Written for the Screen establishes the status of the motion-picture screenplay as a literary
text. It introduces a text-type which is situated on the threshold of performance - to an even
greater extend than drama - and as a written text has therefore been neglected by both film
and literary studies. The volume addresses the question of film authorship and sets out the
unique conditions of screenplay production and reception. Written for the Screen outlines the
genre's constituent features and demonstrates the cinematic potential for dialogue
characterization perspective time structure setting color sound music montage and
mise-en-scène contained in the screenplay text. The screenwriter is seen as a creative and
stylistically versatile artist who anticipates the range of possibilities which his her text
represents for the final film. The selection of scripts covers U.S. American screenplays from
the early sound film to the 1990s and encompasses a variety of genres from the American cinema.
Many examples both from well-known screenplays and from others which have remained unpublished
and even unproduced illustrate the function and aesthetics of this hitherto quite unknown
text-type.
