Russell Gewirtz | |
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Born | 1967 (age 56–57) Great Neck, New York, United States |
Occupation | Writer |
Russell Gewirtz (born 1967 in Great Neck, New York) is an American screenwriter, best known for writing the screenplay for Spike Lee's 2006 film Inside Man .
Gewirtz attended Trinity School in New York City before earning a degree in computer science from Tufts University. He then attended Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in Manhattan, and because "one law degree wasn't enough," he earned an LL.M. in Taxation from the NYU School of Law. "I don't carry a business card. But if I did, it would say Esq., B.A., J.D., LL.M. after my name." Gewirtz spent his summers at Camp Swago in Damascus, Pennsylvania. After passing the bar exam, Gewirtz went to work for his father running a small chain of clothing stores. [1] After brokering a lucrative real estate deal in 1999, he left New York for several years and spent time in France and Brazil. It was at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival that he originally pitched the idea for Inside Man to Daniel Rosenberg and became a Hollywood screenwriter. [2]
He wrote two episodes for TV series Blind Justice in 2005, after penning Inside Man . [3]
Gewirtz's second screenplay was Righteous Kill , a thriller starring Al Pacino and Robert De Niro, [4] which received mainly negative reviews. [5] and grossed $78.4 million. [6]
Alfredo James Pacino is an American actor. Considered one of the greatest and most influential actors of the 20th century, Pacino has received many accolades including an Academy Award, two Tony Awards, and two Primetime Emmy Awards, achieving the Triple Crown of Acting. He has also received four Golden Globe Awards, a BAFTA, two Screen Actors Guild Awards, and was honored with the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2001, the AFI Life Achievement Award in 2007, the National Medal of Arts in 2011, and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2016.
...And Justice for All is a 1979 American legal drama film directed by Norman Jewison and starring Al Pacino, Jack Warden and John Forsythe. Lee Strasberg, Jeffrey Tambor, Christine Lahti, Craig T. Nelson, Thomas Waites and Sam Levene appear in supporting roles. The Oscar-nominated screenplay is written by Valerie Curtin and Barry Levinson. It was filmed in Baltimore, including the courthouse area. It received two Academy Award nominations: Best Actor (Pacino) and Best Original Screenplay.
Barry Lee Levinson is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Levinson won the Academy Award for Best Director for Rain Man (1988). His other best-known works are Diner (1982), The Natural (1984), Good Morning, Vietnam (1987), Bugsy (1991), and Wag the Dog (1997). In 2021, he co-executive produced the Hulu miniseries Dopesick and directed the first two episodes.
A Bronx Tale is a 1993 American coming-of-age crime drama film directed by and starring Robert De Niro in his directorial debut and produced by Jane Rosenthal, adapted from Chazz Palminteri's 1989 one-man show play of the same name. It tells the coming-of-age story of an Italian-American boy, Calogero, who, after encountering a local Mafia boss, is torn between the temptations of organized crime and the values of his honest, hardworking father, as well as racial tensions in his community. The Broadway production was converted to film with limited changes, and starred Palminteri and De Niro.
Martin Brest is an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. After his feature debut, Going in Style (1979), he directed the action comedies Beverly Hills Cop (1984) and Midnight Run (1988), which were critical and commercial hits.
John Holland Cazale was an American actor. He appeared in five films over seven years, each of which was nominated as Best Picture at their respective Academy Awards. Cazale started as a theater actor in New York City, ranging from regional, to off-Broadway, to Broadway acting alongside Al Pacino, Meryl Streep and Sam Waterston. Cazale soon became one of Hollywood's premier character actors, starting with his role as the doomed, weak-minded Fredo Corleone opposite longtime friend Pacino in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1974). He acted in Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Sidney Lumet's Dog Day Afternoon (1975). In 1977, Cazale was diagnosed with lung cancer, but he chose to complete his role in The Deer Hunter (1978). He died shortly after, in New York City on March 13, 1978.
The Godfather is a 1972 American epic gangster film directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who co-wrote the screenplay with Mario Puzo, based on Puzo's best-selling 1969 novel. The film stars an ensemble cast including Marlon Brando, Al Pacino, James Caan, Richard Castellano, Robert Duvall, Sterling Hayden, John Marley, Richard Conte and Diane Keaton. It is the first installment in The Godfather trilogy, chronicling the Corleone family under patriarch Vito Corleone (Brando) from 1945 to 1955. It focuses on the transformation of his youngest son, Michael Corleone (Pacino), from reluctant family outsider to ruthless mafia boss.
