Aufbauseminar Writing Film Adaptation Raymond Carver on Film

Writing and directing are both acts of discovery. In the end, the film is there and the stories are there and one hopes there is a fruitful interaction. Yet in directing Short Cuts, certain things came straight out of my own sensibility, which has its differences, and this is as it should be. I know Ray Carver would have understood that I had to go beyond just paying tribute. Something new happened in the film, and maybe that's the truest form of respect              --- Robert Altman (writer and director of Short Cuts, a 1993 film adaptation                   of nine Raymond Carver short stories and Carver's poem Lemonade) This course aims to reconcile the theory and practice of adaptation studies by combining the study of literature and film adaptation with the development of a more active literacy through screenwriting. Accordingly, each class will, in equal parts, consist of adaptation theory and adaptation practice, of analyzing adaptation and writing adaptation. In the first half of each class, we will analyze the kind of relation between Altman's film Short Cuts and Carver's writings by adopting a postmodern intertextual approach. We will draw the theoretical framework for our position as much from structuralist (e.g. Genette's transtextuality) as from poststructural and postmodern approaches (e.g. Derrida's bricolage or freeplay). In the second half, we will, then, use screenwriting as a medium of criticism, that is, we will write our own adaptations of Carver's short stories. Thereby, we will turn from readers looking up to Carver and Altman into writers meeting them on their own ground and on their own level. We will also have a chance to experiment with various types of adaptations, ranging from stricter replications to more allusive pastiches. This will enable us not only to gain a profound understanding of the theory of adaptation, but also of the actual challenges and problems involved in adapting prose for the screen in practice. This course is, therefore, as much about adaptation studies as it is an introduction to screenwriting. An introduction to screenwriting, dramatic structure, and screenplay format will be given at the beginning of the course.   This seminar will include a considerable amount of reading and writing!   To be purchased:   Carver, Raymond. 1993. Short Cuts: Selected Stories. New York: Vintage Books. ISBN: 978- 0679748649   All other primary sources and theoretical texts will be made available online via the document server of the university library (elektronischer Semesterapparat). Anglistik u.Amerikanistik (BA, PO 2013) Kernfach Universität Düsseldorf WiSe 2016/17 Bräuer Tobias