"J.J. Murphy analyzes the shifting role of the screenplay in the history of modern American independent cinema. He argues that in moving away from the traditional Hollywood approach of using a script developed in pre-production, key independent filmmakers used psychodrama and improvisation to create a new kind of cinema that allowed for more complex characterization and pushed dramatic interaction to the point where the boundary between the fiction and reality begin to dissolve. Murphy begins with filmmaking in the 1950s and 1960s and the works of John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Norman Mailer, Jonas Mekas, and other independent directors. In reading key films and analyzing the techniques of these directors, he demonstrates how their divergence from the script, to varying degrees, created a new American cinema. Murphy then turns his attention to the twenty-first century when filmmakers, influenced by the freedom afforded by digital technology, explored many of the same strategies. Films by Gus Van Sant as well as those associated with mumblecore helped set a new precedent for this second wave of unconventional scripting practices. In his focus on improvisation, psychodrama, and a new approach to scripting, Murphy provides a new history of American indie filmmaking and how it challenged Hollywood industrial practices and performance styles"--

Most films rely on a script developed in pre-production. Yet beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the recent mumblecore movement, key independent filmmakers have broken with the traditional screenplay. Instead, they have turned to new approaches to scripting that allow for more complex characterization and shift the emphasis from the page to performance. In Rewriting Indie Cinema, J. J. Murphy explores these alternative forms of scripting and how they have shaped American film from the 1950s to the present. He traces a strain of indie cinema that used improvisation and psychodrama, a therapeutic form of improvised acting based on a performer’s own life experiences. Murphy begins in the 1950s and 1960s with John Cassavetes, Shirley Clarke, Barbara Loden, Andy Warhol, Norman Mailer, William Greaves, and other independent directors who sought to create a new type of narrative cinema. In the twenty-first century, filmmakers such as Gus Van Sant, the Safdie brothers, Joe Swanberg, and Sean Baker developed similar strategies, sometimes benefitting from the freedom of digital technology. In reading key films and analyzing their techniques, Rewriting Indie Cinema demonstrates how divergence from the script has blurred the divide between fiction and nonfiction. Showing the ways in which filmmakers have striven to capture the subtleties of everyday behavior, Murphy provides a new history of American indie filmmaking and how it challenges Hollywood industrial practices.

Within the last twenty-five years, an enormous burst of creative production has emerged from independent filmmakers. From Stranger than Paradise (1984) and Slacker (1991) to Gus Van Sant's Elephant (2003) and Miranda July's Me and You and Everyone We Know (2005), indie cinema has become part of mainstream culture. But what makes these films independent? Is it simply a matter of budget and production values? Or are there aesthetic qualities that set them off from ordinary Hollywood entertainment? In this groundbreaking new study, J.J. Murphy argues that the independent feature film from the 1980s to the present has developed a distinct approach of its own, centering on new and different conceptions of cinematic storytelling. The film script is the heart of the creative originality to be found in the independent movement. Even directors noted for their idiosyncratic visual style or the handling of performers typically originate their material and write their own scripts. By studying the principles underlying the independent screenplay, we gain a direct sense of the originality of this new trend in American cinema. Me and You and Memento and Fargo also presents a unique vision for the aspiring screenwriter. Most screenwriting manuals and guidebooks on the market rely on formulas believed to generate saleable Hollywood films. Many writers present a "three-act paradigm" as gospel and proceed to lay down very stringent rules for characterization, plotting, timing of climaxes, and so on, while others who appear to be more open about such rules turn out to be just as inflexible in their advice. Through in-depth critical analyses of some of the most significant independent films of recent years, J.J. Murphy emphasizes the crucial role that novelty can play in the screenwriting process.

