American Film Scripts Online is a highly indexed full‐text database of US feature film scripts. As of the October 2003 release, the database will contain the text of 265 scripts representing a range of films from the earliest days of film making (such as 1903s The Great Train Robbery) to productions as recent as last year’s Scooby Doo. Scripts are chosen for inclusion using a variety of criteria, including awards won, critical acclaim, and historical or sociological significance.
As a result of extensive indexing, search capabilities are numerous. For example, detailed records for each writer contain about ten searchable data fields such as name, birth and death dates, ethnicity, race and place of birth. Detailed records for each script are even more extensive, including over 25 fields of data with information such as film release date, production company, cast, genre, character occupation, character sexual orientation (the last two are also provided in the detailed records for each character) and abundant subject headings. The database is designed as a research tool for film, literature and US culture scholars, pop‐culture aficionados, historians, and others interested in US cinema. In‐depth indexing plus full‐text content allow users to construct detailed searches. For example, it is possible to find a film script in which a US President is depicted on a camping trip (My Fellow Americans) or to find all the scripts from the 1970s through the 1990s that contain scenes depicting mental illness.
This unique resource is projected to become even more useful in the near future as plans proceed to increase to 1,000 the total number of film scripts available. Plans are also in progress to provide digitized facsimiles of the original scripts. A useful research tool for large universities with a research interest in film studies or popular culture.
