by James Dickey
First published 1982
This collection presents James Dickey's original screenplay for Deliverance alongside twenty-two production stills from the acclaimed film adaptation. Dickey wrote the script as both a standalone artistic work and an enhancement to the source novel's meaning. He approached the screenplay as "an intense and extremely stimulating sort of game" with a divine camera capturing each scene as he envisioned it. When Warner Brothers received his submission, Dickey felt confident he had captured his exact vision for the screen. The final film, directed by John Boorman, earned Academy Award nominations for best picture, direction, and editing. Arthur Knight praised it as a rare film that achieves literary resonance without sounding literary. Yet Dickey acknowledges that the actual movie differs from his original conception. His true vision exists only in imagination and within these pages. The screenplay invites readers to project Dickey's version in their mind's theater and compare it with the film they know.
Genres: fiction, drama, american-fiction, adventure
Vibes: dark, emotional, suspenseful
Tropes: fish-out-of-water
Period: 20th-century
168 pages · Hardcover · Southern Illinois University Press
Content warnings: graphic-violence, violence