In Sean Baker’s award-winning 2017 film The Florida Project, a young girl, her single mother, and her friends live in rundown motels near Disney World, the children’s summer fun contrasting with the grim conditions around them. In this book, J. J. Murphy delves deep into the movie’s development and filming while also examining it within the wider context of Baker’s career. Using production documents, different versions of the screenplay, and interviews with principal members of the production team, Murphy traces the evolution of The Florida Project from initial idea through its various stages of production. He highlights Baker’s unconventional strategies in making a film about a marginalized subculture, including alternative scripting, guerrilla-like filmmaking, improvisation, and the unorthodox casting of local and first-time actors. Murphy also explores how Baker’s impromptu style sometimes rankled crew members and caused a major crisis on set, revealing the difficulties indie filmmakers can face when working with professional crews on larger films. A lively analysis of this critically acclaimed movie, its director, and its production, The Florida Project also betters our understanding of contemporary independent cinema as a whole.

In Sean Baker’s award-winning 2017 film The Florida Project, a young girl, her single mother, and her friends live in run-down motels near Disney World, the children’s summer fun contrasting with the grim conditions around them. In this book, J. J. Murphy delves deep into the movie’s development and filming while also examining it within the wider context of Baker’s career. Using production documents, different versions of the screenplay, and interviews with principal members of the production team, Murphy traces the evolution of The Florida Project from initial idea through its various stages of production. He highlights Baker’s unconventional strategies in making a film about a marginalized subculture, including alternative scripting, guerrilla-like filmmaking, improvisation, and unorthodox casting of local and first-time actors. Murphy also explores how Baker’s impromptu style sometimes rankled crew members and caused a major crisis on set, revealing the difficulties indie filmmakers can face when working with professional crews on larger films. A lively analysis of this critically acclaimed movie, its director, and its production, The Florida Project also betters our understanding of contemporary independent cinema as a whole.

William Greaves is one of the most significant and compelling American filmmakers of the past century. Best known for his experimental film about its own making, Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One, Greaves was an influential independent documentary filmmaker who produced, directed, shot, and edited more than a hundred films on a variety of social issues and on key African American figures ranging from Muhammad Ali to Ralph Bunche to Ida B. Wells. A multitalented artist, his career also included stints as a songwriter, a member of the Actors Studio, and, during the late 1960s, a producer and cohost of Black Journal, the first national television show focused on African American culture and politics. This volume provides the first comprehensive overview of Greaves’s remarkable career. It brings together a wide range of material, including a mix of incisive essays from critics and scholars, Greaves’s own writings, an extensive meta-interview with Greaves, conversations with his wife and collaborator Louise Archambault Greaves and his son David, and a critical dossier on Symbiopsychotaxiplasm. Together, they illuminate Greaves’s mission to use filmmaking as a tool for transforming the ways African Americans were perceived by others and the ways they saw themselves. This landmark book is an essential resource on Greaves’s work and his influence on independent cinema and African-American culture.

Robert Altman and the Elaboration of Hollywood Storytelling reveals an Altman barely glimpsed in previous critical accounts of the filmmaker. This re-examination of his seminal work during the "Hollywood Renaissance" or "New Hollywood" period of the early 1970s (including M*A*S*H, Brewster McCloud, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Images, The Long Goodbye, Thieves Like Us, California Split, and Nashville) sheds new light on both the films and the filmmaker, reframing Altman as a complex, pragmatic innovator whose work exceeds, but is also grounded in, the norms of classical Hollywood storytelling rather than someone who rejected those norms in favor of modernist art cinema. Its findings and approach hold important implications for the study of cinematic authorship. Largely avoiding thematic exegesis, it employs an historical poetics approach, robust functionalist frameworks, archival research, and formal and statistical analysis to demystify the essential features of the standard account of Altman's filmmaking history and profile-lax narrative form, heavy reliance on the zoom, sound design replete with overlapping dialogue, improvisational infidelity to the screenplay, and a desire to subvert based in his time in the training grounds of industrial filmmaking and filmed television. The book provides a clear example of how a filmmaker might work collaboratively and pragmatically within and across media institutions to elaborate upon their sanctioned practices and aims. We misunderstand Altman's work, and the creative work of Hollywood filmmakers in general, when we insist on describing innovation as opposition to institutional norms and on describing those norms as simply assimilating innovation.