Melisa Wallack | |
---|---|
Born | 1968 (age 53–54) Wayzata, Minnesota, U.S. |
Occupation | Screenwriter, film director |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Skidmore College |
Spouse | Bernie Goldmann [1] |
Melisa Wallack is an American screenwriter and film director. Wallack and fellow screenwriter Craig Borten were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for the 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club .
Wallack was born in Wayzata, Minnesota, [1] [2] a small town outside Minneapolis. [3] She is one of six children. [3] She attended The Breck School and Skidmore College, earning a Bachelor of Arts in English and a Bachelor of Science in business. [4]
After college, she returned to Minneapolis, in 1993 where she joined her sister Andrea Wallack in establishing a national presence for NightOwl Discovery, a company specializing in data discovery, governance and compliance for heavily regulated industries. When the company expanded to the West Coast in 1995, Wallack moved to Los Angeles and, after "meeting a lot of writers", decided to become a screenwriter herself. [1] [5] She partnered with Craig Borten to write the screenplay for Dallas Buyers Club , which was based on the true story of AIDS activist Ron Woodruff. [1] Although Wallack and Borten sold the script in the 1990s, the film did not enter production for several years and was released in 2013, almost 20 years after it had been written. [5] Dallas Buyers Club received numerous accolades, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Screenplay for Wallack and Borten. [5]
After selling the script for Dallas Buyers Club, Wallack was named one of Variety magazine's "10 screenwriters to watch" in 2005. [1] Her first feature film to be produced was Meet Bill , which Wallack wrote and directed with her husband, Bernie Goldmann, and which was released in 2007. [5] She created the story for the 2012 film Mirror Mirror , an adaptation of the Snow White fairy tale starring Julia Roberts. [4]
Wallack's future projects include the screenplay of Emily the Strange [4] and a rewrite of The Last Witch Hunter . [6]
In 2021, an article by AIDS activist Peter Staley described Wallack as an AIDS denialist and detailed the experience of attempting to remove more than 30 inaccurate claims about AIDS from her original script for Dallas Buyers Club . [7]
A screenplay writer, scriptwriter or scenarist, is a writer who practices the craft of screenwriting, writing screenplays on which mass media, such as films, television programs and video games, are based.
Michael Breckenridge Eisner is an American television and film director.
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.
Audrey Ann Wells was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. Her 1999 film Guinevere won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award.
Brook Maurio, known professionally by the pen name Diablo Cody, is an American writer and producer. She gained recognition for her candid blog and subsequent memoir, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper (2005). Cody received critical acclaim for her screenwriting debut film, Juno (2007), winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay, the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Screenplay, and the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.
A spec script, also known as a speculative screenplay, is a non-commissioned and unsolicited screenplay. It is usually written by a screenwriter who hopes to have the script optioned and eventually purchased by a producer, production company, or studio.
Honey Irani is an Indian actress and screenwriter, who works in Hindi cinema. She started her career as a child actor with roles in films such as Mahesh Kaul’s Pyar ki Pyas. It is said that Mr.Kaul kept her at his home so she would be comfortable during the film’s shooting. She was probably four to five years old when the shooting of the movies Chirag Kahan Roshni Kahan and Bombay Ka Chor started.
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.
Nick Schenk is an American screenwriter known for writing the Clint Eastwood-directed feature film Gran Torino in 2008 for which he won Best Original Screenplay from the National Board of Review. He continued his collaborations with Eastwood on The Mule (2018) and Cry Macho (2021).
Tracey Scott Wilson is an American playwright, television writer, television producer, and screenwriter. She graduated from Rutgers University with a BA in English and from Temple University with an MA in English Literature.
Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters is a 2013 action horror film written and directed by Tommy Wirkola. It is a continuation to the German folklore fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel", in which the titular siblings are now grown up and working as a duo of witch exterminators for hire. The film stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton in the title roles with Famke Janssen, Peter Stormare, Thomas Mann, Pihla Viitala and Derek Mears as the supporting cast.
Monica Johnson was an American screenwriter whose film credits included Mother, Lost in America, Modern Romance, Jekyll and Hyde... Together Again and The Muse. Her television credits included The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Laverne & Shirley and It's Garry Shandling's Show. She was a frequent collaborator with Albert Brooks.
Denise White is an American entrepreneur and crisis manager. Since 1996, she has served as CEO and founder of EAG Sports Management, a sports firm for professional athletes. She has also served as a CNN contributor for sports and crisis management stories.
Dallas Buyers Club is a 2013 American biographical drama film written by Craig Borten and Melisa Wallack, and directed by Jean-Marc Vallée. The film tells the story of Ron Woodroof, an AIDS patient diagnosed in the mid-1980s when HIV/AIDS treatments were under-researched, while the disease was not understood and was highly stigmatized. As part of the experimental AIDS treatment movement, he smuggled unapproved pharmaceutical drugs into Texas for treating his symptoms, and distributed them to fellow people with AIDS by establishing the "Dallas Buyers Club" while facing opposition from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Two fictional supporting characters, Dr. Eve Saks, and Rayon, were composite roles created from interviews with transgender AIDS patients, activists, and doctors. Presidential biographer and PEN-USA winner Bill Minutaglio wrote the first magazine profile of the Dallas Buyers Club in 1992. The article, which featured interviews with Woodroof and also recreated his dramatic international exploits, attracted widespread attention from filmmakers and journalists.
The Last Witch Hunter is a 2015 American fantasy action film directed by Breck Eisner and written by Cory Goodman, Matt Sazama, and Burk Sharpless. The film stars Vin Diesel as an immortal witch hunter who must stop a plague from ravaging the entire world. The film was released on October 23, 2015, grossing $147 million while receiving generally unfavorable reviews from critics.
Ronald Dickson Woodroof was an American man who created what would become known as the Dallas Buyer's Club in March 1988, one of several such AIDS buyers clubs that sprang up at the time. After being diagnosed with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in 1985, he created the group as part of his efforts to find and distribute drugs to treat HIV at a time when the disease was poorly understood.
The 66th Writers Guild of America Awards honor the best film, television, radio and video-game writers of 2013. The television and radio nominees were announced on December 5, 2013. Film nominees were announced on January 3, 2014. All winners were announced on February 1, 2014, at the JW Marriott hotel in the L.A. Live entertainment complex.
Craig Borten is an American screenwriter. Borten is best known for his Oscar-nominated script for the 2013 film Dallas Buyers Club. In addition to his nomination for Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay, Borten also received a nomination for Writers Guild of America Award for Best Original Screenplay.