Famed Mississippi author William Faulkner may have won the nobel prize in literature for his novels, but he also worked as a script-writer for Hollywood.
In fact, he penned the screen adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s The Big Sleep, which is one of my favorite movies (as confusing as it is; I like the fact that the DVD has the uncut, unreleased, less-confusing version as well as the theatrical one).
The Big Sleep is film noir, so it’s dark and moody, but Faulkner also liked comedy. His favorite TV show toward the end of his life, apparently, was Car 54 Where Are You?
So what if Faulkner had tried his hand writing comedy for Hollywood? . . . like maybe the Three Stooges?
THE RESULT MAY HAVE BEEN SOMETHING LIKE THIS.
The link is to the story that won this year’s Faux Faulkner contest.
Screenwriter David Sheffield won this year’s Faux Faulkner contest by
imagining what it would’ve been like if William Faulkner — a Nobel
laureate known for thickets of challenging (often parenthetical) prose
— had written for the Three Stooges.Faulkner’s niece, Dean Faulkner Wells, who has coordinated the parody contest for 15 years with her husband, Larry, said Sheffield’s script clearly stood out.
“What I cannot believe, from the hundreds and hundreds of entries we read, is that there could be something this fresh and this new and this funny,” she said. “This one was unique.”
Larry Wells thought “Pappy” would’ve liked seeing his highbrow style superimposed on the lowbrow Stooges.
MORE.
CHT: Southern Appeal.
ABOUT WILLIAM FAULKNER.
ABOUT THE THREE STOOGES.
I love the run-on sentence for an opening paragraph.
I’m not all that familiar with Faulkner.
I have a good deal more exposure to the Stooges.
If you want more exposure As I Lay Dying is a good place to start. I love when the old lady is dying listening to the men build her coffin because they have to get her in it and across the creek before it floods. “I made it on the bevel…”
that’s not a run-on sentence.
True, it might be a trifle difficult, diagramming it, but it has all the punctuation and conjunctions necessary.
His favorite TV show toward the end of his life, apparently, was Car 54 Where Are You?
And for a bit of trivia: What two actors from that show were later reteamed for yet another half-hour comedy?
it might be a trifle difficult diagramming it
shhh….young people today probably don’t know what that is. 😉
Barbara, that would be Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis, who later played Herman and Grandpa Munster.
“that’s not a run-on sentence.
True, it might be a trifle difficult, diagramming it, but it has all the punctuation and conjunctions necessary.”
Techically, yes, but it’s just unwieldy. I know my old english professor would have made ME go back and re-work it.
The diagram for that sentence would look like Oppenheimer’s plans for Fat Man.
One of my friends in college used an actual Faulkener sentence in a paper, which then was marked on the paper as a run on sentence. This was to prove that the Professor’s favorite author, Faulkner, wasn’t all that great and wrote many “run on sentences.” At least that’s what he told me.
Arrrgh! Flashbacks to high school English!
Calling a sentence “run-on” because it is long and convoluted and ought to be rewritten as several is an abuse of the English language, since not every sentence that runs on and on and on is a run-on — and a run-on does not have to run on and on and on. “He laughed he cried” is a run-on sentence.
Don’t glorify your neo-Confederate friends or justify that which should not be justified too much