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Lincoln: The Screenplay
A decade-long collaboration between three-time Academy Award® winner Steven Spielberg and Pulitzer Prize winner Tony Kushner, Lincoln is a revealing drama that focuses on the 16th President’s tumultuous final months in office. Containing eight pages of color photos from the film and inspired by Doris Kearns Goodwin’s critically acclaimed Team of Rivals, Lincoln is now a major motion picture.
194 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 29, 2013
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About the author
Tony Kushner
100 books481 followersTony Kushner is an award-winning American playwright most famous for his play Angels in America, for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He is also co-author, along with Eric Roth, of the screenplay of the 2005 film Munich, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and earned Kushner (along with Roth) an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 14, 2013
I remember sitting in the theater watching this masterpiece and thinking "I really need to watch this again with subtitles". The little profound writing of it I was catching was Shakespearean. Tony Kushner I feel at his best. Its the screenplay of the film, but historically speaking its wonderful to catch all the names of all the players of this significant event in history, as it hard to keep track of them all in the film. But the breakdown, especially of Lincoln's voice overs leave you stunned. I read this slowly, because I was visualizing every single scene, taking in every single word, as not a single word was superfluous in the entire work. I cannot recommend this enough to people who are a fan of the film, or the brilliant non fiction work that it was based on. It will leave you mesmerized, again.
June 13, 2019
O livro retratou um enxadrista político extremamente hábil, capaz de aglutinar pessoas, mesmo aqueles que deveriam ser adversários. Nada mais atual e simbólico para o Brasil, onde os políticos são incapazes de fazer alianças duradouras e benéficas para o país.
Apesar da riqueza na descrição da guerra civil americana e nos bastidores da administração do Lincoln, o epílogo não me pareceu correto. A escritora diz que Lincoln não deve ser conhecido pela competência política e militar, mas sim pelo lado humanitário e pela sua retidão e dignidade.
Pelo que foi relatado nesse livro, Lincoln teve alguns deslizes, como a "insensibilidade" (pra mim racismo) com os negros, quando propôs que fossem de forma financiada morar fora do país ou quando se comportava de forma neutra em questões nacionais cruciais, deixando deus pares políticos receberem a responsabilidade por atitudes e idéias impopulares, que o Lincoln compactuava, mas não se expunha.
Enfim, fica a impressão de um político com uma capacidade fora do comum e uma inteligência emocional brilhante, o que fez com que vencesse as prévias republicanas, a guerra e que fosse idolatrado por políticos e por uma nação esfacelada, sendo um dos precursores do fim da escravidão norte americana.
Personagem obrigatório, pra quem quer conhecer um político excepcional
Apesar da riqueza na descrição da guerra civil americana e nos bastidores da administração do Lincoln, o epílogo não me pareceu correto. A escritora diz que Lincoln não deve ser conhecido pela competência política e militar, mas sim pelo lado humanitário e pela sua retidão e dignidade.
Pelo que foi relatado nesse livro, Lincoln teve alguns deslizes, como a "insensibilidade" (pra mim racismo) com os negros, quando propôs que fossem de forma financiada morar fora do país ou quando se comportava de forma neutra em questões nacionais cruciais, deixando deus pares políticos receberem a responsabilidade por atitudes e idéias impopulares, que o Lincoln compactuava, mas não se expunha.
Enfim, fica a impressão de um político com uma capacidade fora do comum e uma inteligência emocional brilhante, o que fez com que vencesse as prévias republicanas, a guerra e que fosse idolatrado por políticos e por uma nação esfacelada, sendo um dos precursores do fim da escravidão norte americana.
Personagem obrigatório, pra quem quer conhecer um político excepcional
November 25, 2025
LINCOLN (2 hours 30 minutes)
Stephen Spielberg acquired the film rights to Dorris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln in 2001. He wanted Tony Kushner to write the script. Tony Kushner won a Pulitzer for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes and lives in Manhattan with his husband Mark Harris.
In her FOREWARD, Kearns Goodwin emphasizes, “You’ll never regret any time you spend with Abraham Lincoln.” (vii)
The screenplay took six years to write and at one point was 500 pages long. Italics are used to emphasize speech, but there isn’t much cinematography direction in the script, though there is a “sequence of rapid cuts” and a voice-over at the end.
The impeccable Daniel Day-Lewis takes the lead as Honest Abe.
There is a “furious” focus on the ages of characters (thirty-eight, ten-year-old, fifty-nine, sixty-four, twenty-seven, thirty-three, mid-forties, seventy-two, forty-five, fifty-one, sixty-three, fifty, forty-nine, forty-two seventy-three, twenty-one, fifty-six, forties, twelve, forty, twenty-five, twenty-two, forty-three) and Grant’s uniform is definitely rumpled.
