Screenwriting : Who is your favourite screenwriter? by Jabari Sandy

I, of course, am my favorite screenwriter! I also am my favorite novelist, etc. There's a bazillion-way split for second place.

Nice one Charles.

I can say, that those whose work inspired me to be a better writer. Paul Haggis (Crash), Alan Ball (American Beauty, Six Feet Under) and Frank Capra, Elia Kazan, who's stories and filmmaking touched us all, still do after so many years. Thanks, Jabari very insightful question.

Aaron Sorkin and Tom Stoppard, despite the fact he's only written plays in the past few years.

Lowell Ganz and Babaloo Mandel. Classic comedy team! lots of Billy Crystal stuff. "League Of Their Own" "City Slickers" "Mr. Saturday Night"

@Tony i LOVE that series. i got an extra adrenaline kick when realising it was based on SNL

Dan Mainwaring.

I could name 100 screenwriters as my favorite, changing daily, based on my feelings at the time. I like people who have large bodies of work and whose complex characters are conflicted and deeply exposed to me. It's kinda hard to name one. In no particular order, Stanley Kubrick, Ben Hecht, Robert Towne, Woody Allen, Herman Menkewicz, James L. Brooks, Mel Brooks, Tennessee Williams, Stirling Silliphant, David Ward, Paddy Cheyevsky, Steve Gaghan, The Coen Brothers, Paul Haggis, P.T. Anderson, I.A.L. Diamond, Billy WIlder, Dalton Trumbo, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, Blake Edwards, Frank Peirson, Ruth Gordon, Robert Benton, Raymond Chandler, Stewart Stern, Mike Leigh, Robert Towne, Oliver Stone, Charlie Kaufman, Joan Harrison, Wiliam Goldman, Ingmar Bergman, James Agee, Cameron Crowe, Nora Ephron, John Hughes, Federico Fellini, Bo Goldman, Terry Southern, David Mamet, Larry McMurty, Frank Durabont, Harold Ramis, John Milius, Steve Zallian, William Faulkner, Paul Shrader, ...I could keep going....but want to go watch a movie now.

Billy Wilder.

The ones who make good movies.

wow, peter, that was thorough. i would have included wilder's "sunset blvd".

Woody Allen and you know why

Billy Wilder, Woody Allen, Larry McMurtry, Preston Sturges, Robert Benton -- they've all already been named. I'll add David Newman for writing "Bonnie and Clyde" with Benton and Diana Ossana for writing "Brokeback Mountain" with McMurtry. There are many more!

To Peter Corey: Assume you'll be seeing "TRUMBO" with Bryan Cranston. Also - LOVE Peter Stone. Where's one of my all time favorites - "Father Goose"?

William Goldman, Robert Bolt, Carole Eastman, Robert Town, Curtis Hanson, Alexander Payne, Francis Ford Coppola, John Osbourne, Jerzy Kosinki, Budd Schulberg, Irving Ravetch and Harriet Frank, Dalton Trumbo, Matthew Weiner, Vince Giligan and anyone else who has the balls to write meaningful work.

Many good ones mentioned, how about Joe Esterhas, David Koepp, Robert Bolt and Buck Henry.

Buck Henry did some great work.

Loved The Graduate! Catch 22 was pretty good. The original Get Smart was great TV.

Robert Towne.

How could I have forgotten, Richard Curtis.

when I first saw "Body Heat" during its release - it was Lawrence Kasdan. Wilder, Goldman, Allen, Joss Whedon -(best action writer around), Robert Towne, but it all started with Frank Capra for me...

Joss Whedon, Stephen Moffat, Richard Curtis (more for Blackadder, the funniest tv show ever made, than any other work) and some others I can't think of right now.

Mr. Sewell -Love "Body Heat". Kasdan is a favorite of mine also - "Raiders of the Lost Ark", "Silverado", "The Big Chill". To paraphrase Mickey Spillane, "That guy sure can write".

Harold Ramis and to a smaller degree, John Landis (The Blues Brothers and An American Werewolf in London), have created some wonderful work, some of my favourites.

Landis was a major contributory factor in getting three actors (2 of them children) killed during the filming of one of his movies - can't really "favourite" him much for anything.

