Robert De Niro at Work
From Screenplay to Screen Performance
Authors: Ganz, Adam, Price, Steven
Free Preview- Features unseen annotated scripts from throughout De Niro's career and analysis of the same
- Re-evaluates how stories evolve between screenwriter, actor and director, tracing power and creative control
- Proposes a new theoretical concept of the 'working script'
- Seeks to redefine our current understanding of what a screenplay is
Buy this book
- About this book
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Robert De Niro at Work is the first critical study to examine how Robert de Niro, perhaps the finest screen actor of his generation, works with screenplays to imagine, prepare and denote his performance. In categorising the various ways in which De Niro works with a screenplay, this book will re-examine the relationship between actor and text. This book considers the screenplay as above all a working document and a material object, present at every stage of the filmmaking process. The working screenplay goes through various iterations in development and exists in many versions on set, each adapted and personalised for the specific use of the individual and their role. As the archive reveals, nobody works more closely with the script than the actor, and no actor works more on a script than De Niro.
- About the authors
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Adam Ganz is Professor in the Media Arts Department at Royal Holloway, University of London.
Steven Price is Professor in Modern and Contemporary Literature and Film at Bangor University. He is the author of The Screenplay: Authorship, Theory and Criticism and A History of the Screenplay, and former editor of the Journal of Screenwriting.
- Reviews
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“For someone famous for playing inarticulate characters, Robert De Niro here stands revealed as a probing, subtle reader of the screenplays he inhabits. With unprecedented access to De Niro’s personal scripts for Taxi Driver and other classics, Ganz and Price show how he ponders a role—assembling clippings and video notes, researching costumes and period details, jotting down emotional chords that will blossom into precise expressions, tonalities, and gestures. More broadly, Robert De Niro at Work demands that we rethink how profoundly an actor’s craft shapes the dynamics of screenwriting practice. This plunge into the creative process, deeply informed by a historical awareness of acting traditions, will be of keen interest to aspiring filmmakers and performers. Not least, film fans will gain a new respect for De Niro’s immense gifts.” (David Bordwell, American film theorist and film historian)
“In this intriguing new book, Adam Ganz and Steven Price document Robert De Niro writing to himself. Reading these intimate internal dialogues, we are reminded of the immense, unsatisfied thirst for illusion that is at the core of our being. The authors demonstrate a profound understanding of the process of acting. Robert De Niro at Work is unique in placing the performer at the centre of the writing process and storytelling by capturing the physical and intellectual relation that actors have to the text, as well as the highly complex journey involved in making it their own.” (Anamaria Marinca, Actor)
- Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Introduction
Pages 1-6
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The Robert De Niro Archive and the Screenplay as a Boundary Object
Pages 7-49
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Influences and Ideas of Performance
Pages 51-89
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Taxi Driver
Pages 91-115
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The Last Tycoon
Pages 117-146
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
Bibliographic Information
- Bibliographic Information
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- Book Title
- Robert De Niro at Work
- Book Subtitle
- From Screenplay to Screen Performance
- Authors
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- Adam Ganz
- Steven Price
- Series Title
- Palgrave Studies in Screenwriting
- Copyright
- 2020
- Publisher
- Palgrave Macmillan
- Copyright Holder
- The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)
- eBook ISBN
- 978-3-030-47960-2
- DOI
- 10.1007/978-3-030-47960-2
- Softcover ISBN
- 978-3-030-47959-6
- Edition Number
- 1
- Number of Pages
- XIII, 246
- Number of Illustrations
- 1 b/w illustrations, 10 illustrations in colour
- Topics