Presented chronologically are unique words and phrases used throughout the entirety of the script (apologies if some are repeats):
Heavy, terrible, staggering, bivouacked, bluntness, mechanically, smartly, swallowed him up, turreted, tearing through, immense, discernible, leaden, cozy, knickknacks, folio, rapping, revelation, bitter victory, thirty-eight, bodice, exasperated, heaped, ten-year-old, sprawled, scrutinizes, stirs, weary, fifty-nine, jaunty, halyards, sixty-four, exquisite, dapper, twenty-seven, feeding him documents, thirty-three, severe, mid-forties, mud-splattered, road-worn, plume, frantically, hoarse, skeptical, anteroom, perched, baronial, seventy-two, fifty, whip-thin, blazes, elegant, forty-five, sarcastically, lacquered, formerly, fussing, fifty-one, barrel-shaped, long-bearded, bespectacled, sixty-three, luxurious, (it’s a wig), flowing, snowy, fifty, forty-nine, converge, shocked silence, (beat), perpetually worried, forty-two, discombobulated, flattered, agog, redolent, seventy-three, horrible red wig, gaunt, unmoved, insulted, skeptical, alcove, sagging, sooty, ancient, prospectus, raucous, tumult, murmuring, scrutinize, uncomfortable passivity, granite-faced, eyes burn black, painful fake grin, contemptuously, uncomfortable, hooting, egging on, furious concentration, admonishing, twenty-one, disentangles, hoists, suspicion, strung, disarray, overflowing, strewn, less assertively, schooners, pitch, grubby, mourning black, daguerreotype, lameducks, descend, barreling, solemnly, proffers, soaped-up, incongruous, slurps, peruses, snare, horrifying reality, consult, trots, fifty-six, brusquely, polite dignity, squint, dazzling, solemn concentration, forties, scowls, envious glance, canopied, twelve, handsome, bright-eyed, confident, sad smile, candelabra, conspicuous, wealthy people, middle-class people, working people, bothered, backlog, radicals, slight, lethal smile, poker-face, barely perceptible, admiring, detritus, laden, hastily, vigorous, frozen, looks improvised, forty, twenty-five, twenty-two, furiously, fulminations, conferring, baffled, dismayed, provoked, nosy, shared, unhappily, forty-three, worn and rumpled, patriotically, bemused, somber, disembarks, disheveled, guttering, spare, startles, stirs, thwacks, solitary, uselessly, sullenly, antechamber, brooding, barrow, rotten, panic attack, hiccupy shallow breathing, looks like horror, scowl, weatherbeaten, swells, portico, beet-red, blots, furious discussion, questioning look, angry response, cipher key, great surprise, consternation, gleeful, sharp, observant, reverie, murderous, abstention, well-pleased, tickles, quintiles, tease, absolute silence, peal cannonade, jubilation, vigorously, exultation, placards, hobbling, ferocious scowl, eyes sparkling, gangway, fatigue, hellish, asunder, felled, piercingly, solemn, astride, freezes, plastered, badly shaken, PANDEMONIUM (not actually capitalized, but reoccurs frequently in screenplays), frozen in shock, hissing
Other examples of unique descriptive language include:
“There’s no discipline or strategy, nothing depersonalized: it's mayhem and each side intensely hates the other.” (3)
“the answer’s so obvious” (24)
“who’s never smiled” (40)
“Bilbo takes a mallet to a crab, smashing it!” (45)
“avalanche of boos and cheers” (49)
“warped from its beer bath” (57)
“happy and sick with fear” (60)
“glaring with defiant hatred” (64)
“perfectly pitched between mourning and emergence” (70)
“swollen with grief” (71)
“Mary, radiant, her charm turned to its brightest candle-power, is greeting the Blairs, who are part of a long receiving line.” (71)
“Lincoln in his element” (72)
“perpetually exhausted and impatient” (79)
“Rictus of pain” (119)
“seems eight feet tall” (128)
*“caucusing” (129)*
“There’s tense applause. Some of the black guests bow; most aren’t sure how to respond.” (130)
“Impeachable. I’ve made no false representation.” (135)
*“sick with fear” (143)*
“beyond tears of joy” (148)
“grinning from ear to ear” (148)
“with the face of someone who’s seen his world collapse to ruin” (148)
“prevailing festive mood” (149)
“Like a vision of apocalypse” (154)
“He has grown older, the skin around his eyes is cobwebbed with fine creases, and his hair’s thinner, softer, suffused with gray. His brow has grown smoother.” (156)
“famous slouch hat” (157)
“Lee should leave, having just surrendered to Grant inside; but he’s immobile. Some of the officers of both sides look at Lee, some can’t bear it. Lee tries out various expressions: pride, defiance, blankness.” (157)
“drain their drinks” (161)
“arrested by a strange feeling” (161)
“patriotic bunting” (161)
“pale as a ghost” (163)
FADE TO BLACK
THE END.