Yes, he contravened several laws and was fortunate to escape time behind bars - I liked Vic Morrow as an actor, a shocking story re the helicopter accident, especially the two children - but, I admire his work, especially the two films I mentioned above and I might as well include Trading Places.

We're going way off point here on this thread - about favorite screenwriters - but I lived in LA when the incident happened during the shooting of "Twilight Zone - The Movie" and read articles on it daily through the end of the trial as well as seeing reports on the local news stations. What I said above was that "Landis was a major contributory factor...". I'm not looking to void double jeopardy and try him again. But as the director of the film - the director being the boss on the set/location - the one who calls all the shots and is responsible for all the action - I'm not sure how you can argue with that fact. A jury of OJ Simpson's "peers" acquitted him as well. Los Angeles juries are funny that way. Landis also had a high priced legal team. It was testified to during the trial that he did multiple takes of the sequence where Vic Morrow - bogged down in waist deep water - was made to carry 2 young Vietnamese children under his arms - while Landis - the director - kept shouting through his headset for the chopper pilot to "fly lower". Do I think the deaths were purposeful? No. Were they avoidable? Yes. Was Mr. Landis as the director "a major contributory factor"? Absolutely. Would I put his name on any list of favourite screenwriters? Not a chance.

Billy Wilder.

I just watched "The New Centurions", which was written by a guy named Stirling Silliphant. This film is 43 years old and remains pretty powerful with great dialogue. In addition to writing mega disaster hits like Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno, he also wrote the Oscar Winning "In the Heat of the Night" which is a brilliant screenplay. A few others like The Slender Thread, Charly and Marlowe were also very solid efforts. And he wrote tons of other film and television titles, which is why I'm adding him to my list.

Hard to pick faves....just like it's hard to pick fave flicks.

Phillip - agree with you on Silliphant - but to give proper credit - he had a great foundation to work with on "New Centurions". It was adapted from a very powerful first novel by LA cop turned novelist Joseph Wambaugh who went on to quite a sterling career as a novelist himself. I think "In The Heat of the Night" was also adapted from a novel. Funny you mentioned his name...back when I was starting my writing career - and trying to get my first agent - I had written a gangster script based on a real life gangster from the 30s and 40s. The agent who read it really liked the writing, but told me, "If a studio wants to do a movie about this guy - they're going to option the latest book written about him and then hire Stirling Silliphant to write the script". Hand to God. Then he asked what else I had. Gave him a semi-autobiographical summer camp script - he got it optioned (first money I ever made as a writer) and my career was begun. It came close to getting made - but didn't. And years after that - after "The Untouchables" came out (the Costner movie, not the TV series) - I dug my old gangster script out from under a pile in a cabinet - rewrote it - gave it to my then agent (I believe # 4 by then) and she sold it in a bidding war to Fox. But the Silliphant line stuck with me to this day.

Michael: Thanks so much for sharing your SS story with me. And, I'm very familiar with Mister Wambaugh's work. During the seventies, he was the go to guy for source material for stories related to LAPD. You're quite right in saying that his work as a novelist was an awesome foundation for adapting to a script. However, I had to adapt two memoirs not written by a professional, which was not such an easy task. The focus of my script was far different than the source material. The author of that source material like what I did and I'm now waiting to hear back from one of big three talent agencies. Whether they like it is another question entirely.

Phillip: Choirboys, The Blue Knight, The Onion Field. Sometimes the source material is great and all you have to do is not screw it up. He also created one of the best anthology series of the 70s - "Police Story". I remember reading "Silence of the Lambs" and being riveted and thinking that all you have to do is trim some of the prose and the screenplay can't miss. Memoirs would be tougher - a lot of interior thoughts and feelings. Wambuagh's books are great characters (in the best sense of the word) and action. Offbeat and harrowing. I adapted a novel once - and tossed everything but the central gimmick of the plot (a hijacking of an airplane). The team that pulls it off in the book was a ragtag bunch of misfits and odd couplings (a stewardess, a taxi driver...). It cried out for military precision - so the easy fix was to substitute a team of ex-Army Rangers who had all cycled out of the service - had the training - and needed the dough. Worked like a charm. Good luck with the agencies. Only takes one.

Michael: Thanks for your kind wishes. Trying to make the leap from option to film is a big one. This is my second time being reviewed at this agency, so hopeful but realistic.