Curated category
20th-century American screenwriters
- Alfred HitchcockAlfred Hitchcock was born on the 13th of August 1899 above a greengrocer's shop at 517 High Road in Leytonstone, Essex. By the time he died in 1980, his…
- Martin ScorseseMartin Scorsese had asthma as a boy and could not play sports or join in games with the other children. So his parents and his older brother took him to the…
- Woody AllenWoody Allen has made 50 feature films. That single fact sits at the center of a career so long and so productive it resists easy summary.
- Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway was born on the 21st of July 1899, in Oak Park, Illinois, into a family where his mother kept his hair long and dressed him in frilly…
- Orson WellesOrson Welles was born on the 6th of May 1915, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and died on the 10th of October 1985. In between those dates, he directed what is…
- Steven SpielbergSteven Spielberg was born on the 18th of December 1946, in Cincinnati, Ohio, and by the time he was twelve years old, he had already staged and filmed a…
- Tennessee WilliamsTennessee Williams wrote in his will that he wanted to be sewn into a canvas sack and dropped into the sea at the exact spot where his idol, the poet Hart…
- Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino was born on the 27th of March 1963, in Knoxville, Tennessee, to a mother who let him watch R-rated films as a child and a father he never…
- David LynchDavid Lynch was born on the 20th of January 1946 at St. Patrick's Hospital in Missoula, Montana, the son of a USDA research scientist and an English-language…
- Stanley KubrickStanley Kubrick was born on the 26th of July 1928 in the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, and he died on the 7th of March 1999, just a few days after hosting…
- Wes AndersonWes Anderson grew up in Houston, Texas, making silent films on his father's Super 8 camera, casting his brothers and friends as the talent.
- George LucasGeorge Lucas was nearly killed before he ever made a film. On the 12th of June 1962, a few days before his high school graduation in Modesto, California…
- William FaulknerWilliam Faulkner spent most of his writing life within a few square miles of Lafayette County, Mississippi, yet the fictional world he built from that patch…
- Kurt VonnegutKurt Vonnegut survived the firebombing of Dresden by hiding in a meat locker three stories underground, surrounded by hanging cadavers.
- Andy WarholAndy Warhol died at 6:31 in the morning on the 22nd of February 1987, in a private room at New York Hospital, from a sudden cardiac arrhythmia following what…
- Dr. SeussTheodor Seuss Geisel was born on the 2nd of March, 1904, on Fairfield Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, within walking distance of a road called Mulberry…
- Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert walked to the podium at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, stood a few yards from President George W.
- Raymond ChandlerRaymond Thornton Chandler was born in Chicago in 1888 and died in 1959, having spent much of the intervening years doing almost everything except what he…
- Elia KazanElia Kazan was born Elias Kazantzoglou in Constantinople on the 7th of September, 1909, to Cappadocian Greek parents whose surname derived from the Turkish…
- Bruce LeeBruce Lee was born in San Francisco on the 27th of November, 1940, during the hour of the Dragon, in the year of the Dragon.
- Irving ThalbergIrving Thalberg was twenty years old when Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, told him to take charge of the entire Los Angeles studio.
- William WylerWilliam Wyler walked away from the set of Ben-Hur in 1959 having just overseen a chariot race that took six months to film.
- Ralph BakshiRalph Bakshi was born on the 29th of October 1938 in Haifa, Mandatory Palestine, into a Krymchak Jewish family, and by the time he was a teenager in Brooklyn…
- Terrence MalickTerrence Malick graduated from Harvard College summa cum laude in 1965, won a Rhodes Scholarship to study philosophy at Oxford, then walked away from the…
- Francis Ford CoppolaFrancis Ford Coppola illegally hired a grave robber to supply real human corpses as props, and oversaw the ritualistic killing of a water buffalo.
- Arthur MillerArthur Miller died on the evening of the 10th of February 2005 - the fifty-sixth anniversary of the Broadway debut of Death of a Salesman.
- Buster KeatonBuster Keaton never smiled on screen. Not when a two-ton building facade toppled directly onto him, leaving only the gap of an open window between his body…
- Walt DisneyWalt Disney holds the record for most Academy Awards won by an individual, with 22 wins from 59 nominations. Yet the man behind that record was, in private…
- John LasseterJohn Lasseter was fired from the Walt Disney Company for believing too hard in the future. The year was 1984, the project was a test film blending…
- Conan O'BrienConan Christopher O'Brien was born on the 18th of April 1963, in Brookline, Massachusetts, into a family defined by high achievers.
- Ron HowardRon Howard was five years old when he stood on a set holding a toy turtle, pretending it was dead. He had to cry. The director helping him through the scene…
- J. J. AbramsOn a day in 1982, Jeffrey Jacob Abrams composed the music for a horror movie called Nightbeast. He was only sixteen years old when he wrote that score.
- Dean DevlinDon Devlin, a Jewish actor turned writer-producer who discovered Steven Spielberg, and Pilar Seurat, a Filipino actress, raised Dean Devlin in the…
- John SingletonJohn Daniel Singleton walked into the Cannes Film Festival in 1991 as a 23-year-old first-time director, his debut feature Boyz n the Hood already drawing…
- Tony GilroyTony Gilroy was born in Manhattan on the 11th of September, 1956, into a household where storytelling was not a hobby but a profession. His father, Frank D.
- George R. R. MartinGeorge Raymond Richard Martin was born on the 20th of September, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of a longshoreman.
- Charlie KaufmanCharles Stuart Kaufman was born on the 19th of November 1958 in New York City to a Jewish family. His parents were Helen and Myron Kaufman.
- Michael CrichtonMichael Crichton stood 6 feet 9 inches tall, and he spent much of his life feeling out of place because of it. That restlessness never left him.
- Lorne MichaelsLorne Michaels once offered The Beatles $3,000 to reunite on live television. He made the offer in front of a studio audience, on a brand-new NBC show…
- David X. CohenDavid Samuel Cohen was born on the 13th of July 1966 in New York City. Both of his parents were biologists, and he grew up planning to be a scientist himself.
- Leigh BrackettLeigh Douglass Brackett was born on the 7th of December 1915 in Los Angeles, California. Her father died when she was very young and her mother did not…
- Penelope GilliattPenelope Gilliatt was born on the 25th of March 1932 in London. Her parents were Cyril Conner and Marie Stephanie Douglass, both hailing from Newcastle upon…