Curated playlist
Best Original Screenplay Academy Award winners
- Matt DamonMatt Damon once turned down 10 percent of the profits from Avatar, a film that went on to become the most successful of all time. Director James Cameron made the offer while Damon was still working on the Bourne films, and Damon did not…
- Woody AllenWoody Allen failed a film production course at New York University, then went on to direct Annie Hall.
- Orson WellesOrson Welles burned ten reels of his own Don Quixote film. He felt the 1969 Moon landings made its ending obsolete.
- Quentin TarantinoQuentin Tarantino turned down Speed and Men in Black to write Pulp Fiction in Amsterdam.
- Mel BrooksMel Brooks was 14 years old when he climbed onto a diving board at the Butler Lodge, a second-rate hotel in the Borscht Belt. He worked there as a pool-side tummler, an entertainer hired to keep the guests amused. On this day he wore a…
- Francis Ford CoppolaMarlon Brando won the Godfather role only after a screen test and a reduced fee.
- Kenneth BranaghKenneth Branagh won an Oscar for a film about the Belfast he fled at age nine. He won Best Original Screenplay in 2022.
- Michel GondryMichel Gondry pioneered "bullet time" in a 1996 vodka ad. The effect was later adapted for The Matrix.
- Ben AffleckBen Affleck directed Argo, and for it he collected the Golden Globe, the Directors Guild Award and the BAFTA for Best Director without ever being nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director. No director had done that before him. The…
- Tom StoppardTom Stoppard arrived in England knowing not a word of Czech. He fled Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a child.
- Charlie KaufmanEvery company rejected Charlie Kaufman's script for Being John Malkovich. Spike Jonze later agreed to direct it.
- Michael ArndtMichael Arndt wrote the first draft of Little Miss Sunshine in three days in May 2000. That is a very short span for a screenplay that would later change his career. Arndt is an American screenwriter. His name now sits beside Pixar…