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Closet screenplay

August 21, 2023

Related to closet drama, a closet screenplay is a screenplay intended not to be produced/performed but instead to be read by a solitary reader or, sometimes, out loud in a small group.

While any published, or simply read, screenplay might reasonably be considered a "closet screenplay," 20th- and 21st-century Japanese and Western writers have created a handful of film scripts expressly intended to be read rather than produced/performed. This class of prose fiction written in screenplay form is perhaps the most precise example of the closet screenplay.

This genre is sometimes referred to using a romanized Japanese neologism: "Lesescenario (レーゼシナリオ)" or, following Hepburn’s romanization of Japanese, sometimes “Rezeshinario.” A portmanteau of the German word Lesedrama ("read drama") and the English word scenario, this term simply means "closet scenario," or, by extension, "closet screenplay."[1]

Critical interest

Brian Norman, an assistant professor at Idaho State University, refers to James Baldwin's One Day When I Was Lost as a "closet screenplay."[2] The screenplay was written for a project to produce a movie, but the project suffered a setback. After that, the script was published as a literary work.

Lee Jamieson's article "The Lost Prophet of Cinema: The Film Theory of Antonin Artaud"[3] discusses Artaud's three Lesescenarios (listed below) in the context of his "revolutionary film theory." And in French Film Theory and Criticism: 1907–1939,[4] Richard Abel lists the following critical treatments of several of the Surrealist "published scenario texts" (36) listed in the example section below:

  • J. H. Matthews, Surrealism and Film (U of Michigan P, 1971), 51–76.
  • Steven Kovács, From Enchantment to Rage: The Story of Surrealist Cinema (Associated UP, 1980), 59–61, 157–76.
  • Linda Williams, Figures of Desire: A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film (U of Illinois P, 1981), 25–33.
  • Richard Abel, "Exploring the Discursive Field of the Surrealist Film Scenario Text," Dada/Surrealism 15 (1986): 58–71.

Finally, in his article "Production's 'dubious advantage': Lesescenarios, closet drama, and the (screen)writer's riposte,"[5] Quimby Melton outlines the history of the Lesescenario form, situates the genre in a historical literary context by drawing parallels between it and Western "closet drama," and argues we might consider certain instances of closet drama proto-screenplays. The article also argues that writing these sorts of "readerly" performance texts is essentially an act of subversion whereby (screen)writers work in a performance mode only to intentionally bypass production and, thereby, (re)assert narrative representation's textual primacy and (re)claim a direct (re)connection with their audience.

The comments section of Melton's article also has an ongoing discussion of the Lesescenario canon.[8] The list of examples below is based on "Production's 'dubious advantage,'" that discussion, and Melton's "Lesecenario Bibliography" at Google Docs.[6] The bibliography contains additional critical works concerned with individual Lesescenarios and/or the canon at large.

Examples

Alphabetical by author last name. For a full list, please see Melton's aforementioned Google Docs bibliography.

A

B

C

  • Secrets on the Island and Arletty, Young Woman from Dauphine (by Louis-Ferdinand Céline)
  • The End of the World, Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame and Atlantis (by Blaise Cendrars)
  • A Broken Foot: A Documentary (by Hendrik Cramer)

D

  • "The Reefs of Love," Midnight at Noon: A Study of Marvelous Modernity, and "There Are Bugs in the Roast Pork" (by Robert Desnos)
  • Pierre, or The Demon Unmasked (by André Desson and André Harlaire)
  • Savoir Vivre (by Jean-Paul Dreyfus and Bernar Lahy-Hollebecque)

F

  • "Eyes Wide Open" ("Paupières mûres"), "Horizontal Bar," and "Mtasipoj" (by Benjamin Fondane)

G

H

J

K

L

M

N

O

R

S

  • The Evening Murder (by Haruo Sato)[16]
  • Don't Put a Dog Outside: A Film without Words (by Claude Sernet)

T

  • Whispering Moon, (by Jun'ichirō Tanizaki)　[16]
  • The Unconquerable People, The Doctor and the Devils, Rebecca's Daughters, The Beach of Falesá, Twenty Years A-Growing, Suffer Little Children, The Shadowless Man, and Me and My Bike (by Dylan Thomas)

