This dissertation is a tripartite creative writing project consisting of an essay on film noir and a feature-length screenplay (film noir) based on a short story I wrote (pulp fiction). This unique project permitted me to pursue several passions simultaneously while creating a cohesive study of film noir narrative culminating in the feature-length screenplay. The challenge was studying various interrelationships of the arts from multiple perspectives and finding an ideal project for the culmination of my Individual Interdisciplinary Doctorate with an emphasis in cinema. The degree included defining a multiple-disciplinary field of education and acquiring training in the fields of theory, criticism, and practicum as they apply to the narrative in the following forms--cinema, drama, print media (literary and journalistic), and, in this specific instance, post-World War II American cinema.
Extensive film analysis is employed in my reading of the 1954 Elia Kazan film On the Waterfront and Robert Aldrich's 1955 film Kiss Me Deadly. The period for the Troubled Man screenplay I have written is 1955 (the death of James Dean and birth of Rock 'n' Roll) and the aforementioned films provide cinematic touchstones for this specific period. The flashback incorporates previous time periods pertinent to the shaping of the characters and events that occur in Troubled Man's contemporary setting.
The second section includes the short work of fictional prose, "Brotherly Love: The Return of Frank Milhorn," on which the third and final section (a feature-length film noir screenplay) is based. The entire process is from a creative writing perspective in which I present evidence of my understanding of film noir in the first portion, synthesize that process through the filter of the short fiction, and create a screenplay. The project displays a highly skilled understanding of film noir, screenwriting and the entire creative writing process, focusing on the iconic noir attributes of flashback and voiceover.