Yes: Screenplay and Notes (Shooting Script) - Softcover

Potter, Sally; Berger, John; Porter, Sally; Mishra, Pankaj

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1557046662 ISBN 13: 9781557046666

Publisher: Newmarket Press, 2005

Synopsis

Contents include:

• Foreword and Screenplay by Sally Potter
• Introductions by John Berger and Pankaj Mishra
• Q&A with Sally Potter and Joan Allen
• 16-page color photograph section with 28 photographs

About this title

From Publishers Weekly

Potter's upcoming film Yes is set in London, and centers on the affair of an Irish-born American biologist, "She," and a Lebanese émigré who is a waiter in a chic hotel, "He." She is unhappily married to a British politician; at a diplomatic event in He's hotel, the two meet, and while their affair doesn't take them anywhere we haven't gone before, the script is remarkable because it is written entirely in rhymed verse. As if this weren't enough to scare off a script reader (or moviegoer), there's even a Greek chorus of sorts, in the form of a cleaning woman who comments continually on the action, as well as a number of shifts in location as She and He's affair moves around the globe. Potter, the English screenwriter best known to Americans for her films Orlando and The Tango Lesson, might have a hard time selling this latest project to Generation Multiplex; it sounds like the worst combination of literary conceit and faux dialectics. But whatever one thinks of the film (which will be released in June), it's surprising, and rather incredible, that the screenplay reads as beautifully as... well, a poem. The book also includes a q&a with Potter and Joan Allen (who plays She). Photos. (June)
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From Booklist

Published screenplays are usually worth reading only if one has seen the films, and often resemble souvenir brochures more than books. Potter's complement to her latest film is the rare published screenplay that transcends those limitations. Pictures are corralled into a discrete section, there's no press-book boilerplate about actors, and the screenplay per se, trimmed to reflect the completed film, is good reading. It helps immensely that the dialogue consists of rhymed couplets, for the discipline involved helps Potter pack in significance without becoming verbose. Basically the story, serious but not without humor, of an affair between an Irish American scientist whose marriage to a British politician has collapsed and a Lebanese physician whose exile to Britain has reduced him from practicing surgery to filleting meat in a restaurant, the piece brims with political and relationship issues, on which a succession of cleaning women makes ontological commentary a la a classical Greek chorus. Questions and answers between film-festival audience members and Potter about the film's making wrap things up very satisfactorily. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Newmarket Press
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 1557046662
• ISBN 13: 9781557046666
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 108