Stephen Spielberg acquired the film rights to Dorris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln in 2001. He wanted Tony Kushner to write the script. Tony Kushner won a Pulitzer for his play, Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes and lives in Manhattan with his husband Mark Harris.
In her FOREWARD, Kearns Goodwin emphasizes, “You’ll never regret any time you spend with Abraham Lincoln.” (vii)
The screenplay took six years to write and at one point was 500 pages long. Italics are used to emphasize speech, but there isn’t much cinematography direction in the script, though there is a “sequence of rapid cuts” and a voice-over at the end.
The impeccable Daniel Day-Lewis takes the lead as Honest Abe.
There is a “furious” focus on the ages of characters (thirty-eight, ten-year-old, fifty-nine, sixty-four, twenty-seven, thirty-three, mid-forties, seventy-two, forty-five, fifty-one, sixty-three, fifty, forty-nine, forty-two seventy-three, twenty-one, fifty-six, forties, twelve, forty, twenty-five, twenty-two, forty-three) and Grant’s uniform is definitely rumpled.
Presented chronologically are unique words and phrases used throughout the entirety of the script (apologies if some are repeats):
Heavy, terrible, staggering, bivouacked, bluntness, mechanically, smartly, swallowed him up, turreted, tearing through, immense, discernible, leaden, cozy, knickknacks, folio, rapping, revelation, bitter victory, thirty-eight, bodice, exasperated, heaped, ten-year-old, sprawled, scrutinizes, stirs, weary, fifty-nine, jaunty, halyards, sixty-four, exquisite, dapper, twenty-seven, feeding him documents, thirty-three, severe, mid-forties, mud-splattered, road-worn, plume, frantically, hoarse, skeptical, anteroom, perched, baronial, seventy-two, fifty, whip-thin, blazes, elegant, forty-five, sarcastically, lacquered, formerly, fussing, fifty-one, barrel-shaped, long-bearded, bespectacled, sixty-three, luxurious, (it’s a wig), flowing, snowy, fifty, forty-nine, converge, shocked silence, (beat), perpetually worried, forty-two, discombobulated, flattered, agog, redolent, seventy-three, horrible red wig, gaunt, unmoved, insulted, skeptical, alcove, sagging, sooty, ancient, prospectus, raucous, tumult, murmuring, scrutinize, uncomfortable passivity, granite-faced, eyes burn black, painful fake grin, contemptuously, uncomfortable, hooting, egging on, furious concentration, admonishing, twenty-one, disentangles, hoists, suspicion, strung, disarray, overflowing, strewn, less assertively, schooners, pitch, grubby, mourning black, daguerreotype, lameducks, descend, barreling, solemnly, proffers, soaped-up, incongruous, slurps, peruses, snare, horrifying reality, consult, trots, fifty-six, brusquely, polite dignity, squint, dazzling, solemn concentration, forties, scowls, envious glance, canopied, twelve, handsome, bright-eyed, confident, sad smile, candelabra, conspicuous, wealthy people, middle-class people, working people, bothered, backlog, radicals, slight, lethal smile, poker-face, barely perceptible, admiring, detritus, laden, hastily, vigorous, frozen, looks improvised, forty, twenty-five, twenty-two, furiously, fulminations, conferring, baffled, dismayed, provoked, nosy, shared, unhappily, forty-three, worn and rumpled, patriotically, bemused, somber, disembarks, disheveled, guttering, spare, startles, stirs, thwacks, solitary, uselessly, sullenly, antechamber, brooding, barrow, rotten, panic attack, hiccupy shallow breathing, looks like horror, scowl, weatherbeaten, swells, portico, beet-red, blots, furious discussion, questioning look, angry response, cipher key, great surprise, consternation, gleeful, sharp, observant, reverie, murderous, abstention, well-pleased, tickles, quintiles, tease, absolute silence, peal cannonade, jubilation, vigorously, exultation, placards, hobbling, ferocious scowl, eyes sparkling, gangway, fatigue, hellish, asunder, felled, piercingly, solemn, astride, freezes, plastered, badly shaken, PANDEMONIUM (not actually capitalized, but reoccurs frequently in screenplays), frozen in shock, hissing
Other examples of unique descriptive language include:
“There’s no discipline or strategy, nothing depersonalized: it's mayhem and each side intensely hates the other.” (3)
“the answer’s so obvious” (24)
“who’s never smiled” (40)
“Bilbo takes a mallet to a crab, smashing it!” (45)
“avalanche of boos and cheers” (49)
“warped from its beer bath” (57)
“happy and sick with fear” (60)
“glaring with defiant hatred” (64)
“perfectly pitched between mourning and emergence” (70)
“swollen with grief” (71)
“Mary, radiant, her charm turned to its brightest candle-power, is greeting the Blairs, who are part of a long receiving line.” (71)
“Lincoln in his element” (72)
“perpetually exhausted and impatient” (79)
“Rictus of pain” (119)
“seems eight feet tall” (128)
*“caucusing” (129)*
“There’s tense applause. Some of the black guests bow; most aren’t sure how to respond.” (130)
“Impeachable. I’ve made no false representation.” (135)
*“sick with fear” (143)*
“beyond tears of joy” (148)
“grinning from ear to ear” (148)
“with the face of someone who’s seen his world collapse to ruin” (148)
“prevailing festive mood” (149)
“Like a vision of apocalypse” (154)
“He has grown older, the skin around his eyes is cobwebbed with fine creases, and his hair’s thinner, softer, suffused with gray. His brow has grown smoother.” (156)
“famous slouch hat” (157)
“Lee should leave, having just surrendered to Grant inside; but he’s immobile. Some of the officers of both sides look at Lee, some can’t bear it. Lee tries out various expressions: pride, defiance, blankness.” (157)
“drain their drinks” (161)
“arrested by a strange feeling” (161)
“patriotic bunting” (161)
“pale as a ghost” (163)
FADE TO BLACK
THE END.