W

See also

References

  1. ^ Sanseido's Concise Dictionary of Katakana Words. Tokyo, Sanseido, 1994
  2. ^ Norman, Brian. “Reading a ‘Closet Screenplay’: Hollywood, James Baldwin’s Malcolms, and the Threat of Historical Irrelevance." African American Review 39.1-2 (Spring/Summer 2005): 10-18.[1]
  3. ^ Jamieson, Lee. “The Lost Prophet of Cinema: The Film Theory of Antonin Artaud" Senses of Cinema 44 (27 August 2007).[2]
  4. ^ Abel, Richard. French Film Theory and Criticism: 1907–1939 (Princeton UP, 1993)
  5. ^ Melton, Quimby. January 2010. "Production's 'dubious advantage': Lesescenarios, closet drama, and the (screen)writer's riposte." SCRIPTjr.nl 1.1. http://scriptjr.nl/issues/1.1/productions-dubious-advantage.php (accessed November 21, 2009) [3]
  6. ^ Melton, Quimby. 6 February 2011. "Lesescenario Bibliography." Google Docs. https://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0ARA6WIHgRcNMZGM2OGJxNWhfMjlmeHh0NHZnbg&hl=en (accessed February 06, 2011) [4]
  7. ^ In a postscript of Akutagawa's “A day in the year-end ,Asakusa Park, and other 17 stories ” published　by　Iwanami Shoten[5], a literary researcher named Toru Ishiwari called this work “so-called Lese-scenario”.
  8. ^ There is a term “Lese-scenario”(レーゼ・シナリオ) in the context about “Asakusa Park ” “ Temptation ” of a master's thesis on Akutagawa submitted to Tokyo University :Michiko Doi ( 土井美智子 ) 's thesis (March 2001)[6] ,which was titled 'Treatise upon Ryunosuke Akutagawa:Shifts of forms and the artistic views' and listed under the annual report of research and education volume-6 published by Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at Tokyo University [7] 2016-09-22 at the Wayback Machine
  9. ^ In 2005, Shinichiro Sawai called this work Lese-scenario at Kishu Izuchi's site titled “Spiritualmovies” 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine.
  10. ^ The following process of starting this work is introduced in postscript of it: An editor from a publishing firm named “Ohta Publishing” asked Arai to write this work with saying that ,versus Kazuo Kasahara who wrote some screenplays about wars from people's viewpoints, Arai should write one about same theme from intellectuals' viewpoints.Arai accepted the request before reading the Onishi's novel with thinking that ,in the editor's intention, filmmaking was no more than an addition to publishing.
  11. ^ An erotic closet screenplay (Cinematic Wet Dreams Book 1)
  12. ^ Kashiyafuda in Aozora Bunko
  13. ^ "Charms Of Scenarios(Shinario No Miryoku)" published by Shakai-Shiso-Kenkyukai-Shuppambu,(1953),page155-290
  14. ^ Hidekatsu Nojima, a Japanese translator who translated this work, wrote the following in the postscript of Kuro-Misa ("Black Mass", 1977, Shueisha): "Trial of the warlock" is never a so-called screenplay.It's an absolute novel.I think that ,by taking advantage of the present tense in screenplay's style, Mailer discovered a new style of novel, which matched his existential sense about time,namely 'The Time of Our Time' or 'in the present, in that enormous present'.
  15. ^ information about a book of Oe's essays titled "The Last Novel" including the work in Kodansha book club
  16. ^ a b "A Thought on Junichiro Tanizaki's Whispering Moon - from aspects of writing/reading a film -" by Mioko Sato （ Doshisha National Literature Vol.83 ）

