Body Double

The Author Incarnate in the Cinema

by Lucy Fischer

Published by: Rutgers University Press

Subjects:American Studies, Literary Studies, Film, Media Studies, and Communications

288 Pages, 6.1 x 9.3 in, 41 photographs

Paperback
9780813554488
Published: January 15, 2013

EPUB
9780813577548
Published: January 15, 2013

PDF
9780813554501
Published: January 15, 2013

Description
Contents
Authors
Praise

Body Double explores the myriad ways that film artists have represented the creative process. In this highly innovative work, Lucy Fischer draws on a neglected element of auteur studies to show that filmmakers frequently raise questions about the paradoxes of authorship by portraying the onscreen writer. Dealing with such varied topics as the icon of the typewriter, the case of the writer/director, the authoress, and the omnipresent infirm author, she probes the ways in which films can tell a plausible story while contemplating the conditions and theories of their making.

By examining many forms of cinema, from Hollywood and the international art cinema to the avant-garde, Fischer considers the gender, age, and mental or physical health of fictionalized writers; the dramatized interaction between artists and their audiences and critics; and the formal play of written words and nonverbal images.

By analyzing such movies as Adaptation,Diary of a Country Priest, Naked Lunch, American Splendor, and Irezumi, Fischer tracks the parallels between film author and character, looking not for the creative figure who stands outside the text, but for the one who stands within it as corporeal presence and alter-ego.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: The Screen Author--Wanted: Dead or Alive

1. Typecasting the Author
2. Beyond Adaptation: The Writer as Filmmaker
3. The Author at the Dream Factory: The Screenwriter and the Movies
4. The Authoress: Textuality as Sexuality
5. Writing Pain: The Infirm Author
6. Cinecriture: Word and Image
7. Corpus and Oeuvre: Authorship and the Body
8. Stealing Beauty: The Reader, the Critic, and the Appropriation of the Authorial Voice

Afterword: Signs and Meaning in the Cinema

Notes
Filmography
Bibliography
Index

LUCY FISCHER is Distinguished Professor of English and Film Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She has written and edited numerous books, including American Cinema of the 1920s: Themes and Variations (Rutgers University Press) and Designing Women: Art Deco, Cinema, and the Female Form.

"Fischer’s original, wide-ranging book shows that filmmakers have said as much or more than theorists about the complex figure of the author in modern culture."
~James Naremore, Indiana University

"Richly detailed, carefully researched, and elegantly written, Lucy Fischer’s Body Double signficantly reshapes our understanding of authorship in the cinema while exploring related issues regarding gender, style, writing, and embodiment."
~Patrice Petro, Past President, Society for Cinema and Media Studies

"Where is the author in film? In this book, Fischer offers a wide ranging, deeply informed view of the concept of authorship in cinema in all its manifestations. This brief review cannot begin to address the multitude of films, scenarists, directors, and films given detailed examination, but the manner in which Fischer discusses the films and their makers, both literary and cinematic, is authoritative and never less than richly detailed. This is a bold and adventurous book that repays multiple readings. Highly recommended."
~Choice

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Body Double

The Author Incarnate in the Cinema

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The Author Incarnate in the Cinema

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