Death and Life of Drama

Lance Lee has taught screenwriting to students at all levels for many years. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.

"This is an intelligent, practical, and interesting study of the screenwriting art and craft... Lee's explorations into underlying philosophy and the psychological intricacies of character behavior and story consequences are so well developed they could easily be taken as case histories of real people and real events. One can scarcely have higher praise for [this] cogent analysis of the moviemaker's art." Robert Foshko, Head of Screenwriting, Department of Radio-TV-Film, University of Texas at Austin "Lee presents an intelligent, historically informed discussion of how and why some films are inherently better than others... He gives audiences and those of us who teach film some important ideas about how to evaluate the quality and significance of one film as opposed to another... The book is filled with tantalizing, thought-provoking, and insightful ideas." Joanna E. Rapf, Professor of English and Film, University of Oklahoma

• Preface Part I. Immediate Issues 1. By the Ocean of Time Time The Argument We Are Caught In Time and Drama Slow vs. Swift 2. The Heavy as Opposed to . . . The Heavy vs. the Exhilarating Freud, Civilization, and the Heavy The Descent into the Heavy 3. Moral Substance and Ambiguity Morality and Screenplays? Typing and Volition in . . . The Heavy and Moral . . . But What Are We Morally Ambiguous About? 4. Complexity vs. Fullness Belief vs. Disbelief: Complexity Fullness Typing, Volition, and Fullness Endings A Diagram Part II. The Cooked and the Raw 5. The Cooked and the Raw Cooked Emotion The Raw Blending the Cooked and the Raw Antecedents 6. The Smart and the Dumb Flat and Round Hamlet and the Dumb John Nash and the Smart Plot-Handling Implications Part III. The Lost Poetics of Comedy 7. The Lost Poetics of Comedy The Comic Universe Winnicott and Play Some Diagrams The Two Roads The Bones of the Comic Angle of Vision The Cooked and Comedy The New Beginning in Comedy Another Diagram The Smart and Dumb in Comedy Part IV. The Nature of Dramatic Action 8. The Weight of the Past What Is the Past? High Noon Lantana Wild Strawberries Lifting Weights 9. The Weight of the Wrong Decision The Wrong Decision in the Past The Wrong Decision in the Present True Heroines and Heroes and False 10. The Nature of the Hero's Journey Campbell's Hero The Dramatic Hero 1. Arresting Life 2. Complying with the False 3. Awakening 4. Confused Growth-and the Pursuit of Error 5. Failure of the False Solution 6. The Discovery of the True Solution 7. The Heroic Deed 8. Suffering 9. The New Life Part V. The Death and Life of Drama 11. The Death and Life of Drama Prometheus in Athens, Gladiator in Rome Shakespeare in Elizabeth's London The Argument We Are Having with Ourselves Appendix A Case Study: Ingmar Bergman's Fanny and Alexander Notes Film and Drama List Index