Dan Futterman Books

This is an amazing script, that anyone who is interested in writing scripts should read. The complexity and subtext of the text will educate you and provide you with the example of what is required to write a truelly amazing script.

I can say that this is a great script, as I've been reading some pages around the internet and I'll surely buy this book very soon. The dialogue, as well as the whole script, is very realistic, and also very enjoyable.

I can't say if it really deserved the Award, but I can say that this script deserves to be read by every screenwriting fan.

Dan Futterman is a genius. It is pure magicianship how he weaves the texts of "Capote" the biography, "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote and whatever other research material he depended on, (not to mention his own witty imagination) into this gripping, thorough, and accomplished story. I am so sorry he got knocked down by the "Brokeback" voters - I've read both screenplays and their source materials and have seen both movies and this is by far the more insightful and entertaining. A must for any student of film writing. I look forward to Dan Futterman's future works. JPN, Bronx, NY

THE MOMENT SHE WAS GONE is a book trying to tackle an unusual subject and bring it to a human, understandable level. It is about a very mentally ill young lady, and the devastating effects her illness has on her family. Annie and Andrew are twins, and as children, they were very close, as twins are. When Annie becomes a teenager, and meets a young man she becomes enamored with while on vacation in Sweden, she begins to display some psychotic tendencies. The young man jilts her, and as her family shows her understandable sympathy, the reader sees that much of what Annie has experienced could very well simply be imagined...a fantasy.

The thing the book does very well as it shows us Annie's various descents into madness throughout the decades, is to demonstrate the manner in which those nearest and dearest to Annie (mother, siblings) kid themselves that she is basically okay.

The book starts just shortly after her brother Andrew has had to fly to Sicily to retrieve his sister from a mental institution there. She had been brutally assaulted (or so she claims) and caused a bit of trouble when she becomes unhinged. Annie comes back to NYC, and after a few weeks living with her mother, disappears again. But this time, her state is so disjointed that no one can credibly deny that she is very ill and very much a danger to herself and others. As the family members talk to each other, they begin to piece together a story that makes it quite clear they have been very blind to Annie's need.

The book is brief, and Evan Hunter (aka Ed McBain) is sparse and convincing with his prose...particularly his dialogue, which has always been stellar in the extreme. He writes with such seeming ease.

It is a book suffused with sympathy for the plight of all concerned. However, to me, there were some weaknesses. First, Annie does not manage to garner much sympathy. Everyone in the family loves her, of course, but as "outsiders" we do not learn to care. Yes, she's very ill, and thus very frustrating. She can't be reasoned with. She doesn't really show much caring for the people around her. She's dangerous at times. She's greedy, foul-mouthed, stupid, belligerent (not all at once, but in turns). It may be a realistic portrayal, but it sure isn't pleasant. Second, the book has a weak structure. Much of it is told in flashback, but Hunter, who has done similar things before quite successfully, doesn't quite pull it all together. It feels a bit haphazard. It isn't that the book can't be followed, but the structure isn't compelling.

Hunter (and McBain) is a fantastic writer. One of my all-time favorites...and his recent death is a huge blow, particularly for those of us who love the 87th Precinct. And this book has many of his trademark strengths. But I just didn't find it compelling enough to give a hearty recommendation. You won't feel your time was wasted, but it isn't Hunter's strongest by a long shot either.

Mr. Hunter won me over for the umpteenth time with this one, given that I've been reading - and loving - for a good thirty years the work of this extraordinary author, both as Evan Hunter and as Ed McBain (I pride myself about not having skipped any title whatsoever in McBain's own nearly fifty-year-old 87th Precinct police procedural series, a never ending stream of genial and inventive writing which has been ripped off by virtually anyone, especially TV shows, without ever achieving results which can be remotely compared to its original brilliance).

The first Evan Hunter novel I ever read was Second Ending (1956), and it greatly affected my teenage years. I read it and re-read it so many times that my old paperback copy is by now nearly destroyed. The latest Hunter to grace my bookshelves is, of course, this melancholic, somewhat elegiac and yet achingly realistic-feeling gem, The Moment She Was Gone. I caught some intriguing analogies between these two Hunter masterpieces.

