Engaging Dialogue: Cinematic Verbalism in American Independent Cinema

Abstract

Explores how American directors engage audiences through dialogue that is creatively designed and executedProvides a framework for analysing dialogue design and execution that can be readily applied to other films and filmmakersHighlights how speech can be central to cinema without overshadowing its medium-specific componentsDevelops new connections between film dialogue, reception studies, independent cinema and auteur studiesExamining the centrality of dialogue to American independent cinema, Jennifer O'Meara argues that it is impossible to separate small budgets from the old adage that 'talk is cheap'. Focusing on the 1980s until the present, particularly on the films by writer-directors like Jim Jarmusch, Noah Baumbach and Richard Linklater, this book demonstrates dialogue's ability to engage audiences and bind together the narrative, aesthetic and performative elements of selected cinema. Questioning the association of dialogue-centred films with the 'literary' and the 'un-cinematic', O'Meara highlights how speech in independent cinema can instead hinge on what is termed 'cinematic verbalism': when dialogue is designed and executed in complex, medium-specific ways.Read a sample chapter (pdf)

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