External links

  • Ryūnosuke Akutagawa, Asakusa Park (Trans. Seiji M. Lippit. nycBigCityLit.com, February 2004. [10 May 2009]).
  • Antonin Artaud, Les Dix-huits seconds (Google Books, n.d. https://books.google.com/books?id=hdhR9dmPah0C&dq=antonin%20artaud%20selected&pg=PA113 [1 January 2011]).
  • Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Secrets dans l'îsle (Trans. Mark Spitzer. Cipher Journal, n.d. http://www.cipherjournal.com/html/celine.html [10 May 2009]).
  • Seiji M. Lippit, “The Disintegrating Machinery of the Modern: Akutagawa Ryunosuke's Late Writings” (Journal of Asian Studies[9] 58:1 [February 1999]: 27-50).
  • Peace, David (2007-09-08). "Last words". The Guardian. Retrieved 2009-05-10.
  • Hiroo Yamagata ([Lesescenario] Translator, Negrophobia and The Last Words of Dutch Schultz), Interview (SCRIPTjr.nl 1.2. [June 2010]. http://scriptjr.nl/issues/1.2/hiroo-yamagata-interview-1-2.php [01 January 2011]).
  • Lom Long as a Lese-scenario:A professor of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies,Seiji Udo’s paper on Chart Korbjitti's Lesescenario

