In his very informative and enjoyable 2008 autobiography, X Films, Alex Cox finishes a discussion of his cult classic Repo Man (1984) by noting that, to him, it’s better written than directed. Such a description came as a surprise to many fans who honor the film’s memorable shots, regardless of how often the film is quoted.
Cox’s comment about writing over directing came to mind when seeing the first two films by Jordan Peele. With his scripts for these reflexive horror noire works so well made, his direction of them seems to be the simpler final step, just get it all onscreen. This is not to say that his direction wants for anything, but the writing is that significant in comparison. (We wonder if Peele, like the late Larry Cohen, is mainly a writer who wanted to control his work onscreen by directing.) While Get Out (2017) and Us (2019) have strong atmosphere and ideal casting, Nope (2022), which captures the perspective of facing an invasion – and having had enough, in general – stands as the most visually inventive. As wild as the idea of making the Blob an invading alien ship may be, Nope shows it can be done, with direction of the locations and actors relating their personal transformation during duress.
Inventory Press, having published Peele’s annotated screenplay of Get Out in 2019, now follows up with Us. It’s a nice surprise, since the first volume could have easily been a one-off, riding on the high-profile success of Peele’s debut. While his second film often gets lost between his initial and most recent success, Us remains a favorite for this writer and worthy of study – namely, as one of the best statements regarding everyone possessing an outsider/other status (especially in a horror noire context), in a genre with a long-time dedication to exploring such (as Robin Wood has noted). The supplementary footnotes included in Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay should launch more needed commentary, showing that a scholarly monograph on the film is already overdue, while Jordan Peele’s Get Out: Political Horror, edited by Dawn Keetley (Ohio State UP, 2020) did a fine job of getting such going for Peele.
Though Peele has taken to social media to comment on theories about his work, his short introduction to the Us screenplay, centered on a childhood experience in 1989 that inspired the opening scene, explores carnivalesque amusement features that lead into the film’s doubling theme – here questioning identity in 21st century. The script, illustrated with regular stills, presents the language of the project up front, again leaving us to wonder of its importance over directing. The deleted scenes noted throughout, and indexed at the end, help out those theatrical viewers and streamers who can’t get to the Blu-ray, while, naturally, readers can imagine their own direction.
The real prize here are the footnotes (in a section titled “A Cosmology of Us“) which illustrate the film’s background even, in many examples, for the well-informed viewer. The editors assemble an interesting contributor list, including Shana L. Redmond of Columbia University, along with excerpts from the work of Colson Whitehead, Carol J. Clover, and Paul Laurence Dunbar. An entry by Ted Gerike on Peele’s use of the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, which opened in 1907 and featured in many productions, shows how it grew into something like a secondary L.A. River on screen; Gerike also has the opening note, fittingly on Us reference point C.H.U.D. (Douglas Cheek, 1984), a VHS of which fans have spotted in the opening shot, and a key entry on the film’s poetics of the Underground, in a horror noire context. While many entries are obvious, like one on the werewolf, there are several nice surprises, including Zainab Sillah’s (of Monkeypaw Productions) on Oscar Micheaux’s Body and Soul (1925) and how the doubling of the Paul Robeson roles informs the reading of the theme in Us. The distinctive voices in these mini-essays help avoid a continuous reference text style, and while some of the contributors use personal slants, they don’t cloud the objective goal of illustrating the film’s background.
The notes even account for the visual product, especially when a footnote appears in a still included in the script text. And yet, once the reading is finished, the question of Peele’s language and written narrative dominating his visualization gets new traction, namely, as we wonder about the interesting horror scripts his has coming up. That said, I look forward to Nope: The Complete Annotated Screenplay, to see how the blueprint with commentary compares to the best of Peele’s direction.