Favourite Screenwriters

Woody Allen, The Coen Brothers, Billy Wilder are great writer/directors. But who's your favourite Writer that's not a director.

Babaloo Mendel & Lowell Ganz - the writers of Parenthood and City Slickers.

Scott Alexander & Larry Karaszewski - the writers of The People vs Larry Flynt, Ed Wood and Man on the Moon

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• Robert Towne (Chinatown, The Last Detail, Shampoo, Without Limits)
• Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The Mosquito Coast, Touch)
• William Goldman (Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid, The Princess Bride, Marathon Man, Misery)
• Richard LaGravense (The Fisher King, The Bridges of Madison County, The Ref)
• Buck Henry (The Graduate, To Die For, Catch-22, What's Up, Doc?)
• Scott Frank (Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Dead Again)
• Richard Price (The Color of Money, Sea of Love, Mad Dog & Glory, Clockers)
• Steven Kloves (Wonder Boys, The Fabulous Baker Boys, Flesh & Bone)
• Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, Adaptation)
• Andrew Kevin Walker (SE7EN, Sleepy Hollow, Hideaway)

OK, there's ten off the top of my head I immediately get excited about when I hear their names attached to a project. Towne, Schrader and Buck Henry have dabbled in directing (and quite well in some instances) so I broke the rules a little bit, but they are primarily screenwriters, and that's where their greatest successes have come. If anybody knows who Robert Towne is, it's as the writer of Chinatown, not the director of Tequila Sunrise.

I can do a list of screenwriters from bygone eras too, but it'll have to wait: gotta run!

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-Isn't it a little unfair to be putting Charlie Kaufman on the list? Granted, Being John Malkovich was impressive and I'm guessing you've seen HUman Nature but Adaptation is yet to be released. Plot-wise, he deserves credit for his originality but, isn't it a bit early?

No arguments with William Goldman, Robert Town or Paul Schrader.

Others that have come to my mind are:

David Webb Peoples - Unforgiven, Twelve Monkeys
Eric Roth - Ali, The Insider, Forrest Gump
Tom Stoppard - Shakespeare in Love, Brazil, Empire of the Sun
Elaine May - Primary Colors, The Birdcage
Paul Attansio - Donnie Brasco, Quiz Show
John Hodge - Trainspotting, Shallow Grave, A Life Less Ordinary
Gary Ross - Big, Dave, Pleasantville
Nora Ephron - When Harry Met Sally, This is My Life, Sleepless in Seattle

Back just for a sec.

As for Kaufman, I've actually read the screenplay for Adaptation (friend of a friend worked on it), and I think it's his best, most inspired work yet. Just as I don't think after only three films it's too early to heap tons of praise upon Wes Anderson, likewise I feel quite confident handing it out to Kaufman at this point in his career.

I almost included Webb Peoples on my list too. He would have come in at number eleven. Unforgiven and 12 Monkeys (which he co-authored with his wife) are both nearly perfect scripts. I think Stephen Frears' Hero is criminally underrated, and he also did a draft or two of BladeRunner, so the guy is aces by me.

I don't really keep tabs on screenwriters. It counts on the movie, I guess. Not every screenwriter can write a good movie every time...Its strange but the only Coen Brothers movie I have ever seen is The Man Who Wasn't There. I'll have to check out more of their movies. I have wanted to see Wes Anderson's and Owen Wilson's movies but so far I haven't seen Rushmore or The Royal Tenenbaums. That sux, I really need to see more movies.....

Yes, you do. You also need to start recognizing what kind of contribution the screenwriter is making. There have been plenty of bad movies made from good scripts, but very, very few good movies made from bad scripts. That's no accident.

Thank you for your blunt reply Holden Pike. =) I'm sorry I can't live up to your expectations. Anyways, I know that screenwriting is an important part of the movie. Scripts are very important to me, because if a movie has a bad script than I don't like the movie. I am just saying that I do not know ALL of the screenwriters for every movie ever made. I am saying that just because a screenwriter writes a story or script, that doesn't mean that all their movies are going to be good.

