Product Description

Including a facsimile of the complete shooting script--Academy Award-nominated director Scott Hicks (Shine) shares his vision transforming the bestselling novel into a seamless and profound masterpiece of a movie. Set in the Pacific Northwest a few years after the end of WWII, Snow Falling on Cedars is a powerful, lyrical meditation on the heartache--and consequences--of lost love. It tells the story of Ishmael Chambers (Ethan Hawke), a journalist reporting on the trial of a Japanese American accused of murdering a local fisherman. The trial forces the entire village to face the shame of sending their Japanese American neighbors to internment camps following the bombing of Pearl Harbor and becomes the turning point for the honorable but wounded Hawke to free himself from his obsessive passion for his childhood love, the Japanese woman now married to the accused. Here is a deeply haunting mystery and a heartbreaking tale of passion, justice, and the accidents of nature which rule every corner of the universe. In the Newmarket Shooting Script Series format, here is the complete shooting script, an introduction by Hicks, notes and storyboards with his own drawings of scene renditions and camera angles, and a detailed interview revealing how he envisioned turning the acclaimed David Guterson novel into a movie. Illustrated with production stills and examples of several versions of poster art, the book is a must for all film students, fans, and lovers of the novel. The movie stars Ethan Hawke (Great Expectations, Reality Bites), James Cromwell (Babe), Richard Jenkins (There's Something about Mary), Youki Kudoh (Picture Bride), James Rebhorn (The Game), Sam Shepard (Safe Passage), newcomer Rick Yune, and Max Von Sydow (Hannah and Her Sisters). The producers are Kathleen Kennedy (E.T., The Color Purple), Frank Marshall (Raiders of the Lost Ark), Harry J. Ufland, and Ron Bass.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1489526 in Books
• Published on: 1999-11
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

Customer Reviews

Successful screen adaptation of a complex novel
Everyone will acknowledge that to adapt a novel for the screen always amounts to a difficult - and in many cases a downright impossible - undertaking. This is not any different with "Snow Falling on Cedars", a novel that is remarkable for its use of different time levels as well as an array of characters complex enough to scare off most scriptwriters. Given the difficulties Ron Bass and Scott Hicks must have faced while adapting the novel, I am all the more pleased with the result of their work. All in all it is fair to say that they have succeeded in writing a script that never runs the risk of cutting the novel's central thread and that pays attention to a great many of the book's intricate details. One drop of bitterness, however, is exactly the use of the aforementioned time levels - or "time frames", as Hicks calls them in his commentary that closes the script - as their complex arrangement both threatens the smooth evolving of the story and tends to confuse those readers not familiar with the novel. But then this may have to do more with the general problems associated with bringing a novel to the screen than with Bass' and Hicks' qualities as scriptwriters, and I would still recommend this script to anyone interested in getting to know more about the filming of "Snow Falling on Cedars" and about adapting a novel for the screen in general.