Introduction: the screen author wanted: dead or alive -- Typecasting the author -- Beyond adaptation: the writer as filmmaker -- The author at the dream factory: the screenwriter and the movies -- The authoress: textuality as sexuality -- Writing pain: the infirm author -- Word and image -- Corpus and oeuvre: authorship and the body -- Stealing beauty: the reader, the critic, and the appropriation of the authorial voice -- Afterword: Signs and meaning in the cinema.