realities for writers in Hollywood.4Paul Schrader, Taxi Driver (London: Faber & Faber, 1990).See also Schrader on Schrader & Other Writings, Directors on Directors Series, by Paul Schrader,Kevin Jackson (ed.) (London: Faber & Faber, 1992) and Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer by Paul Schrader (London: Faber & Faber, 1988).5William Goldman, Adventures in the Screen Trade (New York: Warner Books, 1983). 202 CHAPTER 9: Writing Techniques for Long-Form ScriptsWhen you go to the movies, you should watch the screen credits and see who the writer is.See whetherit is an original screenplay.Pay attention to the writer and to the writing talent that makes moviespossible.Don t be one of those vulgarians who walk out as soon as the credits come on [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]