August 21, 2023
closet, screenplay, this, article, multiple, issues, please, help, improve, discuss, these, issues, talk, page, learn, when, remove, these, template, messages, this, article, possibly, contains, original, research, please, improve, verifying, claims, made, add. This article has multiple issues Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page Learn how and when to remove these template messages This article possibly contains original research Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations Statements consisting only of original research should be removed December 2013 Learn how and when to remove this template message This article needs additional citations for verification Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources Unsourced material may be challenged and removed Find sources Closet screenplay news newspapers books scholar JSTOR December 2013 Learn how and when to remove this template message Learn how and when to remove this template message Related to closet drama a closet screenplay is a screenplay intended not to be produced performed but instead to be read by a solitary reader or sometimes out loud in a small group While any published or simply read screenplay might reasonably be considered a closet screenplay 20th and 21st century Japanese and Western writers have created a handful of film scripts expressly intended to be read rather than produced performed This class of prose fiction written in screenplay form is perhaps the most precise example of the closet screenplay This genre is sometimes referred to using a romanized Japanese neologism Lesescenario レーゼシナリオ or following Hepburn s romanization of Japanese sometimes Rezeshinario A portmanteau of the German word Lesedrama read drama and the English word scenario this term simply means closet scenario or by extension closet screenplay 1 Contents 1 Critical interest 2 Examples 2 1 A 2 2 B 2 3 C 2 4 D 2 5 F 2 6 G 2 7 H 2 8 J 2 9 K 2 10 L 2 11 M 2 12 N 2 13 O 2 14 R 2 15 S 2 16 T 2 17 W 3 See also 4 References 5 External linksCritical interest EditBrian Norman an assistant professor at Idaho State University refers to James Baldwin s One Day When I Was Lost as a closet screenplay 2 The screenplay was written for a project to produce a movie but the project suffered a setback After that the script was published as a literary work Lee Jamieson s article The Lost Prophet of Cinema The Film Theory of Antonin Artaud 3 discusses Artaud s three Lesescenarios listed below in the context of his revolutionary film theory And in French Film Theory and Criticism 1907 1939 4 Richard Abel lists the following critical treatments of several of the Surrealist published scenario texts 36 listed in the example section below J H Matthews Surrealism and Film U of Michigan P 1971 51 76 Steven Kovacs From Enchantment to Rage The Story of Surrealist Cinema Associated UP 1980 59 61 157 76 Linda Williams Figures of Desire A Theory and Analysis of Surrealist Film U of Illinois P 1981 25 33 Richard Abel Exploring the Discursive Field of the Surrealist Film Scenario Text Dada Surrealism 15 1986 58 71 Finally in his article Production s dubious advantage Lesescenarios closet drama and the screen writer s riposte 5 Quimby Melton outlines the history of the Lesescenario form situates the genre in a historical literary context by drawing parallels between it and Western closet drama and argues we might consider certain instances of closet drama proto screenplays The article also argues that writing these sorts of readerly performance texts is essentially an act of subversion whereby screen writers work in a performance mode only to intentionally bypass production and thereby re assert narrative representation s textual primacy and re claim a direct re connection with their audience The comments section of Melton s article also has an ongoing discussion of the Lesescenario canon 8 The list of examples below is based on Production s dubious advantage that discussion and Melton s Lesecenario Bibliography at Google Docs 6 The bibliography contains additional critical works concerned with individual Lesescenarios and or the canon at large Examples EditAlphabetical by author last name For a full list please see Melton s aforementioned Google Docs bibliography A Edit The House Man s Fate Dedication Day by James Agee Asakusa Park 7 The Life of a Stupid Man Shadow and Temptation by Ryunosuke Akutagawa 8 Divine Comedy by Haruhiko Arai based on Kyojin Onishi s novel of the same name 9 10 France America or the Interrupted Film by Robert Aron Eighteen Seconds a screenplay The Seashell and the Clergyman Thirty Two The Solar Plane Two Nations on the Borders of Mongolia The Master of Ballantrae after the Robert Louis Stevenson novel of the same name Flights and The Butcher s Revolt by Antonin Artaud Lost Children by Marcel Ayme B Edit The Reader from Ames by Andre Berge The Initiation A Story of Adventure by Francois Berge Hummingbird Adventures of a Freshman Girl by Nora Blake 11 The Second Departure by Maurice Betz Le Dernier Empereur by Jean Richard Bloch Beautiful Weddings in the Street A New Scenario on a Banal Theme by Jacques Bonjean One Day When I Was Lost A Scenario Based on Alex Haley s The Autobiography of Malcolm X by James Baldwin Une Girafe by Luis Bunuel Mozart and the Wolf Gang by Anthony Burgess The Last Words of Dutch Schultz by William S Burroughs C Edit Secrets on the Island and Arletty Young Woman from Dauphine by Louis Ferdinand Celine The End of the World Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame and Atlantis by Blaise Cendrars A Broken Foot A Documentary by Hendrik Cramer D Edit The Reefs of Love Midnight at Noon A Study of Marvelous Modernity and There Are Bugs in the Roast Pork by Robert Desnos Pierre or The Demon Unmasked by Andre Desson and Andre Harlaire