This week, we take a peek into the world of Robert M. Rubin, a New York–based collector of film scripts. A historian of architecture and contemporary art by trade, Bob began buying rare and historically significant screenplays seriously in the 1990s, and by now has amassed an archive of what he calls “exformation”—that is, the ephemera that was often discarded in the process of moviemaking, but now reveals hidden and forgotten histories.
Film Comment editors Clinton Krute and Devika Girish sat down with Bob and bibliographer Erin McGuirl, who manages the collection, to leaf through some of these treasures. They include variant copies of classics like Citizen Kane and Notorious, editor Lou Lombardo’s working scripts for Robert Altman’s films, Ben Gazzara’s personal copies of the screenplay for The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, and much more. We delve into the ways in which this material—with its pictures, notations, and scribbles—challenges our understanding of auteurism and sheds light on the crucial roles played by script supervisors, secretaries, and writers in Hollywood.
Check out a selection of photos from the collection below, including Cary Grant’s coffee-stained Notorious, Orson Welles’s heavily marked-up Touch of Evil, and other scripts discussed on the podcast, with notes by Erin McGuirl.
Listen the Podcast:
