By Jordan Peele. Text by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond, Jared Sexton, Leila Taylor, Jamieson Webster.
“A colossal cinematic achievement” —Richard Brody, the New Yorker
A masterpiece of identity horror and a dark reflection on America’s past and present, Us presents chilly atmospherics, psychological torment and old-world suspense-building plot twists. Whereas Get Out was considered more a mixture of drama and suspense, Peele leaned fully into the horror genre with his sophomore film, using urban legends such as doppelgangers to tease out the uniquely American perceptions of xenophobia and “othering.” Critic Monica Castillo wrote of the film: “Us is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he’s given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition.” Published in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of the critically acclaimed film’s release, this companion paperback features Oscar®-winning director Jordan Peele’s screenplay, alternate endings and deleted scenes, and is richly illustrated with over 150 stills from the motion picture. Specially commissioned annotations by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond and Leila Taylor present a cosmology of images, definitions and inspirations that extend the themes of the film. Continuing in the legacy of 1960s paperbacks that documented the era’s most significant avant-garde films—such as Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Godard’s Masculin Féminin and Antonioni’s L’Avventura—Us is an indispensable guide to a deeper understanding of this important film. Jordan Peele (born 1979) is a writer, actor and filmmaker who rose to fame as half of the comedy duo Key & Peele. He has written and directed three feature films: Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and Nope (2022). He was the first Black screenwriter to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
IndieWire
Jim Hemphill
Peele’s screenplay itself is, unsurprisingly, a terrific read, and one that deepens the reader’s appreciation of the finished film by drawing closer attention to its details.
Print Magazine
Steven Heller
'Us' is an invaluable guide to a deeper understanding of this important film
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Horror fans, rejoice. Jordan Peele’s Us: The Complete Annotated Screenplay is out now from Inventory Press. The companion to Peele’s complete annotated screenplay for Get Out, this indispensable guide to Us adds alternate endings, deleted scenes, stills from the film and annotations by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond and Leila Taylor. Annotating a scene featuring Lupita Nyong’o as Red, Webster digs into Freud and his concept of the uncanny. In part: “Looking at the word uncanny or unheimlich etymologically, Freud sees that it is created from heim (which means home or familiarity), but not in the sense of opposites of feeling at home/not feeling at home, but rather as one derived from the other, meaning that what is uncanny was once familiar, what we felt at home with, which has now become its Other, alien. … Importantly, there is new interest in the uncanny which seems to follow on renewed interest in the intergenerational transmission of trauma, in unconscious omnipotence, forms of radical alienation, questions about the limits of knowledge, and new forms of unconscious guilt and masochism. This has, of course, been important in colonial histories and the transmission of historical violence and omnipotent fantasies of generations past, and how these keep reappearing again and again. Stopping this intergenerational repetition of violence might mean having to confront what is the most uncanny in day-to-day life, hiding in plain sight.” continue to blog
Published by Inventory Press. By Jordan Peele. Text by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond, Jared Sexton, Leila Taylor, Jamieson Webster.
“A colossal cinematic achievement” —Richard Brody, the New Yorker
A masterpiece of identity horror and a dark reflection on America’s past and present, Us presents chilly atmospherics, psychological torment and old-world suspense-building plot twists. Whereas Get Out was considered more a mixture of drama and suspense, Peele leaned fully into the horror genre with his sophomore film, using urban legends such as doppelgangers to tease out the uniquely American perceptions of xenophobia and “othering.” Critic Monica Castillo wrote of the film: “Us is another thrilling exploration of the past and oppression this country is still too afraid to bring up. Peele wants us to talk, and he’s given audiences the material to think, to feel our way through some of the darker sides of the human condition.”
Published in conjunction with the fifth anniversary of the critically acclaimed film’s release, this companion paperback features Oscar®-winning director Jordan Peele’s screenplay, alternate endings and deleted scenes, and is richly illustrated with over 150 stills from the motion picture. Specially commissioned annotations by hannah baer, Theaster Gates, Jamieson Webster, Jared Sexton, Mary Ping, Shana Redmond and Leila Taylor present a cosmology of images, definitions and inspirations that extend the themes of the film. Continuing in the legacy of 1960s paperbacks that documented the era’s most significant avant-garde films—such as Kurosawa’s Rashomon, Godard’s Masculin Féminin and Antonioni’s L’Avventura—Us is an indispensable guide to a deeper understanding of this important film.
Jordan Peele (born 1979) is a writer, actor and filmmaker who rose to fame as half of the comedy duo Key & Peele. He has written and directed three feature films: Get Out (2017), Us (2019) and Nope (2022). He was the first Black screenwriter to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.
