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Publisher Description
This svelte, softcover, pocket-sized volume memorializes Peele’s Oscar-winning script for the first time in print. Proceeding from a new foreword by Peele, 150 gorgeous black-and-white stills thread through the screenplay and into an appendix rich with brand-new material, including cut dialogue, deleted scenes, and Peele’s annotations on the whole production. But the Annotated Screenplay’s most ingenious intervention into the dense critical discourse around Get Out was to tap Tananarive Due to author its proper introduction, an essay titled “Get Out and the Black Horror Aesthetic.” Due is a leading scholar in the emerging study of Black horror, and even teaches a course at UCLA on the subject called “The Sunken Place.” [...] This new framing unlocks a deeper level of engagement with the film...
52 Reviews
4.5
Mariaaa✨
Created 2 months agoShare
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Jeff Wiemer
Created 3 months agoShare
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L💓
Created 4 months agoShare
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“No way to equivocate it: this book is simply incredible.
I had long been wanting a copy of this, as Get Out is one of my all-time favorite movies; it is cinematic craft. Just as much as I was interested in the insight this book would offer to enrich my understanding of a movie I marvel, I, even more, considered it with collectible value -- an emblem of my love for Get Out. This said, I underestimated the literary quality that a screenplay could retain, and thus my minimal anticipation for the actual subject matter allowed its impact on finally obtaining and reading it: I was blown away.
If the movie alone functioned to create awe in me, reading the annotated screenplay only served to aggrandize that capacity. Reading this book enriches interaction with the movie in so many regards, both internal to the material itself but also with respect to the exterior production-side, two faces of the movie, as revealed by the annotated screenplay, that are closely married. It doubtless deepened my understanding of the vision Peele wielded in Get Out's creation, testifying to his attention to detail and the level and reach of his intention, care, and thoughtfulness. Being witness to what humans can make, how they can tease and extend their creative capacities, was constantly mind-blowing.
The book also reinforced so many of the points of commentary this movie makes on race and American society, realizing an innumerable amount of entry-ways and relevancies to the world we live in that I had not originally seen. Given that the movie-form is dynamic, to glean its communications to completion is often difficult, as its nature tends to discourage close scrutiny (at least, without executing manipulation -- pausing, rewinding, etc..). All that can be gained from a movie in watching it, moreover, is usually executed for the filmic layman by way of ample time and iteration, if at all (especially in that the common watcher's disposition is usually relaxed or passive). The screenplay, though, transposes its visual derivative into a still form, and can thus accommodate intention on part of the audience much more naturally. Although it is a version incomplete of motion (and other regards), still does it maintain integrity. So, engaging with the script, for me, therein created a stronger sense of access to the movie's more fleeting elucidations and intradialogue. The stability of Get Out's message(s) as offered in this book was extremely illuminating, and allowed me time to spend with its details that would otherwise constantly be moving out of sight -- which overall amounted to reinforcing the strength of the movie's thematic arches. I definitely underestimated how much I would appreciate reading the screenplay in this regard.
Finally, the screenplay even provided a fairly working knowledge of the machinery of film in general, revealing mechanics and forms integral to the movie-making and movie-writing technique -- which was interesting because it was a study I had never before encountered and was cool to learn more about. Peele took the prospective recipients into immense account when constructing his screenplay, conscious of a movie being a treatment toward those watching it in tandem to an expression of its creator. How its architectural considerations informed the story was fascinating -- fashioning the plot was mechanical at times, as Peele revealed. Further, that a movie is not only a story-telling mode but one that is also very potently an experience crafted for viewers, as was made known to me, it was interesting how concerns such as audience fatigue, respite, and pay-off determined the events that took place and how they were told. From reading this book, I also speculate that engineering necessitations far proceed the storytelling of movies and tv compared to books and writing.
As mentioned, this was my first time reading a screenplay at all, let alone one in its entirety. The nature of this reading experience was particular. This book was not, per-se, akin to most casual reads -- itself, though read for fun and leisure, offering hesitance for such qualification. This is, it was much choppier than the usual leisure text. But -- as was particular about it -- not because of any necessary faults or shortcomings of the material. Rather, the nature of the literary genre just inspires an unprecedented slowness in perceiving it. I cannot imagine this book as something one could rush through. Both because of the form of the screenplay (its spatial incorporations, most notably), but also because of that unique to Get Out singularly -- its complex and layered subject matter, there was an interesting proportionality playing out between text quantity and digestion. That is, every line in the script is dense and rich, and through reading this book, I gained a new appreciation for how great a load words must carry in this respective writing form. It was just cool to be able to recognize characteristics and qualities integral to a genre with which I have little familiarity.
Further, my experience with this book was slow. With each line or sentence, I had to spend ample time taking in my reading -- for otherwise efficacious ingestion of the subject matter would not have been possible. That was a unique reading experience. I definitely overlooked the allure the screenplay would have in its own right apart from Peele's commentary, as well as even its own body of work. That is, I didn't realize how full the script would be as individual enterprise; I had preconceived its function as subordinate to the movie that would proceed it, as foundational, transitional, or supplementary to the "main" creative endeavor of its efforts, and was proven against such thought.
(I have but one sort of disfavor with Get Out: The Annotated Screenplay: I have qualms about its design aspects. These critiques are so disproportionate to the work that they really aren't even criticisms at all, but rather just me expressing my thoughts that I noted while making my way through the book. The visual design overall is very concise and well-made: it is exact, clean, and elegant with respect to both the formatting and typographic treatment, making the book a beautiful addition to my library. Certain issues were raised really only with aspects of user-experience. While I'm unsure of any production-factors that may have weighed in, I found the blocking of the script, annotations, and deleted scenes unpreferable. That is, I would have preferred them to spatially conjoin, on either page or spread. Arranging the script with its relevant additional information in proximity would have allowed their coordination with more access. I realize that the book is of a physically small ratio, and would present obstacles to such proximity, but wonder if other design solutions could have weighed in. Perhaps too creative liberty was taken to prioritize the integrity of the script read and format (for aesthetic and presentation purposes, being constantly broken up by annotations could have rendered impairment or disruption). I simply noted in my reading the modicum of inconvenience in the constant flipping front-to-back that was required to breach the book’s contents. Again, given the conciseness of the manual, it was not the end of the world -- it just contributed some difficulty in maintaining the respective places of script and annotation as well as corresponding them, and just made the read overall a bit choppy. My critique with the book's blocking deliberative, there was one time where the book design was definitively unsuccessful. The script-formatting attempts to lead the reader up to one of the movie's biggest moments, trying to emulate all the suspense and scale of this scene in designing the inclusion of its visual with respect to the dialogue and instruction that it's comprised of. This moment is when Chris enters the sunken place. While readers can perceive these attempts at dressing this moment in all of its iconic-ness, such efforts fall through because the stills cannot be seen. The script leaves off at the end of page 80, and two images that follow on 82-83 are the only in the book to take up the entirety of a spread. Further, the focal points of each image being in the center, they are obstructed by the plunge created in the book's binding. I really wish a better design-solution could have preserved these stills.)”
William Rocheleau
Created 4 months agoShare
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