Francis Joseph Sheeran, also known as "The Irishman", was an American labor union official and enforcer for Jimmy Hoffa and Russell Bufalino. He was accused of having links to the Bufalino crime family in his capacity as a high-ranking official in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), the president of Local 326.
Inside Man is a 2006 American crime thriller film directed by Spike Lee and written by Russell Gewirtz. It centers on an elaborate bank heist-turned-hostage situation on Wall Street. The film stars Denzel Washington as Detective Keith Frazier, the NYPD's hostage negotiator, Clive Owen as Dalton Russell, the mastermind who orchestrates the heist, and Jodie Foster as Madeleine White, a Manhattan fixer who becomes involved at the request of the bank's founder Arthur Case to keep something in his safe deposit box protected from the robbers.
Stephen Gaghan is an American screenwriter and director. He is noted for writing the screenplay for Steven Soderbergh's film Traffic, based on a Channel 4 series, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, as well as Syriana which he wrote and directed. He also wrote and directed the thriller Abandon and the family film Dolittle, and directed the drama Gold.
Chinese Coffee is a 2000 American independent drama film starring Al Pacino and Jerry Orbach. It is directed by Pacino and written by Ira Lewis, adapted from his play. Two longtime friends in New York City struggle with their relationship, which has become contentious after years of mistrust and resentment over professional and personal failures.
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.
Raymond Khoury is a Lebanese screenwriter and novelist, best known as the author of the 2006 New York Times bestseller The Last Templar.
Michael Blodgett was an American actor, novelist, and screenwriter. Of his many film and television appearances he is best known for his performance as gigolo Lance Rocke in Russ Meyer's 1970 cult classic Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. He retired from acting in the late 1970s and began a writing career.
Righteous Kill is a 2008 American crime thriller film directed by Jon Avnet and written by Russell Gewirtz. The film stars Robert De Niro and Al Pacino as New York City Police Department detectives on the hunt for a serial killer. It is the third film in which both De Niro and Pacino appear in starring roles, and also stars John Leguizamo, Carla Gugino, Donnie Wahlberg, Brian Dennehy, and Curtis Jackson.
Robert Anthony De Niro is an American actor and film producer. He is considered to be one of the greatest and most influential actors of his generation. De Niro is the recipient of various accolades, including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, the Cecil B. DeMille Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama in 2016.
The Irishman is a 2019 American epic gangster film directed and produced by Martin Scorsese from a screenplay by Steven Zaillian, based on the 2004 book I Heard You Paint Houses by Charles Brandt. It stars Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci, with Ray Romano, Bobby Cannavale, Anna Paquin, Stephen Graham, Stephanie Kurtzuba, Jesse Plemons, and Harvey Keitel in supporting roles. The film follows Frank Sheeran, a truck driver who becomes a hitman involved with mobster Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and his crime family before later working for the powerful Teamster Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino). The film marked the ninth collaboration between Scorsese and De Niro, in addition to Scorsese's fifth collaboration with Harvey Keitel, his fourth collaboration with Joe Pesci; his first with Al Pacino; the fourth collaboration between Pacino and De Niro; and the first collaboration between Pacino and Pesci altogether.
Stephanie Kurtzuba is an American film, television, and theater actress. She is best known for her roles in the films The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), Annie (2014), and The Irishman (2019), and on television in recurring roles on The Good Wife and Blue Bloods.
Inside Man: Most Wanted is a 2019 American crime thriller film directed by M. J. Bassett and starring Aml Ameen, Rhea Seehorn, and Roxanne McKee. A sequel to the 2006 film Inside Man, it was released direct-to-video in the United States on September 24, 2019. It was also released onto Netflix and other pay-on-demand digital platforms.
Charles Peter Brandt was an American investigator, lawyer, writer, and speaker. He wrote the narrative non-fiction Frank Sheeran memoir I Heard You Paint Houses, the basis for the 2019 film The Irishman, directed by Martin Scorsese and starring Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci.