I am not usually very civic-minded, but last month I wrote a letter to City Council Speaker Christine Quinn against the proposed budget cuts to the NYPL because, in short, I am a big book nerd.
(In full...1. Access to books and learning and imagination should not be the sole privilege of people with money!--And I don't think that just because I'm currently unemployed! 2. I love that libraries are agnostic about book sales and popularity, and a little-known book can sit right next to a Nobel authored book when the alphabet works out just so. 3. Crinkling plastic book jackets, Gumby-bendy paperbacks, and knuckle knock knock rebindings.)
Today, I lost a few happy hours at The Performing Arts branch of the NYPL. Besides musical scores and dance recordings and theatre archives, you can borrow screenplays!
I brought home THE PIANO (Jane Campion), SECRETARY (Erin Cressida Wilson), JULES AND JIM (Francois Truffaut), and THE ICE STORM (James Schamus). I've started the Jules and Jim screenplay, and there are certain scenes already that I've mentally flagged to watch with the screenplay in hand. These are the scenes where I don't really get the technical stuff. The words are pretty self-explanatory--dissolve, close-up, pan, fade--but I have to admit that I can't really visualize, "The camera pans after her in close-up as she puffs rapidly round the room. . ." We'll see.
For those of you who are employed and perhaps too busy to go to the library, you can find the screenplays (or DVD, for Jules and Jim) through the Amazon links below.
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