November 24, 2018
The script conveys an excellent, intimate feel of Lincoln, regardless of what is believed to be factual. Lincoln suddenly acts with a mix of humor, coercion, persuasion, nobleness, and sheer manipulation to get the 13th Amendment passed by the raucous House before the Civil War was ended. I will be watching the movie soon & will be curious to see how the transition between the passage & the assassination works. In the script it felt manipulative, as tho it was the day after the vote. A movie from which Obama should have derived some lessons about how to use embarrassment to tell the public the truth about Russia’s pervasive, invasive attracts with the aim of helping Trump get elected.
March 1, 2020
Amazing!
March 28, 2021
Book far better than the movie
July 5, 2021
The best screenplay I have ever read. Period.
June 10, 2025
The written script from one of the best movies ever.
September 24, 2015
I never got around to seeing this film but hope to now. I didn't think Day Lewis had the presence of the tall President, but it doesn't matter; with a script like this one I think several different actors could've played Lincoln. Kushner's screenplay is practically actor-proof, one of those rare ones a director could throw individuals into. It focuses on the last four months of the Civil War, and for the most part we see the President struggling with the passage of the Constitutional Amendment to end slavery. There's a lot of bickering and name-calling between Republicans and Democrats. A lot of deals are struck, too. Lincoln goes through tremendous stress and strain. He hates war, which is depicted when he travels to Petersburg, Virginia, after a wretched battle.
One unusual technique Kushner employs in the script is having two characters talking at once, so there are two blocks of dialogue on the page, a little confusing. Another thing about the script is there's a lot of politicians from different states, and not all of them are delineated much at first.
I was unaware how many politicians stood against abolishing slavery, more than a few were from Border and Northern states.
In any event, I look forward to reading more of Kushner's work. An accomplished stage play writer for years, he switched to movie scripts in the early 2000s.
One unusual technique Kushner employs in the script is having two characters talking at once, so there are two blocks of dialogue on the page, a little confusing. Another thing about the script is there's a lot of politicians from different states, and not all of them are delineated much at first.
I was unaware how many politicians stood against abolishing slavery, more than a few were from Border and Northern states.
In any event, I look forward to reading more of Kushner's work. An accomplished stage play writer for years, he switched to movie scripts in the early 2000s.
February 20, 2014
Tony Kushner's riveting screenplay "Lincoln" focuses on the single month January 1865, & how the 13th Amendment to finally outlaw slavery was forcibly shoved through congress months before the Civil War ended.
Lively, vivid, exciting, excruciating. Unique. And very important. By all means, see the movie. But buy the screenplay, too.
"With 15,000 books already published about [Lincoln] and the Civil War....I can promise you one thing. You'll never regret any time you spend with Abraham Lincoln."
(Doris Kearns Goodwin, from Foreword sharing how she helped show Kushner why the project deserved his attention to write the screenplay.)
Lively, vivid, exciting, excruciating. Unique. And very important. By all means, see the movie. But buy the screenplay, too.
"With 15,000 books already published about [Lincoln] and the Civil War....I can promise you one thing. You'll never regret any time you spend with Abraham Lincoln."
(Doris Kearns Goodwin, from Foreword sharing how she helped show Kushner why the project deserved his attention to write the screenplay.)
March 20, 2013
Just like the movie! ...oops
April 13, 2013
The complex maneuvering of Abraham Lincoln in his fight to preserve the union and outlaw slavery the constitution.
June 2, 2013
A phenomenal film.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews