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. AbramsJ. J. Abrams wrote his first film score at age 16 for a low-budget horror movie called Nightbeast. That was 1982, and it was not the work of a film student…
- Dean DevlinDean Devlin grew up with Hollywood in his blood and an unusual family story behind him. His father, Don Devlin, was an actor turned writer-producer who…
- 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 KaufmanCharlie Kaufman spent his first weeks on a professional writing staff too anxious to speak. Hired in the early 1990s to write for the sitcom Get a Life…
- 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 Brackett was born on the 7th of December 1915 in Los Angeles, California, and by the time she died in March 1978, she had left her mark on science…
- 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…