Body double
Subtitle: the author incarnate in the cinema
By: Lucy Fischer
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Published: 2012
Place of publication: New Brunswick, N.J
Language: eng
Number of pages: 273
ISBN-13: 9780813554495; 9780813554488; 9780813554501
Subjects: Authors in motion pictures; Motion picture authorship; Auteur theory (Motion pictures); Motion pictures and literature
Description: "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."--Publisher's website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Introduction: the screen author wanted: dead or alive; title: Typecasting the author; title: Beyond adaptation: the writer as filmmaker; title: The author at the dream factory: the screenwriter and the movies; title: The authoress: textuality as sexuality; title: Writing pain: the infirm author; title: Word and image; title: Corpus and oeuvre: authorship and the body; title: Stealing beauty: the reader, the critic, and the appropriation of the authorial voice; title: Afterword: Signs and meaning in the cinema.