‘Nightmare Alley’: Read The Screenplay For Guillermo Del Toro’s Noir Cautionary Tale

deadline.com:

Editors note: Deadline’s Read the Screenplay series debuts and celebrates the scripts of films that will be factors in this year’s movie awards race.“I wanted to render a classic story in a very alive and contemporary way – I wanted people to feel they are watching a story pertinent to our world,” says Nightmare Alley director and co-writer Guillermo del Toro, whose penchant for stylishly crafted horror stories took a turn for the decidedly noir with his latest film.Del Toro and his writing partner Kim Morgan, an accomplished film journalist and essayist, turned to author William Lindsay Gresham’s fatalistic 1946 novel – now widely regarded as a classic of the hard-boiled, doom-suffused noir genre and the basis for the equally admired 1947 film starring Tyrone Power.

Gresham’s tale follows the ascent of rough-hewn carnival roustabout Stanton Carlisle (Bradley Cooper) into a successful, polished café society mentalist, and his descent into downward spiral when he can’t resist turning his audience’s belief in his non-existent spiritual abilities into a high-stakes confidence game.The opening backdrop of the postwar carnival and the infamous geek shows that served as the era’s most illicit attraction – and which Gresham had diligently studied since childhood – provided a natural segue from del Toro’s horror roots to a story concerned with all-too-human weaknesses, a cautionary fable with an inevitable conclusion.“The carnival is an incredibly close-knit, hermetic society,” he says. “It’s a place where people keep their secrets, and many are escaping a life of crime or a past they had to leave behind.