Fragmented Authorship and Multimodal Readings in the Published Screenplay A River Runs through It

Abstract

Published screenplays are often regarded as secondary texts distinct from plays, fiction, films, and production documents. Yet many combine script, photographs, film stills, commentary, and other paratexts into multimodal reading experiences that function as interactive artworks. Using A River Runs Through It as a case study, this paper examines how such publications challenge notions of authorship, ontology, and identity. Through the interaction of screenplay text and the visual, paratextual material, it demonstrates how published screenplays may emerge as distinct multimodal, intermedial cultural objects in which authorship is fragmented, and identity becomes an effect of mediation rather than a singular origin.