Scott Smith (author)

Last updated
Scott B. Smith
ScottSmith2.jpg
Smith in 2006
Born (1965-07-13) July 13, 1965 (age 59)
Summit, New Jersey, U.S.
Occupation
  • Author
  • screenwriter
  • executive producer
LanguageEnglish
Education
Genres Horror, thriller
Notable works A Simple Plan (1993), The Ruins (2006)

Scott Bechtel Smith (born July 13, 1965) is an American author and screenwriter. He has written two novels, A Simple Plan (1993) and The Ruins (2006). Both were adapted into films - A Simple Plan (1998) and The Ruins (2008), respectively - based on Smith's own screenplays. He also wrote the screenplays for the films Siberia (2018) and The Burnt Orange Heresy (2019). His screenplay for A Simple Plan earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Contents

Early life and education

Smith was born in Summit, New Jersey in 1965 and moved to Toledo, Ohio as a child. [1] He is the son of Linda and Doug Smith. He told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review reviewer Regis Behe that, as a child, he read his father's "castoffs," the novels of Clive Cussler and Jack Higgins. "Growing up, I also read Ray Bradbury and Stephen King," he said. "I just had a sense of how to create these places that aren't real world places, but just with this provisional attachment to the real world. It is very much of your imagination, and I felt very much I could do that." [2] After graduating from Dartmouth College and from Columbia University with a Master of Fine Arts degree in writing, he took up writing full-time.

Career

He has published two novels, A Simple Plan and The Ruins . His screen adaptation of A Simple Plan earned him an Academy Award nomination. The screenplay won a Broadcast Film Critics Association Award and a National Board of Review Award.

His second novel, The Ruins, was also adapted into a film, released on April 4, 2008. Stephen King called it "the best horror novel of the new century." King had also called A Simple Plan "simply the best suspense novel of the year."

In 2016 it was announced that TNT had greenlit a pilot for Civil, a new TV series created by Smith about a second American Civil War following a hotly contested presidential election. [3] A TV series adaptation of William Gibson's The Peripheral was commissioned in 2018 by Amazon, [4] with Smith as writer. [5] Smith created the series, and served as executive producer and showrunner. Vincenzo Natali directed the show's pilot. [6]

Bibliography

Novels

Short stories

Translations

Filmography

Film

Television

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References

  1. Prince, Tom. "Brief Lives: Making a Killing," New York , August 30, 1993, p. 48. Accessed February 20, 2011.
  2. Behe, Regis (July 23, 2006). "Author Infuses The Ruins with Social Commentary". Pittsburgh Tribune-Review . Pittsburgh: Tribune-Review Publishing Company.
  3. The Hollywood Reporter "TNT Picks Up Young Shakespeare Series, Orders Modern Civil War Drama Pilot"
  4. Elderkin, Beth (April 17, 2018), The Creators of Westworld Head to Amazon With New Scifi Series The Peripheral, Gizmodo , retrieved November 15, 2019
  5. Andreeva, Nellie (November 13, 2019), Jonathan Nolan & Lisa Joy's 'The Peripheral' Picked Up To Series By Amazon, Deadline , retrieved November 15, 2019
  6. Maas, Jennifer (November 13, 2019), Amazon Greenlights Sci-Fi Series 'The Peripheral' From 'Westworld' Creators Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, The Wrap , retrieved November 15, 2019
  7. "Open City #20 – Homecoming". Open City. Retrieved 2018-04-17.