Louis Alan Garfinkle (1928-2005) was an American scriptwriter and the co-developer of the Collaborator computer screenwriting program. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with four others for The Deer Hunter . He died of complications from Parkinson's disease at his home in Studio City in 2005. [1]
He was born in Seattle in 1928 and studied at the University of Southern California from which he received his B.A. in 1948. [1]
Garfinkle was one of the co-creators with director Cary Brown and fellow screenwriter Francis Feighan of the Collaborator, an interactive scriptwriting computer program that was popular in the 1990s. Garfinkle's obituary in the Los Angeles Times stated that Collaborator "poses questions aimed at shaping a movie treatment and prods the writer to flesh out characters". [1] [2]
Garfinkle also co-wrote the story for the 1973 Broadway musical Molly that starred Kaye Ballard. [1]
Garfinkle collaborated on five films with the director Albert Band. [3]
The Deer Hunter is a 1978 American epic war drama film co-written and directed by Michael Cimino about a trio of Slavic-American steelworkers whose lives were changed forever after fighting in the Vietnam War. The three soldiers are played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage, with John Cazale, Meryl Streep, and George Dzundza playing supporting roles. The story takes place in Clairton, Pennsylvania, a working-class town on the Monongahela River south of Pittsburgh, and in Vietnam.
George Seaton was an American screenwriter, playwright, film director and producer, and theatre director.
Curtis Lee Hanson was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. His directing work included the psychological thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle (1992), the neo-noir crime film L.A. Confidential (1997), the comedy Wonder Boys (2000), the hip-hop biopic 8 Mile (2002), the romantic comedy-drama In Her Shoes (2005), and the made-for-television docudrama Too Big to Fail (2011).
The Hillside Memorial Park and Mortuary is a Jewish cemetery located at 6001 West Centinela Avenue, in Culver City, California. Many Jews from the entertainment industry are buried here. The cemetery is known for Al Jolson's elaborate tomb, a 75-foot-high pergola and monument atop a hill above a water cascade, all visible from the adjacent San Diego Freeway.
Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park & Mortuary is a cemetery and mortuary located in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles. It is located at 1218 Glendon Avenue in Westwood, with an entrance from Glendon Avenue.
Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery is the largest Jewish cemetery organization in California. The cemeteries are the final resting place for many Jews in the entertainment industry.
Inglewood Park Cemetery, 720 East Florence Avenue in Inglewood, California, was founded in 1905. A number of notable people, including entertainment and sports personalities, have been interred or entombed there.
Roger Roberts Avary is a Canadian-American film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He collaborated with Quentin Tarantino on Pulp Fiction, for which they won Best Original Screenplay at the 67th Academy Awards. Avary directed Killing Zoe, The Rules of Attraction, Lucky Day, and wrote the screenplays for Silent Hill and Beowulf.
Marsha Mason is an American actress and director. She was nominated four times for the Academy Award for Best Actress: for her performances in Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Goodbye Girl (1977), Chapter Two (1979), and Only When I Laugh (1981). The first two films also won her Golden Globe Awards. She was married for ten years (1973–1983) to the playwright and screenwriter Neil Simon, who was the writer of three of her four Oscar-nominated roles.
Michael Cimino was an American filmmaker. He achieved fame as the director of The Deer Hunter (1978), which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and earned him the Academy Award for Best Director. However, Cimino's reputation was tarnished by his follow-up Heaven's Gate (1980), a critical failure that became one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time.
Julius J. Epstein was an American screenwriter, who had a long career, best remembered for his screenplay, written with his twin brother, Philip, and Howard E. Koch, of the film Casablanca (1942), for which the writers won an Academy Award. It was adapted from an unpublished play, Everybody Comes to Rick's, written by Murray Bennett and Joan Alison.
Screenwriting or scriptwriting is the art and craft of writing scripts for mass media such as feature films, television productions or video games. It is often a freelance profession.
Daniel Thomas O'Bannon was an American film screenwriter, director and visual effects supervisor, usually in the science fiction and horror genres.
Rod Lurie is an Israeli-American director, screenwriter, and former film critic.
Eric R. Roth is an American screenwriter. He has been nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay — for Forrest Gump (1994), The Insider (1999), Munich (2005), The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008), A Star Is Born (2018), and Dune (2021) — winning for Forrest Gump. He also worked on the screenplays for the Oscar-nominated films Ali (2001) and Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (2011), as well as Martin Scorsese's upcoming film Killers of the Flower Moon.
Richard Leighton Levinson was an American screenwriter and producer who often worked in collaboration with William Link.
Robin Stender Swicord is an American screenwriter, film director, and playwright, best known for literary adaptations. Her notable screenplays include Little Women (1994), Matilda (1996), Practical Magic (1998), Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (2008); which was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay. She wrote and directed the 2007 film The Jane Austen Book Club.
Quinn Redeker is an American actor and screenwriter, best known for his work on daytime dramas.
Deric Washburn is an American screenwriter.
Richard J. Riordan Central Library, also known as the Los Angeles Central Library, is the main branch of the Los Angeles Public Library (LAPL), in Downtown Los Angeles. It is named after Mayor of Los Angeles Richard Riordan.