American Film Scripts Online

Introducing a new addition to Penn Libraries e-resources: American Film Scripts Online. ASO contains over a thousand American movie scripts from 1903 to 2006. Many scripts carry additional detailed, fielded information on scenes and characters in the scripts. The database includes facsimile images for over half of the collection. Most of the scripts have never been published before and are available nowhere else online.

Scripts were selected by a team of film librarians and scholars. Selection factors include if the film or screenplay won a major award, if the film was critically acclaimed, or the screenplay has historical or sociological significance. The panel tried to build specific clusters based around genres such as Film Noir, Silent Movies of the 1920's, and key writers. Where possible, shooting scripts selected rather than draft scripts.

There is advanced searching capability for this relatively small database so it's easy to get around, including inside the scripts to search on words and phrases. My search on the the phrase "train robbery" turned up five scripts. You can try something more imaginative.