http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?...=PRE&Product_Count=5

Moby Dick: the Screenplay
By Ray Bradbury
--to be published in June 2008

Dust jacket by Jon Foster

Trade: $35
ISBN: 978-1-59606-180-4

Lettered: $400

Length: 185 pages

At last, more than fifty years after the classic movie's release, Ray Bradbury has allowed the original screenplay for his treatment of Herman Melville's Moby Dick to be published.

This is not the shooting script, which saw input from director John Huston, among others, but the version as Bradbury originally envisioned it, the pure tale before studio influence.

Subterranean Press is proud to present Moby Dick: the Screenplay in two unique editions:

Trade: fully cloth bound hardcover

Lettered: 26 signed copies -- the only version autographed by Mr. B -- with an exclusive publication of his working notes toward the screenplay.

In another thread, we were discussing Bradbury, Welles and Moby Dick. Since it's relevant to this thread, I have brought the discussion over here instead!

The person who knows most about Bradbury's Moby Dick screenplay (apart from Mr B himself, of course) is Jon Eller of the Center for Ray Bradbury Studies. So I asked him if he could answer the question of whether Welles or Bradbury wrote the Father Mapple sermon. Here's what he told me:

In Chapter 4 of my forthcoming book, Becoming Ray Bradbury, I discuss the details of the Orson Welles reading of the Father Mapple sermon.

At the time Welles was in London preparing his own stage version of Moby Dick, which opened as a "play within a play" concept some months after Welles read the Father Mapple sermon for Huston on the film set. Welles read his own stage version of the sermon for the first take, but Huston persuaded Welles to read from Bradbury's script for the second take. The second take is supposed to be the one used in the film, but I have not yet checked it against our copy of the final release script here in the Bradbury Center.

Lawrence Grobel's The Hustons (p. 426) quotes cinematographer Ossie Morris as his primary source; Ray was no longer with the crew during the shooting stage of production, but he heard the same story later (probably from Jeannie Sims or Jack Clayton). The Welles stage version is discussed at length in Frank Brady's Citizen Welles (pp. 482-485).

Best and regards to all,

Jon
--
Jonathan R. Eller, Professor of English
Associate Director, Institute for American Thought
Co-founder, Center for Ray Bradbury Studies
Indiana University School of Liberal Arts


So the FINAL verdict awaits direct comparison of the film with the Bradbury script! But from what Jon says, Welles was justified in saying that he wrote the sermon himself - although if he were telling the WHOLE truth he would have added that he actually filmed two versions of the scene.

Phil,
THAT'S SOME AWESOME SLEUTHING. Profound thanks to you and the professor.

I waited over 25 years to see Welles' F for Fake.

I like the word you used before -- "hyperbole" and the phrase you used here -- "if he were telling the WHOLE truth...."

Thank you again.

Was F FOR FAKE worth the 25-year wait? I think it's one of the best things Welles did in his later career. I love the bit where he reveals that the film started off truthfully, but that at a certain point he slipped into lying.

It's probably been there a good few weeks (I haven't looked for a while), but the cover art for Moby Dick is now visible on Subterranean's site:



And they say they will be collecting the books from the printer later this week:

http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/2008/07/09/ray-b...ock-later-this-week/

I feel like a kid waiting for his Winter Solstice gift. The DVD player is queued up to Padre Mapple’s sermon. The moment I get the book, Moby Dick, A Screenplay, I will read the script’s passage while listening to Orson Wells give the speech. I cannot sleep not knowing whose words were actually in the movie.

Methinks it will take several playings to disentangle the dialogue. Such fun!

I love the way Ahab, on the book cover, gradually merges into white (like the whale).

OK, there's three good words recently herein.

Solstice, methinks, and disentangle.

(Herein is a good word)

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:
(Herein is a good word)

(...which also happens to be a perfectly valid word in German, albeit pronounced differently.)

(Albeit is a good word.) (Not to be confused with the German word "Arbeit".)

Parenthese is a good word.

Parenthese. Verb. To place inside one or more parenthesis.

Phil, let's not get too technical!

Happy Solstice, my copy of Moby Dick, A Screenplay is in my chubby hands. The book is beautifully produced. Real linen boards, quality end papers. Quality pages. You've seen the cover but the Rockwell Kent plate of the whale is beautiful.

Not to brew a pot of tea...

jkt, have you got a special advance copy, or have they started despatching to everyone?

quote:

Originally posted by philnic:
jkt, have you got a special advance copy, or have they started despatching to everyone?

I have one on order from SubPress, that has yet to arrive. My local bookmonger, Mystery and Imagination, received 30 copies, on Monday. Yes, I know, I'll have two but one can never have too many books.