From Booklist
Doctorow is not only one of our most significant living novelists, he is also a highly creative screenplay writer. Adaptating novels for movies is a tricky and often thankless endeavor, one many novelists haven't the stomach for. But because Doctorow is profoundly intrigued with film's seductiveness, a frequent motif in his fiction, he has performed this arduous task to fine effect. Three Screenplays presents the screenplays for Daniel (produced in 1983 under the direction of Sidney Lumet), Ragtime, a magnificent adaptation that perfectly mirrors the panoramic novel but which was never made (a shorter screenplay was commissioned for the Milos Forman film), and Loon Lake, which has yet to be produced. Doctorow's remarks, meticulous commentary by film and American literature professor Paul Levine, and interviews with Doctorow and Lumet coalesce to form a provocative inquiry into "the process of artistic alchemy" that attempts the nearly impossible, the translation of fiction into film. Donna Seaman
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Review
"[Doctorow] is at once a radical historian, a cultural anthropologist, a troubadour, a private eye, and a cost-benefit analyst of assimilation and upward mobility in the great American multiculture."--John Leonard, New York Review of Books


Review
"This book is a welcome addition to E. L. Doctorow's published works, one which shows him to be an innovative adaptor of his novels into new configurations for another medium. These screenplays are fascinating to read set against the original novels and afford us the opportunity to understand what happens to the author's vision in a collaborative medium: what must necessarily be altered, what is always lost, what is enhanced."--Chris Messenger, author of The Godfather and American Culture


Book Description
E. L. Doctorow is one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed living writers. Winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Humanities Medal, he is the author of nine novels that have explored the drama of American life from the late nineteenth century to the present. Doctorow has also played an active role in transforming his novels into films, writing screenplay adaptations of three of his works -- The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, and Loon Lake. Published here for the first time, his scripts reveal a new aspect of this writer's remarkable talents and offer film students and other cineastes unique insight into the complex relationship of literature and motion pictures.Each of these screenplays has undergone a different fate. Doctorow's script for Daniel was made into a feature film by director Sidney Lumet in 1983. The monumental Ragtime screenplay he wrote for director Robert Altman was to have been filmed as either a six-hour feature film or a ten-hour television series. When Altman was replaced on the project by Milos Forman, a shorter, more conventional script was commissioned from another writer. In 1981, Doctorow adapted Loon Lake, but this challenging work has yet to be filmed.For this book, Doctorow has revised his dazzling Ragtime screenplay, making clear how different the film might have been, and has written a preface about the art of screenwriting. In addition, editor Paul Levine provides a general introduction to Doctorow's fiction and specific introductions to each screenplay; interviews Lumet about making Daniel; and talks with Doctorow about his abiding interest in the art and craft of cinema.


From the Back Cover
"Three Screenplays is of interest as much for the stories of films that didn't get made as for any insight on the translation from novel to screenplay."-Times Literary Supplement"A provocative inquiry into the process of artistic alchemy that attempts the nearly impossible, the translation of fiction into film."-BooklistOne of America's most accomplished and acclaimed contemporary writers, E. L. Doctorow has played an active role in transforming his novels into films, writing screenplay adaptations of three works: The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, and Loon Lake. These scripts reveal a new aspect of Doctorow's remarkable talents and offer unique insight into the complex relationship between literature and motion pictures. Doctorow revised his Ragtime screenplay for this book and wrote a preface on the art of screenwriting. E. L. Doctorow's novels are Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, and City of God. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Humanities Medal. Paul Levine is a professor of American literature at Copenhagen University.


About the Author
E. L. Doctorow's novels are Welcome to Hard Times, The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, Loon Lake, Lives of the Poets, World's Fair, Billy Bathgate, The Waterworks, and City of God. Among his honors are the National Book Award, two National Book Critics Circle awards, the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Edith Wharton Citation for Fiction, the William Dean Howells Medal of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the National Humanities Medal. He lives in New York. Paul Levine is a professor of American literature at Copenhagen University.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

E. L. Doctorow is one of America's most accomplished and acclaimed living writers. Winner of the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award (twice), the PEN/Faulkner Award, and the National Humanities Medal, he is the author of nine novels that have explored the drama of American life from the late nineteenth century to the present. Doctorow has also played an active role in transforming his novels into films, writing screenplay adaptations of three of his works -- The Book of Daniel, Ragtime, and Loon Lake. Published here for the first time, his scripts reveal a new aspect of this writer's remarkable talents and offer film students and other cineastes unique insight into the complex relationship of literature and motion pictures.

Each of these screenplays has undergone a different fate. Doctorow's script for Daniel was made into a feature film by director Sidney Lumet in 1983. The monumental Ragtime screenplay he wrote for director Robert Altman was to have been filmed as either a six-hour feature film or a ten-hour television series. When Altman was replaced on the project by Milos Forman, a shorter, more conventional script was commissioned from another writer. In 1981, Doctorow adapted Loon Lake, but this challenging work has yet to be filmed.