John Patrick Shanley

Meryl Streep suspects nasty pederasty in John Patrick Shanley's Doubt. De omnibus dubitandum (doubt everything). By Ed Rampell It’s once more into the priest-pederasty breech, lads! Doubt is a very unpleasant story redeemed and enlivened by two great performances, as Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) and Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) clash over whether or not the pastor acted in a most unseemly way at a Catholic school. Director-screenwriter John Patrick Shanley of Moonstruck fame adapted his play, which is set in 1964 and also deals with the struggle between liberalizing a church ossified by orthodoxy, as well as with race. Donald Miller (Joseph Foster ... Read Full Story

There’s a good movie somewhere in the idea of Doubt (a nun suspects a priest of molesting a child, but it’s 1964 and the patriarchy of the Church isn’t going to listen to her). The film’s full of almost detective moments (and faux-auteur Shanley pulls out some Hitchcock angles after the big reveal), but the film never embraces that nature. As a character study masquerading as a detective story, Doubt would have been fantastic. As an awkward conversation drama–Shanley opens the film in the church’s neighborhood, then never returns to this neighborhood, it’s all malarky to make a theater adaptation seem opened up for ... Read Full Story

DOUBT , it’s a most of the times, the worst feeling that you can feel. It’s like a seed that you sows but cannot harvest. In a catholic school , directed by nuns and priests is normal a discipline atmosphere Sister Aloysius Beauvier ( Meryll Streep ) was Principal. This sister is so tidy and correct woman, but her character is so cold, she wants to control everything, everyone were scared with she, until the other nuns. At same congregation we have the nun most sweet and inocent that world can have, Sister James(), she is teacher at this college, and, even she is ... Read Full Story

The WGA has launched a new video interview series called "Angle On," focusing on screenwriters with notable movies in current release. Here is five minutes with playwright-screenwriter-director John Patrick Shanley whose screenwriting credits include Moonstruck (1987) , for which Shanley received an Academy Award (Best Writing, Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen), Joe Versus the Volcano (1990) , Alive (1993) , and Congo (1995) . In this interview, Shanley places Doubt in the context of the changing Roman Catholic Church of the late 50s and early 60s, and also discusses how playwriting has changed over the last 40 years, how to adapt a play ... Read Full Story

I am anxiously anticipating Friday, December 12th and the release of John Patrick Shanley’s film, Doubt . Shanley wrote the screenplay based on his very own stage play of the same name, which in 2005 was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and also the very prestgious Tony Award for Best Play. Ideas of religion, authority, and morality are underlying paradoxes throughout the story of intense suspicion, where the charismatic priest of St. Nicolas’ school in the Bronx is giving too much personal attention to a black student. Meryl Streep, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams star in this heated, impassioned film. Posted in ... Read Full Story