Three Screenplays

E.L. Doctorow is one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed living writers. Winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Humanities Medal, he is the author of nine novels that have explored the drama of American life from the late 19th century to the 21st. Doctorow has also played an active role in transforming his novels into films, writing screenplay adaptations of three of his works - "The Book of Daniel", "Ragtime", and "Loon Lake". Collected in this volume, his scripts reveal a new aspect of the writer's talents and offer film students and other cineastes an insight into the complex relationship of literature and motion pictures. Each of these screenplays has undergone a different fate. Doctorow's script for Daniel was made into a feature film by director Sidney Lumet in 1983. The monumental "Ragtime" screenplay he wrote for director Robert Altman was to have been filmed as either a six-hour feature film or a ten-hour television series. When Altman was replaced on the project by Milos Forman, a shorter, more conventional script was commissioned from another writer. In 1981, Doctorow adapted "Loon Lake", but this challenging work has yet to be filmed. For this book, Doctorow has revised his "Ragtime" screenplay, making clear how different the film might have been, and has written a preface about the art of screenwriting. In addition, editor Paul Levine provides a general introduction to Doctorow's fiction and specific introductions to each screenplay; interviews Lumet about making Daniel; and talks with Doctorow about his abiding interest in the art and craft of cinema.

About the Author :
E. L. Doctorow's novels areWelcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, and City of God. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York. Paul Levine is professor of American literature at Copenhagen University.

Review :
"[Doctorow] is at once a radical historian, a cultural anthropologist, a troubadour, a private eye, and a cost-benefit analyst of assimilation and upward mobility in the great American multiculture." -- New York Review of Books "ÝDoctorow¨ is at once a radical historian, a cultural anthropologist, a troubadour, a private eye, and a cost-benefit analyst of assimilation and upward mobility in the great American multiculture." -- John Leonard, New York Review of Books "Doctorow is not only one of our most significant living novelists, he is also a superbly illuminating essayist and highly creative screenwriter... Adapting novels for movies is a tricky and often thankless endeavor, one many novelists haven't the stomach for. But because Doctorow is profoundly intrigued with film's seductiveness, a frequent motif in his fiction, he has performed this arduous task to fine effect. Three Screenplays presents the screenplays for Daniel (produced in 1983 under the direction of Sidney Lumet), Ragtime, a magnificent adaptation that perfectly mirrors the panoramic novel but which was never made (a shorter screenplay was commissioned for the Milos Forman film), and Loon Lake, which has yet to be produced. Doctorow's remarks, meticulous commentary by film and American literature professor Paul Levine, and interviews with Doctorow and Lumet coalesce to form a provocative inquiry into 'the process of artistic alchemy' that attempts the nearly impossible, the translation of fiction into film." -- Booklist "The film adaptations will challenge students of Doctorow and film." -- Choice "Three Screenplays is of interest as much for the stories of films that didn't get made (like the ten-hour-long script for Ragtime, commissioned by Robert Altman, but ditched by the producer Dino Di Laurentiis in favor of the version made by Milos Forman, which Doctorow clearly hates) as for any insight on the translation from novel to screenplay. There is a rueful, remarkably self-effacing interview with Sidney Lumet about where Daniel went wrong, and a lovely interview with the novelist in which he recalls the impact of Frances Farmer's movies." -- D. D. Guttenplan, Times Literary Supplement Three Screenplays is of interest as much for the stories of films that didn't get made (like the ten-hour-long script for Ragtime, commissioned by Robert Altman, but ditched by the producer Dino Di Laurentiis in favor of the version made by Milos Forman, which Doctorow clearly hates) as for any insight on the translation from novel to screenplay. There is a rueful, remarkably self-effacing interview with Sidney Lumet about where Daniel went wrong, and a lovely interview with the novelist in which he recalls the impact of Frances Farmer's movies.--D. D. Guttenplan "Times Literary Supplement " "[Doctorow] is at once a radical historian, a cultural anthropologist, a troubadour, a private eye, and a cost-benefit analyst of assimilation and upward mobility in the great American multiculture." -- New York Review of Books "Doctorow is not only one of our most significant living novelists, he is also a superbly illuminating essayist and highly creative screenwriter... Adapting novels for movies is a tricky and often thankless endeavor, one many novelists haven't the stomach for. But because Doctorow is profoundly intrigued with film's seductiveness, a frequent motif in his fiction, he has performed this arduous task to fine effect. Three Screenplays presents the screenplays for Daniel (produced in 1983 under the direction of Sidney Lumet), Ragtime, a magnificent adaptation that perfectly mirrors the panoramic novel but which was never made (a shorter screenplay was commissioned for the Milos Forman film), and Loon Lake, which has yet to be produced. Doctorow's remarks, meticulous commentary by film and American literature professor Paul Levine, and interviews with Doctorow and Lumet coalesce to form a provocative inquiry into 'the process of artistic alchemy' that attempts the nearly impossible, the translation of fiction into film." -- Booklist "The film adaptations will challenge students of Doctorow and film." -- Choice "Three Screenplays is of interest as much for the stories of films that didn't get made (like the ten-hour-long script for Ragtime, commissioned by Robert Altman, but ditched by the producer Dino Di Laurentiis in favor of the version made by Milos Forman, which Doctorow clearly hates) as for any insight on the translation from novel to screenplay. There is a rueful, remarkably self-effacing interview with Sidney Lumet about where Daniel went wrong, and a lovely interview with the novelist in which he recalls the impact of Frances Farmer's movies." -- D. D. Guttenplan, Times Literary Supplement