You're welcome!

And for the record, I'm not on the chronic. Can't prove it anyway, man, so I don't know how blunt my response was.

Yeah, I know what you are trying to say and I agree with you. I am just a freak of a 17 year old. I am sure you are a big film buff. I just enjoy watching movies and my source is kind of limited. I just don't like to mouth of about things I don't really know about, and screenwriters are one. I guess I can think of a few that I like.
Nora Ephron
Tim Burton
Cameron Crow
Baz Luhrman and Craig Pearce
See, I really don't know much. Most of them are directors too...
Whatever.

Tim Burton isn't a writer.

I agree that Hero (Or Accidental Hero as it was called on this side of the Atlantic) is, as Holden said, criminally underrated. Hoffman and Garcia are so good in that, that they made me forget how much I hate Geena Davis.

Not true. He wrote The Nightmare Before Christmas, Edward Scissorhands (along with someone else), Vincent (short film), and the Melacholy Death of Oyster Boy and other stories (not a movie, but still writing).

P.S. I like John Hodge too. Actually John Hodge, Danny Boyle, and Ewan McGregor as a team....

I think you will find that Tim Burton originated the ideas for Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and others, but he's never actually written a full-length screenplay.

Ok, you're right. But anyways, he is a cool guy. Is there any screenwriters that are absolutely despised? There must be some. I can't think of any off the top of my head...

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Joe Eszterhas is pretty universally despised, both in the business and by critics. Can't say I've ever cared much for his work. Eszterhas is the outspoken author of Basic Instinct, Showgirls, Jagged Edge, Jade, Burn Hollywood Burn, Betrayed and the adaptation of Sliver. Costa-Gavras' Music Box is a good, solid flick, though it feels like it underachieves a bit, despite excellent performances by Jessica Lange and Armin Mueller-Stahl.

Eszterhas was one of the first to make mega-bucks as a screenwriter, so I suppose he opened some doors that way, which is commendable. And his messy and very public feud with superagent Mike Ovitz & CAA was amusing, in a car crash kind of way.

Wasn't Akiva Goldsman's work pretty much hated until he wrote A Beautiful Mind and won an Oscar?

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Akiva Goldsman worked on a lot of junk, like Batman Forver, Batman & Robin and Lost in Space. He also worked on two routine Grisham adaptations, The Client and A Time to Kill, and that was about it. I wouldn't say his work was "hated", that's much too strong and giving him far too much credit/blame. He just hadn't gotten a job on any decent project. His contributions to Practical Magic may have been his artistic highpoint.

A Beautiful Mind was certainly the first time he worked on anything deeper than a bucket. As for whether it is substantially any better than Practical Magic, well that's a matter of taste of course. I don't give a lick about the Oscars lending him credibility, and I still think A Beautiful Mind is a very average film, at best.


I can't think of any other writer in the business who is outright despised, personally and professinally, like Joe Eszterhas. The guy is in a class by himself on that score.

I thought that when I read it to, though I maintain that it didn't translate as well to screen as it could have. As a piece of literary work, as something to be read, however, it was wonderful.

In my opinion, ithe screenplay for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [which I know you've chosen not to read] is easily his best and most emotionally engaging work thus far. As far as character goes, certainly, it's more mature, complete and fully-formed than his previous screenplays.

James Dale Robinson - LXG, Comic Book Villains.

I followed his career in comics and he's always had a somewhat refreshing approach to formula writing, it's called character development.

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Tom Stoppard comes immediatly to mind, he wrote or at least helped write Shakespeare in Love, Brazil, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and Empire of the Sun

the Coen brothers have written and directed a half dozen of my favorite films

and I have a lot of faith in Richard Kelly despite the fact that he has only written 1 script that has become a movie so far (Donnie Darko)

Paul Schrader and in addition to the ones already mentioned also Blue Collar from him. A great movie about "blue collar" workers whom are torn apart by greed and the selfishness to save their own skin at the expense of their friends. Also it's the best Richard Pryor movie that I've seen.

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