I’ve seen those films (for academic purposes, of course), and they are incredibly chatty movies, with each one having more lines of dialog than any three other softcore porn flicks - loopy exchanges, surreal soliloquies, and naked Greek choruses. I think the very fact that nobody was expected to care what the characters were saying gave Ebert the freedom to write whatever the hell was going though his English major/film buff mind, although I suspect a very large amount of drugs was also involved.
Whenever I am reminded that Dori Doreau from the TV series Sledge Hammer co-wrote Twister I am pleasantly surprised. She was married to Michael Crichton, though…
actually, he ended up a producer on “murder she wrote” too for a couple seasons
Something else I’ve heard when he worked on he-man he’s the one that came up with the idea of of the royal family’s back story … ie mom the queen was an astronaut from earth who ended up in another dimension (and wrote in she was always the smartest one in the room)and there was a twin sister who was stolen when they chased off the “horde” who became she-ra at a later date and there was a spinoff "darkstar "where the other astronaut on that mission ended up in an ad&d type of world and the sword was split in to and he always had to keep both parts separate so the evil guy wouldn’t get it
Lead singer / songwriter of The Smiths, Morrissey, claimed before his success in music he wrote a speculative script for very long running UK TV Soap Opera Coronation Street.
He says it was rejected and it was gently suggested whatever talents he might have were clearly in some other field.
TCMF-2L
He also wrote the next five in the series (Rockies II, II, IV, V and Balboa), in addition to directing all but one (John Avildsen returned to direct Rocky V).
He is probably as well known for an anthology series he fronted called Tales of the Unexpected for which he wrote around a quarter of the 100+ episodes. Each half hour episode was a 30 minute self contained story with a twist ending and we’re frequently dark.
Who exactly is credited as a writer, in what capacity, and in what order, is often an entire negotiation unto itself. How a writer is credited has an enormous impact on his or her reputation and income in Hollywood. The Writer’s Guild of America has detailed requirements for how writers are credited, and an arbitration process for setting disputes about crediting.
Tarantino also made some contributions to the script of Crimson Tide.
You don’t have to be a meathead in real life to play one on screen.
Basketball great and now writer Kareem Abdul Jabbar wrote an episode of Veronica Mars in 2019.
Blackstar debuted 2 years before He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. It was primarily a knock-off of Flash Gordon, with some weird stuff cribbed from Japanese anime and Tolkien. Both series were produced by Lou Scheimer, and most of Blackstar’s writers would later write for M of the U.
How about George Bernard Shaw? It may not be surprising that a playwright also wrote a film script but he was a winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1925 and later the recipient of the Academy Award for a script for a filmed version of Pygmalion.
And then there’s the connection between Goodfellas (written by Nicholas Pileggi) and My Blue Heaven (written by Nora Ephron). Both were based on stories told by the mobster Henry Hill (who was collaborating with Pileggi on a book). The two writers were married, which is how Nora Ephron was talking with Henry Hill. It’s kind of interesting to view the two movies as different takes on the same stories.
Not exactly unexpected – lots of playwrights have adapted their own work for the screen.
I’m rather disappointed that Shaw’s script hasn’t really been filmed. The
Leslie Howard/Wendy Hiller 1938 movie was rewritten – especially the ending – and it doesn’t follow Shaw’s recommendations for many scenes. Maybe one of these days someone will do it right.
The Goodfellas/My Blue Heaven case is interesting, to be sure, but doesn’t fit this thread, really. Nobody is surprised by Norah Ephron and Nick Pileggi adapting their work. It’s only odd that they’re married to each other.
The interesting thing about the GBS story is his possibly unique status as both a Nobel Prize and Academy Award winner.
I remember that cartoon, vaguely. I had one of those “alien demon” toys throughout my childhood. I even found a picture online.
Thanks for jogging my memory, I had completely forgotten about the existence of that cartoon or its toys.
I watched that just for laughs. It wasn’t any worse than the original.
I just watched Hitchcock’s “Foreign Correspondent,” and Robert Benchley the humorist has a screen credit for the dialog. He also had a leading role in the movie. I read Benchley when I was in high school, and I heard his work quite clearly.
A 10th grade English class (26 students) wrote an episode of “Bewitched”
Sisters at Heart - Wikipedia
If you look on the IMDB you se that Benchley has 38 writing credits, mostly for shorts, which I think he frequently acted in. The only case I’m familiar with is the Disney production The Reluctant Dragon, a partially animated little feature that Benchley both wrote (at least part of) and appeared in.
Very interesting. I hadn’t heard about that before.