Savoir Vivre by Jean Paul Dreyfus and Bernar Lahy Hollebecque F Edit Eyes Wide Open Paupieres mures Horizontal Bar and Mtasipoj by Benjamin Fondane G Edit News by Paul Gilson Figures by Ramon Gomez de la Serna Descent to the Lower Depths by Maxim Gorky H Edit For Rent Sakutaro Hagiwara 12 Slaughterhouses of the Night by Maurice Henry The Girl in Harmagedon by Kazumasa Hirai Ape and Essence part II The Script by Aldous Huxley J Edit Negrophobia by Darius James aka Dr Snakeskin K Edit Lom Long by Chart Korbjitti The True Story of Ah Q by Fuyuhiko Kitagawa based on Lu Xun s novella 13 L Edit The Escape of Mr McKinley by Leonid Leonov M Edit Trial of the warlock by Norman Mailer based on La bas by Joris Karl Huysmans 14 N Edit L Amazon des cimetieres by Georges Neveux O Edit The Revolutionary Woman Kenzaburo Oe 15 The Birth of the Emperor Record of Ancient Matters by Hideo Osabe R Edit Donogoo Tonka or The Miracles of Science by Jules Romains La Huiteme Jour de la semaine and The Banker or Fortune is Blind by Georges Ribemont Dessaignes S Edit The Evening Murder by Haruo Sato 16 Don t Put a Dog Outside A Film without Words by Claude Sernet T Edit Whispering Moon by Jun ichirō Tanizaki 16 The Unconquerable People The Doctor and the Devils Rebecca s Daughters The Beach of Falesa Twenty Years A Growing Suffer Little Children The Shadowless Man and Me and My Bike by Dylan Thomas W Edit Reality Is What You Can Get Away With and The Walls Came Tumbling Down by Robert Anton Wilson See also EditFuyuhiko Kitagawa cinepoetryReferences Edit Sanseido s Concise Dictionary of Katakana Words Tokyo Sanseido 1994 Norman Brian Reading a Closet Screenplay Hollywood James Baldwin s Malcolms and the Threat of Historical Irrelevance African American Review 39 1 2 Spring Summer 2005 10 18 1 Jamieson Lee The Lost Prophet of Cinema The Film Theory of Antonin Artaud Senses of Cinema 44 27 August 2007 2 Abel Richard French Film Theory and Criticism 1907 1939 Princeton UP 1993 Melton Quimby January 2010 Production s dubious advantage Lesescenarios closet drama and the screen writer s riposte SCRIPTjr nl 1 1 http scriptjr nl issues 1 1 productions dubious advantage php accessed November 21 2009 3 Melton Quimby 6 February 2011 Lesescenario Bibliography Google Docs https docs google com Doc docid 0ARA6WIHgRcNMZGM2OGJxNWhfMjlmeHh0NHZnbg amp hl en accessed February 06 2011 4 In a postscript of Akutagawa s A day in the year end Asakusa Park and other 17 stories published by Iwanami Shoten 5 a literary researcher named Toru Ishiwari called this work so called Lese scenario There is a term Lese scenario レーゼ シナリオ in the context about Asakusa Park Temptation of a master s thesis on Akutagawa submitted to Tokyo University Michiko Doi 土井美智子 s thesis March 2001 6 which was titled Treatise upon Ryunosuke Akutagawa Shifts of forms and the artistic views and listed under the annual report of research and education volume 6 published by Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at Tokyo University 7 Archived 2016 09 22 at the Wayback Machine In 2005 Shinichiro Sawai called this work Lese scenario at Kishu Izuchi s site titled Spiritualmovies Archived 2016 03 04 at the Wayback Machine The following process of starting this work is introduced in postscript of it An editor from a publishing firm named Ohta Publishing asked Arai to write this work with saying that versus Kazuo Kasahara who wrote some screenplays about wars from people s viewpoints Arai should write one about same theme from intellectuals viewpoints Arai accepted the request before reading the Onishi s novel with thinking that in the editor s intention filmmaking was no more than an addition to publishing An erotic closet screenplay Cinematic Wet Dreams Book 1 Kashiyafuda in Aozora Bunko Charms Of Scenarios Shinario No Miryoku published by Shakai Shiso Kenkyukai Shuppambu 1953 page155 290 Hidekatsu Nojima a Japanese translator who translated this work wrote the following in the postscript of Kuro Misa Black Mass 1977 Shueisha Trial of the warlock is never a so called screenplay It s an absolute novel I think that by taking advantage of the present tense in screenplay s style Mailer discovered a new style of novel which matched his existential sense about time namely The Time of Our Time or in the present in that enormous present information about a book of Oe s essays titled The Last Novel including the work in Kodansha book club a b A Thought on Junichiro Tanizaki s Whispering Moon from aspects of writing reading a film by Mioko Sato Doshisha National Literature Vol 83 External links EditRyunosuke Akutagawa Asakusa Park Trans Seiji M Lippit nycBigCityLit com February 2004 https web archive org web 20080820223841 http www nycbigcitylit com feb2004 contents longerdraughts html 10 May 2009 Antonin Artaud Les Dix huits seconds Google Books n d https books google com books id hdhR9dmPah0C amp dq antonin 20artaud 20selected amp pg PA113 1 January 2011 Louis Ferdinand Celine Secrets dans l isle Trans Mark Spitzer Cipher Journal n d http www cipherjournal com html celine html 10 May 2009 Seiji M Lippit The Disintegrating Machinery of the Modern Akutagawa Ryunosuke s Late Writings Journal of Asian Studies 9 58 1 February 1999 27 50 Peace David 2007 09 08 Last words The Guardian Retrieved 2009 05 10 Hiroo Yamagata Lesescenario Translator Negrophobia and The Last Words of Dutch Schultz Interview SCRIPTjr nl 1 2 June 2010 http scriptjr nl issues 1 2 hiroo yamagata interview 1 2 php 01 January 2011 Lom Long as a Lese scenario A professor of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies Seiji Udo s paper on Chart Korbjitti s Lesescenario Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Closet screenplay amp oldid 1164435501, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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