Both novels show us the deep sufferings of frail young people - in Second Ending it was twentysomething heroin addict/former brilliant jazz musician Andy Silvera; now it's thirtysomething schizophrenic/former brilliant student Annie Gulliver.

Both novels offer riveting and layered portrayals of a badly damaged yet sensitive person, once full of promises, caught in the titanic struggle of coping with the very essence of his/her sufferings as well as with the nostalgia for a past which can't return. Then again, we actually see all of that mainly through the eyes of a sort of chorus (Andy's friends there, Annie's family here), and especially through the eyes of the one single person (Bud Donato there, Annie's twin, Andy, here) whose soul is closest than anyone else's to the suffering, struggling one.

In both novels the result is staggeringly beautiful, and also - in the end - powerfully cathartic. At the end of their (and our own) respective emotional journeys, we find that our "guides" - Bud Donato there, Andy Gulliver here - have grown dramatically, becoming better beings, more open-minded ones, more understanding ones, and they have to thank for that none other than their "flawed" loved ones. This is a beautiful concept.

What also strikes me in The Moment She Was Gone is Evan Hunter's uncanny ability to faithfully - yet emotionally - portray the life of a schizophrenic person's family like it actually is in reality.
I've known two girls who were exactly like Annie Gulliver. One, the sister of a male schoolmate of mine, committed suicide many years ago, in her early twenties, by jumping out of a window. It wasn't her first suicide attempt. She was an incredibly brilliant student, just like her brother, my friend.
The other girl is luckily alive, even though for years she refused to take her medications and transformed her mother's life into a permanent nightmare; she was a former classmate of my sister, and she had what everyone initially defined just "an artistic streak" - she made jewelry just like Annie Gulliver did, she wrote poems, she was also as beautiful as an angel ...

I saw these two girls closely mirrored in Annie Gulliver's struggle with her own inner voices, as well as I saw their families closely mirrored in Andy Gulliver, his mother, his brother Aaron, his sister-in-law Augusta ...

Evan Hunter delivers here a perfect blend of realism, craft and - most of all - overwhelming humanity. A must-read, and five stars out of five.

I checked this book out on the basis of the author having written "Blackboard Jungle." I was not disappointed. Hunter, in spare, cogent style, offers a sensitive, realistic view of a condition difficult for families to face. The author covers various family member reactions such as denying, ennabling and defying.

Criminal Conversation by Evan Hunter is one of my favorite novels and in this book he shows the same writing and characterization that made me want to keep reading.

Annie is a bit crazy, and it is obvious to the reader. Unfortunately, no one in Annie's family has the guts to deal with it, except maybe her twin brother Andy from whom some details of Annie's past have been hidden to protect him.

Each story of Annie's past provides possible clues as to why she is crazy and each story reveals a bit about all the main characters as they all struggle in the present to find where Annie has ran off to this time.

Basically this novel is about Annie's family coming to terms with her craziness, and that covers about 208 pages. I believe Hunter could have added to this novel to make it better. This novel would have been a lot better if there had been a resolution to why Annie was crazy. Hunter definitely has the skill to throw in a plot twist about something dramatic in Annie's past that caused her to go insane, but he leaves us with a story of several people's lives and the book ends with them continuing to live. There really is no climax. I guess Hunter has earned the right to write whatever he chooses, but that still doesn't change the fact that this bare-bones novel could have been much better.

"The Moment She Was Gone" is a drama written by Evan Hunter who writes wonderful police procedurals under the name Ed McBain. Andy Gulliver receives a phone call from his mother informing him that his twin sister Annie has disappeared, again. In fact Annie had disappeared many times before. While in Italy she had been held in a mental hospital where she was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Andy searches for the truth that will help him find his sister. This novel grabbed me from the first page and kept me turning pages until I reached the end. I have read over 60 novels by Evan Hunter/Ed McBain and every time I know that I am reading a work by a literary master. "The Moment She Was Gone" is highly recommended.