Barbara Benedek (born 1948) is an American screenwriter best known for co-writing the 1983 film The Big Chill , for which she received a Writers Guild of America Award and several award nominations.
Barbara Benedek (born 1948) is an American screenwriter best known for co-writing the 1983 film The Big Chill , for which she received a Writers Guild of America Award and several award nominations.
Benedek was a psychiatric researcher prior to becoming interested in screenwriting. Her first entertainment industry job was as sitcom storywriter and editor for Witt/Thomas/Harris Productions. [1]
Her first film screenplay was for the 1983 comedy-drama film The Big Chill . For her work on the film she received, along with co-writer Lawrence Kasdan, the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1984. [2] She was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay, BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, and was runner-up for the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award. [3] [4] [5]
She went on to write screenplays for Immediate Family (1989) and Men Don't Leave (1990). In his two-star review of Men Don't Leave, Roger Ebert speculated that Benedek's screenplay started out "a good deal more realistic and honest," but that it was subject to detrimental revisions in the filmmaking process. [6]
Benedek was an uncredited writer for the 1990 film Pretty Woman . According to director Garry Marshall, "We had five different writers on Pretty Woman ... In all the rewrites, the part of Vivian, the prostitute, came quite easily. It was the character of the businessman, Edward Lewis, that presented the most problems. Only Barbara Benedek, the sole woman writer in the group, got the voice of Edward down by creating a Donald Trump-style executive with a vulnerable side." [7]
In 1995 Benedek wrote the screenplay for Sabrina , a remake of a 1954 film of the same name. It began as a fully original screenplay. Due to similarities to the 1954 film, producer Scott Rudin suggested adapting that story instead. [8]
John Thomas Sayles is an American independent film director, screenwriter, editor, actor, and novelist. He is known for writing and directing the films The Brother from Another Planet (1984), Matewan (1987), Eight Men Out (1988), Passion Fish (1992), The Secret of Roan Inish (1994), Lone Star (1996), and Men with Guns (1997).
Billy Wilder was an American filmmaker and screenwriter. He was born in Sucha Beskidzka, Poland, a town in Austria-Hungary at the time of his birth. His career in Hollywood spanned five decades, and he is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Classic Hollywood cinema. He received seven Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, the Cannes Film Festival's Palme d'Or and two Golden Globe Awards.
Leaving Las Vegas is a 1995 American drama film written and directed by Mike Figgis and based on the 1990 semi-autobiographical novel by John O'Brien. Nicolas Cage stars as a suicidal alcoholic in Los Angeles who, having lost his family and been recently fired, has decided to move to Las Vegas and drink himself to death. He loads a supply of liquor and beer into his BMW and gets drunk as he drives from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. Once there, he develops a romantic relationship with a prostitute played by Elisabeth Shue and the film shifts to include her narrative perspective. O'Brien died by suicide after signing away the film rights to the novel.
Nora Ephron was an American journalist, writer, and filmmaker. She is best known for writing and directing romantic comedy films and received numerous accolades including a British Academy Film Award as well as nominations for three Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, a Tony Award and three Writers Guild of America Awards.
Lawrence Edward Kasdan is an American filmmaker. He is the co-writer of the Star Wars films The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983), The Force Awakens (2015), and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). He also wrote Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and The Bodyguard (1992), and is the writer-director of Body Heat (1981), The Big Chill (1983), Silverado (1985), The Accidental Tourist (1988), and Dreamcatcher (2003).
The Big Chill is a 1983 American comedy-drama film directed by Lawrence Kasdan, starring an ensemble cast consisting of Tom Berenger, Glenn Close, Jeff Goldblum, William Hurt, Kevin Kline, Mary Kay Place, Meg Tilly, and JoBeth Williams. The plot focuses on a group of baby boomers who attended the University of Michigan, reuniting after 12 years when their friend Alex dies by suicide.
The Writers Guild of America Awards is an award for film, television, and radio writing including both fiction and non-fiction categories given by the Writers Guild of America, East and Writers Guild of America West since 1949.
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was a principal in Merchant Ivory Productions along with Indian film producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The trio is known for making film adaptations of stories by authors such as E.M. Forster and Henry James. Their body of work is celebrated for its elegance, sophistication, literary fidelity, strong performances, complex themes, and rich characters.
The Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay – Motion Picture is a Golden Globe Award given by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillian is an Armenian-American screenwriter, film director and producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for his screenplay Schindler's List (1993) and has earned Oscar nominations for the films Awakenings, Gangs of New York, Moneyball and The Irishman. He was presented with the Distinguished Screenwriter Award at the 2009 Austin Film Festival and the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of America in 2011. Zaillian is the founder of Film Rites, a film production company.
Diana Lynn Ossana is an American writer who has collaborated on writing screenplays, teleplays, and novels with author Larry McMurtry since they first worked together in 1992, on the semi-fictionalized biography Pretty Boy Floyd. She won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Writers' Guild of America Award, a BAFTA Award, and a Golden Globe Award for her screenplay of Ang Lee's Brokeback Mountain, along with McMurtry, and adapted from the short story of the same name by Annie Proulx. She is a published author in her own right of several short stories and essays.
A. Scott Frank is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. Frank has received two Academy Award nominations for Best Adapted Screenplay for Out of Sight (1998) and Logan (2017). His film work, credited and uncredited, extends to dozens of films. In recent years, he has worked for Netflix on miniseries, most prominently Godless and The Queen's Gambit.
Notes on a Scandal is a 2006 British psychological drama thriller directed by Richard Eyre and produced by Robert Fox and Scott Rudin. Adapted from the 2003 novel by Zoë Heller, the screenplay was written by Patrick Marber. The film stars Judi Dench, Cate Blanchett, and Bill Nighy, and centres on a lonely veteran teacher who uncovers a fellow teacher's illicit affair with an underage student.
Bo Goldman was an American screenwriter and playwright. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Writers Guild of America Awards as well as the Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998. He also received two BAFTA Award nominations.
Bridget Bedard is a television writer and producer who has garnered four Peabody Awards, a Golden Globe, both Writers and Producers Guild awards, as well as multiple Emmy and Golden Globe nominations.
Earl W. Wallace was an American screen and television writer who began his career in the 1970s writing episodes of the hit CBS Western series Gunsmoke, one of which inspired him, his wife Pamela, and William Kelley to develop the screenplay for the 1985 film Witness.
Charles Randolph is an American screenwriter and producer for film and television. In 2015, he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay along with Adam McKay for co-writing The Big Short. In 2019, he wrote and produced the film Bombshell, which was directed by Jay Roach and starred Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie, and Nicole Kidman.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
