The Ice Storm: The Shooting Script

The Ice Storm: The Shooting Script is a real rarity: a published screenplay that can be enjoyed completely on its own merits. James Schamus’ graceful, literate script brims with exceptional attention to detail (from the detritus of early-’70s suburban culture to the most faintly flickering emotional reactions of its characters) and manages to provide its own pleasures while casting fresh light on both Rick Moody’s novel and Ang Lee’s film. More welcome still, the warts-and-all script includes dialogue, descriptions, and entire scenes that didn’t make it into the movie, along with Schamus’ explanations of why the most significant cuts were made. It takes humility for a writer to expose himself this way—to leave in the overstatements, repetitions, and wrong turns (not to mention the good stuff) that never made it to the screen—but when the resulting book expands a moviegoer’s understanding of the screenwriter’s craft and the finished film, it’s a risk worth taking.