Word: scripting
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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From a Barren Room. A young man of great energy, some talent, and no humility, Mann is currently the most active screenwriter in Hollywood. Since he won an Oscar last year for Judgment at Nuremberg, every Hollywood producer has been trying to sign him to write a script, and lucky actors whisper importantly to their friends that they have been cast "to do an Abby Mann." Later they whisper to Mann himself, saying what a great writer you are, darling. When a writer steps into that sort of atmosphere and is incautious enough to believe what the flatterers tell...
...genuine. A Child Is Waiting is an original Abby Mann screenplay (actually based on an Abby Mann TV play) about retarded children. When Paramount Pictures insisted on using Hollywood kid actors instead of retarded children themselves, Mann emptied his bank account to buy back the option to the script. He wanted real retarded children to show how close to normal they are, or seem...
...Vera Cruz and rode with seven boring fellow passengers to Houston in preparation for his movie adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's Ship of Fools. In Rome, between sessions with De Sica, he popped around to Miss Porter's hotel room to confer with her on the script. In Mexico, he was also collecting impressions for his script of Children of Sanchez. Soon he will be in Georgia and Mississippi soaking up attitudes for his version of MacKinlay Kantor's Anders onville and William Faulkner's Light in August...
...than $250,000 an adaptation -with a nibble or two at the gross. He has succeeded in his one-man crusade for screenwriter independence, at least for himself if not yet for others. Important actors like Spencer Tracy have threatened to quit if a word of an Abby Mann script is changed...
...this madness, some interesting relationships emerge as the story unfolds. Unfortunately, director Silverthorne does not pursue many of them. He falls into the trap and explores only the lack of understanding between the very rich (Albert) and the poor (Amanda). And this conflict is the most trivial in the script, as well as totally overdrawn. Silverthorne underplays the pitiful position of the Duchess, and her inability to help Albert even though she desperately wants to. The real nature of Albert's melancholy is only suggested...