Curated playlist
American male television writers
- Stephen KingStephen King was walking on the shoulder of Maine State Route 5 on the 19th of June 1999 when a minivan struck him and sent him into a depression in the ground about fourteen feet from the pavement. The driver was distracted by a dog…
- 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. He had started the screenplay years earlier, as his thesis project in film school. That scene…
- Greg EaglesAmerican actor
- Paul ZbyszewskiPaul Zbyszewski started his television career writing questions for contestants on the Weakest Link, a game show that thrives on elimination. From that starting point, he went on to write for some of the most acclaimed and unusual dramas…
- 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 movies instead. That is where his passion for cinema began, in a child who could…
- 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. Born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in the Bronx on the 30th of November 1935, he has written for film,…
- 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, another driver broadsided his souped-up Autobianchi Bianchina, flipping the car…
- Stephen ColbertStephen Colbert walked to the podium at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, stood a few yards from President George W. Bush, and spent the next several minutes roasting both the administration and the assembled press…
- Bryan BurkBryan Burk served as producer on Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015. That credit belongs alongside two Mission: Impossible films, the Star Trek reboot series, and television including Lost, Fringe, and Westworld. Burk built all of that…
- 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 he was digging through trash cans for comic books. That detail matters. It tells…
- Ken KeelerKen Keeler holds a PhD in applied mathematics from Harvard University and has spent much of his career writing jokes for animated robots and cartoon families. That gap between theorem and punchline is the central puzzle of his life. How…
- David LettermanDavid Michael Letterman was born on the 12th of April 1947, in Indianapolis, Indiana, and over the next six decades he would reshape what American late-night television could be. He hosted 6,080 episodes across two shows, surpassing his…
- Conan O'BrienConan Christopher O'Brien was born on the 18th of April 1963, in Brookline, Massachusetts, into a family defined by high achievers. His father was a physician and professor at Harvard Medical School. His mother was a partner at the Boston…
- Pat ProftPat Proft's name does not appear in the title of a single one of Hollywood's most beloved comedy franchises, yet his fingerprints are on nearly all of them. Born in Minnesota in 1947, Proft spent decades writing jokes that made audiences…
- 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 or an intern. It was the work of a teenager from Los Angeles who had already…
- Damon LindelofDamon Lindelof has spent his career building television that refuses to let its audience go quietly. Born on the 24th of April, 1973, in Englewood, New Jersey, he grew up to become one of the most celebrated and controversial showrunners…
- J. D. DillardJ. D. Dillard grew up as a Navy brat, the son of a Naval flight officer. His father, Bruce Dillard, was the second African-American ever selected to fly for the Blue Angels. Born on the 26th of December 1987, Dillard spent his early years…
- 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 the world's attention to a neighborhood most of Hollywood preferred to ignore. A…
- Jonathan KasdanJonathan Peter Kasdan was born on the 30th of September 1979 in Los Angeles. His father Lawrence Kasdan worked as a writer and director while his mother Meg Goldman served as a writer. He grew up within a Jewish family that provided little…
- 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. Gilroy, was an award-winning playwright, director, and movie producer. His mother,…
- George R. R. MartinGeorge Raymond Richard Martin was born on the 20th of September, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey, the son of a longshoreman. Every day walking to school, he passed the dock and house that had once belonged to his family before the Great…
- 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 alongside star Chris Elliott, he sat through story meetings in silence. Only after…
- Donald GloverDonald McKinley Glover Jr. was voted "Most Likely to Write for The Simpsons" in his high school yearbook at Stephenson High School in Stone Mountain, Georgia. At age 23, that prediction came close to true. He walked into a room of seasoned…
- 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 stunt, exploiting his well-known obsession with Star Wars. He was wrong. That phone…
- 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, during the first season of Saturday Night Live. John Lennon and Paul McCartney happened…
- 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 most disputed in modern television history. His full name is Daniel Brett Weiss, and…
- 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. By the time he was forty, he had helped build one of the most watched television series in history.…
- Joss WhedonJoss Whedon grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in a household where Shakespeare was vacation reading and silence was a punishment for children who failed to be entertaining. Born on the 23rd of June 1964, he was Joseph Hill Whedon…
- 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. He also enjoyed drawing cartoons and writing stories during those early years.…
- Carl MacekCarl Frank Macek was an American screenwriter and producer. His adaptations of Japanese anime, made across the 1980s and 1990s, are credited with building mainstream American awareness of Japanese animation. He created a franchise called…
- The Duffer BrothersMatt Duffer and Ross Duffer, identical twins credited together as the Duffer Brothers, were born on the 15th of February 1984. They work on every project as a single pair, never apart. That partnership eventually produced the horror film…
- James MangoldJames Mangold grew up in Washingtonville, New York, a small Hudson Valley town, but his ambitions pointed far beyond it. He was born on the 16th of December 1963 in New York City, the son of two artists: Robert Mangold and Sylvia Plimack…
- 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 sleepaway camp in the Poconos during childhood. Nothing about that biography suggests…
- Jon FavreauJon Favreau grew up in Flushing, Queens, the only child of a schoolteacher mother who died of leukemia when he was just twelve years old. His mother was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father a Catholic of Italian and French-Canadian ancestry. After…
- 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. He did not know a single person in the theater world. He had no idea how to write a play. What he…
- James KahnJames Kahn was born on the 30th of December, 1947, in Chicago, and by the time most people encounter his name, they are holding a paperback copy of Return of the Jedi. That novelization made him a household name among a generation of Star…