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Curated category

21st-century American screenwriters

  • Simon KinbergSimon Kinberg has a small cameo in one of his own scripts. In Mr. & Mrs. Smith, he plays the banker who chats with John Smith at a dinner party.
  • 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.
  • 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…
  • 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…
  • 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.
  • Matt HullumMatt Hullum grew up in Atlanta, Georgia, the son of a librarian and a sports journalist. By the time he was in his early twenties, he had already co-directed…
  • 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…
  • Christopher NolanChristopher Nolan does not own a smartphone, and he has no email address. He hand-delivers his scripts to the actors he wants, and his wife handles the rest…
  • Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert walked to the podium at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, stood a few yards from President George W.
  • 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.
  • Bradley CooperBradley Charles Cooper was born on the 5th of January 1975, in Abington Township, Pennsylvania, a child who wanted to move to Japan and become a ninja.
  • 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…
  • J. D. DillardJ. D. Dillard was born on the 26th of December 1987 into a family defined by service and flight. His father Bruce worked as a Naval flight officer who became…
  • 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…
  • Dave FiloniDave Filoni thought he was being pranked. When a job offer arrived from George Lucas himself, Filoni assumed his colleagues at Nickelodeon were pulling a…
  • 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…
  • D. B. WeissD. B. Weiss was born on the 23rd of April, 1971, in Chicago, Illinois, and the career he eventually built would become one of the most celebrated and then…
  • David BenioffDavid Benioff was born David Friedman on the 25th of September, 1970, the youngest of three children in a Jewish family in New York City.
  • 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.
  • The Duffer BrothersMatt Duffer and Ross Duffer, identical twins credited together as the Duffer Brothers, were born on the 15th of February 1984.
  • Jonathan TropperJonathan Tropper grew up in the Riverdale section of the Bronx, New York City, in a liberal observant Jewish household, attending a co-ed Modern Orthodox…
  • Beau WillimonBeau Willimon was born on the 26th of October 1977, and by his own account, he was the worst student in his playwriting cohort at Columbia.
  • Chris TerrioChris Terrio spent months trying to figure out whether Gatorade existed in December 1979. He needed to know if Tony Mendez could plausibly have made a joke…
  • George NolfiGeorge Nolfi was finishing his PhD dissertation at UCLA in 1997 when he sold his first speculative script, Pathfinder, in a three-studio bidding war.