Summary

Elia Kazan was the twentieth century’s most celebrated director of both stage and screen, and this monumental, revelatory book shows us the master at work. Kazan’s list of Broadway and Hollywood successes—A Streetcar Named Desire, Death of a Salesman, On the Waterfront, to name a few—is a testament to his profound impact on the art of directing.

This remarkable book, drawn from his notebooks, letters, interviews, and autobiography, reveals Kazan’s method: how he uncovered the “spine,” or core, of each script; how he analyzed each piece in terms of his own experience; and how he determined the specifics of his production. And in the final section, “The Pleasures of Directing”—written during Kazan’s final years—he becomes a wise old pro offering advice and insight for budding artists, writers, actors, and directors.

“To read this book is to sit with Kazan as he talks about his work. You feel his energy, devotion, and openness. You are given rare and fascinating access to the insights and techniques of a great director.” —Sidney Lumet

“Kazan stands alone in his work both on stage and screen. This book provides an excellent opportunity to deepen our understanding of Kazan’s achievements.” —Alec Baldwin

“A fascinating account of how a master director works. . . . It is also, quite simply, a good read.” —The New Criterion

“A wonderfully conflicted yet curiously confident self-portrait of a great director.” — Los Angeles Times

“Unusually entertaining . . . It’s not just his insights, it’s the incisive way he expresses them.” —New York Observer

“This is Kazan the professional speaking, a giant of the Method spilling his secrets. . . . An indispensable resource for anyone hoping to understand the direction of actors and the differences between stage and screen. . . . Revelatory and instructive.” —Directors Guild of America Quarterly

Author Biography

Elia Kazan was born in 1909 in Istanbul. He graduated from Williams College and attended the Yale School of Drama before joining the Group Theatre. He was the founder of the Actors Studio, and he won three Tony Awards for direction (for All My Sons, Death of a Salesman, and J.B.) and two Academy Awards (for Gentleman’s Agreement and On the Waterfront), as well as an honorary Oscar in 1999 for lifetime achievement. He died in September 2003.

Foreword by John Lahr
Preface by Martin Scorsese
Introduction by Robert Cornfield

THE DIRECTOR’S NOTES
PLAYS
For the Group Theatre
Style and Spine, Style in the Theatre, Quiet City
Hot Nocturne
The Skin of Our Teeth
Dunnigan’s Daughter
Truckline Café
All My Sons
A Streetcar Named Desire
Death of a Salesman
Camino Real
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
J.B.
Sweet Bird of Youth

SHORT TAKES
The Young Go First; Casey Jones; It’s Up to You;One Touch of Venus; Jacobowsky and the Colonel; Deep Are the Roots; Tea and Sympathy;The Dark at the Top of the Stairs; After the Fall;The Changeling; The Chain

FILMS
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Boomerang!
Gentleman’s Agreement
Panic in the Streets
A Streetcar Named Desire
Viva Zapata!
On the Waterfront
East of Eden
Baby Doll
A Face in the Crowd
Wild River
Splendor in the Grass
America America
The Arrangement
The Last Tycoon

SHORT TAKES
Sea of Grass; Pinky; Man on a Tightrope; The Visitors

THE PLEASURES OF DIRECTING
On What Makes a Director
The Pleasures of Directing

Afterword by Robert Cornfield
Chronology
Bibliography
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index

Supplemental Materials

What is included with this book?

The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.

Excerpts

A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
by Tennessee Williams

FROM THE NOTEBOOK
August 1947

A thought: Directing finally consists of turning Psychology into Behavior.

Theme: This is a message from the dark interior. This little twisted, pathetic, confused bit of light and culture puts out a cry. It is snuffed out by the crude forces of violence, insensibility, and vulgarity that existin our South — and this is the cry of the play.

Style: One reason a “ style,” a stylized production, is necessary is that Blanche’s memories, inner life, emotions are a tangible, actual factor.We cannot understand her behavior unless we see the effect of her past on her present behavior.

This play is a poetic tragedy. We are shown the final dissolution of a person of worth, who once had great potential, and who, even as she is defeated, as she is destroyed, has a worth exceeding that of the “healthy,” coarse-grained figures who kill her.

Blanche and Don Quixote are both emblems of the death of an old culture. This is a poetic tragedy, not a realistic, naturalistic one. The acting must be styled, not in the obvious sense. (Say nothing about this to the producer and actors.) But you will fail unless you find this kind of poetic realization for these people’s behavior.

Blanche is a social type, an emblem of a dying civilization, making its last curlicued and romantic exit. All her behavior patterns are those of the dying civilization she represents. In other words, her behavior is social. Therefore find social modes! This is the source of the play’s stylization and the production’s style and color. Likewise, Stanley’s behavior is social too. It is the basic animal cynicism of today. “ Get what’s coming to you! Don’t waste a day! Eat, drink, get yours!” This is the basis of his stylization, of the choice of his props. All props should be stylized: They should have a color, shape, and weight that spellstyle.

An effort to put poetic names on scenes to edge me into stylizations and physicalizations. Try to keep each scene in terms of Blanche.

1. Blanche comes to the last stop at the end of the line.
2. Blanche tries to make a place for herself.
3. Blanche breaks them [Stanley and Stella] apart, but when they come together, Blanche is more alone than ever!
4. Blanche, more desperate because more excluded, tries the
direct attack and creates the enemy who will finish her.
5. Blanche finds that she is being tracked down for the kill. She must work fast.
6. Blanche suddenly finds Mitch, suddenly makes for herself the only possible, perfect man for her.
7. Happy only for a moment, Blanche comes out of the bathroom to find that her doom has caught up with her.
8. Blanche fights her last fight. Breaks down. Even Stella deserts her.
9. Blanche’s last desperate effort to save herself by telling the whole truth. The truth dooms her.
10. Blanche escapes out of this world. She is brought back by Stanley and destroyed.
11. Blanche is disposed of.

Find an entirely different character, a self-dramatized and selfromanticized character for Blanche to play in each scene, as if she were playing eleven different people. This will give the play the kind of changeable and shimmering surface it should have. And all these eleven self-dramatized and romantic characters should derive from the romantic tradition of the Pre-Bellum South. For example, in Scene 2 she is “Gay Miss Devil-May-Care.”

The style — the real deep style — consists of one thing only: to find behavior that’s truly social, significantly typical, at each moment. It’s not so much what Blanche has done, it’s how she does it — with such style, grace, manners, old-world trappings and effects, props, tricks, swirls, etc., that they seem anything but vulgar.

A

Excerpted from Kazan on Directing by Elia Kazan
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