About the Screenplay:
HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of
copies are still available.
Complete with the original shooting script, this official
companion book to the award-winning film The Grey Zone also
contains extensive historical material and commentaries.
For five years, director, writer, and actor Tim Blake Nelson
prepared himself and others to make this searing Holocaust drama,
which drew acclaim and ire from critics and viewers throughout the
country. First realized as a play, then a screenplay, Nelson's story
is based on historical events, centering on Auschwitz's twelfth
Sonderkommando squad, a group of Jewish concentration camp
prisoners assigned work in the crematoria, and their struggle to
organize the only armed revolt in October of 1944. Released in 2002,
the movie stars David Arquette, Daniel Benzali, Steve Buscemi, David
Chandler, Allan Corduner, Harvey Keitel, Natasha Lyonne, and Mira
Sorvino. It won the 2002 National Board of Review Freedom of
Expression Award, and was named one of "The 10
greatest second world war films you haven't seen" by The
Guardian.
This book is the fascinating record of Nelson's journey – from
his initial readings and research, to assembling the brave ensemble
cast, to reconstructing the crematoria 80 percent to scale on
location in Sofia, Bulgaria, and to his work with the art director,
costume and production designers, and others on his team.
To acquaint his cast and crew with the difficult material, Nelson
summarized his research and his cinematic vision in a compelling,
lengthy pre-production memo, which is reproduced in this book. Also
included are his screenplay, his annotated reading list, movie
stills, excerpts from from some of the reading that inspired him –
an essay by Primo Levi, and the source chapter from the book
Auschwitz: A Doctor's Eyewitness Account, by Dr. Miklos
Nyiszli.
Altogether, this unique book delivers an insider's view of the
world of independent filmmaking, while revealing why Nelson chose
such a difficult project and how he addressed its challenges.
Ultimately, The Grey Zone transcends its subject so that as
Nelson writes in his preface, "Its context is the holocaust, but
it's a film about being human."
What people say:
"Tim Blake Nelson's
The Grey Zone strikes a bold, even courageous
blow against the pious cliches of most Holocaust films. Jagged,
unrelenting, claustrophobically intimate, it does more than any other
in recent memory to avoid the platitudes and cheap sentimentality
that, on film anyway, have come to represent the murder of 12 million
people by the Nazis during World War II." — The
Washington Post
"Tim Blake Nelson's The Grey Zone ... focuses on the Jewish Sonderkommando, who kept the gears of death oiled under the promise of another day’s survival and a bit of food. After the initial shock of the setting, the film settles on a seldom-told story of concentration camp insurrection. We all wonder what we would do if we were put in this horrifying situation. This is the rare film that dares to answer." — The Guardian (UK)
"Fearless and intense... No
dramatic feature has ever come quite this close to the matter-of-fact
ugliness of the Nazi crimes." — Entertainment Weekly
"The Grey Zone is haunting,
electrifying, edifying and unbearably heartbreaking." —
The New York Observer
"Immediate, unblinking and
painful...The Grey Zone is a film about making choices that seem to
make no difference, about attempting to act with honor in a closed
system where honor lies dead." — Chicago Sun-Times
About the Author:
Tim Blake Nelson is an American actor, writer, and
director. He is an accomplished character actor who is perhaps best
known for his role in O Brother, Where Art Thou as well as his recent
work in the Coen Brothers' The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. He is also a
playwright and screenwriter. His most notable work, The Grey Zone,
tackles tough questions about the existence of evil and the meaning
of faith.