Introduction: Scripting Real Lives

Abstract

This anthology looks at the adaptation of true events and what it means to script real lives. All the essays were selected because they begin from Thomas Leitch’s premise of removing or decreasing the attention paid to source texts: instead allowing readers to understand adaptation as the “work-in-progress of institutional practices of rewriting” (302–303). Throughout each chapter, the focus is on the interplay between the event and the finished piece (whether film, television show, web series, etc.), rather than necessarily any written “source” text—although these may also appear. The media both covered and made by True Event Adaptation’s contributors provides a place to regroup, refigure, and go forth with different understandings of the past, understandings that may not have been possible without those creations.