A rare copy of the screenplay for Play It As It Lays, Didion’s adaptation of her 1970 novel of the same name. The relatively well-received film, starring Tuesday Weld (turning in a Golden Globe nominated performance) and Anthony Perkins, is an observation of Hollywood from the perspective of an actress in a state of crisis after a series of professional and personal setbacks. A close and careful study of alienation, efforts to hide the effects of alienation, and how hard it can be to recover from existential crises.

The movie has fallen into a bit of obscurity, and it is not currently available on any streaming service, except for a middling quality YouTube upload, and the screenplay itself was never published, leading fans of Didion clamoring for insight into her writing process, from novel, to film adaptation, without access to either. In a 2015 article for The Los Angeles Times, writer David Ulin wrote about as short sample of the screenplay he’d come across in a book called “Works in Progress” and noted that it “may best be read as a distillation of the novel, streamlined, although it is also writerly on its own terms. This is no sketch, in other words, but a fully rendered piece of dramatic work. To watch the movie, as I did over the weekend, is to be struck by how closely the finished product follows the script.”

Didion’s screenplays make up a sizable amount of her writing output, and it’s clear much is waiting to be discovered about her writing process and the development of her craft, in their pages.

Screenplay format, 133 pp. 29 x 22.5cm. Bound with two brass paper fasteners as standard professional screenplay binding. Black leather-like paper wraps with gilt title to cover, also gilt printers information to cover. Creases to edge of wraps and small waterstain to edge of the first two pages. In very good condition. A dignified and stylish presentation of this uncommon item. Five found in WorldCat, held in North America.