Thefailure of any filmmaker to produce Alan Greenberg’s screenplay, Love in Vain,seems almost as mysterious as the life of its subject, Robert Johnson. MickJagger took a hand in this exploration of the great bluesman as far back as thelate-‘70s and Greenberg acknowledges the interest of many other familiar names,among them Bob Dylan, David Lynch, Werner Herzog and Prince. Martin Scorsesewrote the forward to the second published edition, but that was 1994.
TheUniversity of Minnesota Press has just reissued the screenplay in paperback,and in light of the recent acclaim for Beasts of the Southern Wild, filmmakersshould take another look at Greenberg’s manuscript. As critic Stanley Crouchwrites in his perceptive introduction to the first edition (1983), Greenberg’sscript transcends the dull factuality of realism—or pseudo-factuality of theusual Hollywood biographical pictures.
Instead,Love in Vain “transmits how a world may have felt to those participants,onlookers, and descendants swept up in the lore of time.” Southern Wild’sHushpuppy hears her dead mother and encounters prehistoric beasts in the worldof her experience. In Love in Vain, Johnson meets Satan, signs a Faustianbargain and becomes the greatest Delta blues guitarist and poet—the harbingerof rock’n’roll—trading his soul for the burst of uncanny creativity that leftbehind barely 30 recorded songs.
It’sa mythic tale of the 20th century and still deserves to find afilmmaker in the 21st.