"It’s probably one of the best unproduced screenplays ever written."

Vivoscene on LOVE IN VAIN by Alan Greenberg.

greenberg_love coverThe University of Minnesota press has recently published a new edition of Alan Greenberg’s Love In Vain: A Vision of Robert Johnson. It’s probably one of the best unproduced screenplays ever written. The first edition of this work came out in 1983, and the film rights to it were eagerly snapped up by a young man named Jagger who claimed to have some connection with the blues. Seems the long-dead subject of the screenplay was some kind of musical icon to him, and this fellow Jagger, an erstwhile rock singer and sometime actor, was not without resources, or so he claimed.

The odds, therefore, seemed to be in favour of getting the movie made, particularly since everyone who even glanced at the screenplay thought it was a work of genius. And it is, it bloody well is. The esteemed rock critic Greil Marcus said so. Robert Palmer said so in the New York Times. Even the famed director Werner Herzog claimed that “Love in Vain has accomplished what I have tried to do for a long time.”

Read the full article.

Published in: Vivoscene
By: Brian Miller