About the Screenplay:

HARD TO FIND BOOK, only a very limited number of copies are still available.

Total Eclipse is a screenplay by Christopher Hampton featuring two celebrated French poets, Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine.

Long before there were rock stars, there was rock star attitude, as displayed with spectacular insolence by the young French poet Arthur Rimbaud. Set in Paris in the late 1800s, Total Eclipse is the story of Arthur Rimbaud and the older, better established Paul Verlaine, two of France's greatest poets. Verlaine is prone to violence and alcohol, torn between his lovely yet conventional wife and the seductive, dangerous and brilliant Rimbaud, a young poet whose life and work is fuelled by an insatiable hunger for intense experience, unbounded by rules or consequences.

Total Eclipse is the audacious, demanding and provocative story of a volatile romantic triangle and the lives it consumes. Christopher Hampton, who studied Rimbaud's work at Oxford, adapted this screenplay from his highly successful stage play, originally written in 1967, eventually being made into a film starring a young Leonardo DiCaprio and David Thewlis in 1995.

About the Screenwriter:

Christopher Hampton is a British playwright, screenwriter, director, producer, and a consummate translator and adaptor of novels. He is perhaps most famous for his play Les Liaisons Dangereuses (based on the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos), which won an Olivier Award in 1986. He adapted the play for film and won an Oscar for the screenplay. His theatre work includes the stage adaptation of Sunset Boulevard for Andrew Lloyd Webber, which received Tony Awards for both Book and Lyrics. He has translated a wide range of works including classics by Chekhov, Ibsen and Moliere as well as contemporary plays by Yasmina Reza and Florian Zeller. His long list of screenplays includes A Doll's House, The Good Father, Total Eclipse, and The Quiet American.