{"footnote":"\u003Cp\u003E  \u0026lsquo;Flim script\u0026rsquo; is not an unambiguous designation. In the present edition, on which my remarks here are based, it designates a record of dialogue and action faithful to the finished film (supposing  there is a canonical version of that). This is a sound choice and I have no quarrel with it. Other choices would have been to publish the scripts as they stood before filming, but there is  apparently no surviving such text for \u003Cem class=\u0022emphasisClass\u0022\u003EDuck Soup\u003C\/em\u003E, whose script here is therefore wholly reconstituted from the film, and in any case such a collection would serve  quite specialised purposes; or to publish original scripts together with their respective reconstitutions as filmed. This dual publication was followed by Viking some twenty years ago for  \u003Cem class=\u0022emphasisClass\u0022\u003EA Day at the Races\u003C\/em\u003E and for \u003Cem class=\u0022emphasisClass\u0022\u003EA Night at the Opera\u003C\/em\u003E. In obvious ways this is desirable \u0026ndash; such documentation underscores the collaboration,  or mutual inspiration, of the Brothers with some of the most gifted writers, and teams of writers, of comic observation and plot, of gags, and of songs during the golden period of interchange  between Hollywood and Broadway. But the mere credits included in the present scripts should themselves suggest this. Anyway, what is mutual inspiration?\u003C\/p\u003E\n","audio":[],"video":[]}