Curated category
Jewish 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.
- 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…
- 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…
- Bryan BurkBryan Burk was born on the 30th of December 1968 into a Jewish family. He grew up hearing stories that shaped his identity and later influenced his creative…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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.
- James MangoldJames Mangold grew up in Washingtonville, New York, a small Hudson Valley town, but his ambitions pointed far beyond it.
- 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…
- 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.
- Lawrence KasdanLawrence Kasdan was late for a movie in 1963, and that lateness changed everything. His brother, Mark, took him to see David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia, and…