Rewriting Indie Cinema: Improvisation, Psychodrama, and the Screenplay (Film and Culture Series)

In __Rewriting Indie Cinema__, J. J. Murphy explores 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. 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. "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"-- Provided by publisher CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION. ACROSS THE SPECTRUM: FROM IMPROVISATION TO PSYCHODRAMA 1. AND I HATE ACTORS: THE NEW AMERICAN CINEMA 2. LET’S NOT PHONY IT UP ANYMORE: THE FILMS OF JOHN CASSAVETES 3. PLACE-BASED REALISM: MACKENZIE, LODEN, AND BURNETT 4. EXPERIMENTS IN PSYCHODRAMA: MEKAS, WARHOL, CLARKE, AND MAILER 5. HUMAN LIFE ISN’T NECESSARILY WELL-WRITTEN: WILLIAM GREAVES’S SYMBIOPSYCHOTAXIPLASM: TAKE ONE AND TAKE 21⁄2 6. BEYOND THE METHOD: ABEL FERRARA AND HARVEY KEITEL 7. TIED TO A MACHINE: THE FILMS OF GUS VAN SANT 8. I LIKE HOW YOU TALK: THE FILMS OF JOE SWANBERG 9. IMPROVISATION AND PLACE: PUTTY HILL, STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS, AND THE FILMS OF SEAN BAKER 10. REDISCOVERING PSYCHODRAMA: FROWNLAND, HEAVEN KNOWS WHAT, AND STINKING HEAVEN 11. THE LINE BETWEEN REALITY AND STAGING: ACTOR MARTINEZ, ACTRESS, AND THE WITNESS CONCLUSION: BLENDING FICTION AND DOCUMENTARY NOTES BIBLIOGRAPHY INDEX