My Favorite Screenplay Writers

by Marwan-Bob | created - 19 Sep 2018 | updated - 2 months ago | Public

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1. Quentin Tarantino

Writer | Reservoir Dogs

Quentin Jerome Tarantino was born in Knoxville, Tennessee. His father, Tony Tarantino, is an Italian-American actor and musician from New York, and his mother, Connie (McHugh), is a nurse from Tennessee. Quentin moved with his mother to Torrance, California, when he was four years old.

In January of...

Reservoir Dogs - 10/10 Pulp Fiction - 10/10 Django Unchained - 10/10 The Hateful Eight - 10/10 True Romance - 9/10 Inglourious Basterds - 9/10 Jackie Brown - 8/10 Kill Bill: Vol. 1 - 8/10 Kill Bill: Vol. 2 - 8/10 Death Proof - 8/10 From Dusk Till Dawn - 6/10

2. Christopher Nolan

Writer | Tenet

Best known for his cerebral, often nonlinear, storytelling, acclaimed Academy Award winner writer/director/producer Sir Christopher Nolan CBE was born in London, England. Over the course of more than 25 years of filmmaking, Nolan has gone from low-budget independent films to working on some of the ...

Memento - 10/10 The Prestige - 10/10 The Dark Knight - 9/10 Inception - 9/10 The Dark Knight Rises - 9/10 Interstellar - 9/10 Dunkirk - 9/10 Batman Begins - 8/10 Following - 7/10

3. Francis Ford Coppola

Producer | Apocalypse Now

Francis Ford Coppola was born in 1939 in Detroit, Michigan, but grew up in a New York suburb in a creative, supportive Italian-American family. His father, Carmine Coppola, was a composer and musician. His mother, Italia Coppola (née Pennino), had been an actress. Francis Ford Coppola graduated ...

The Godfather - 10/10 The Godfather: Part II - 10/10 Patton - 9/10 Apocalypse Now - 9/10 The Rainmaker - 9/10 The Godfather: Part III - 8/10 The Conversation - 7/10

4. Mario Puzo

Writer | The Godfather

Mario Puzo was born October 15, 1920, in "Hell's Kitchen" on Manhattan's (NY) West Side and, following military service in World War II, attended New York's New School for Social Research and Columbia University. His best-known novel, "The Godfather," was preceded by two critically acclaimed novels...

The Godfather - 10/10 The Godfather: Part II - 10/10 The Godfather: Part III - 8/10

5. Frank Darabont

Writer | The Shawshank Redemption

Three-time Oscar nominee Frank Darabont was born in a refugee camp in 1959 in Montbeliard, France, the son of Hungarian parents who had fled Budapest during the failed 1956 Hungarian revolution. Brought to America as an infant, he settled with his family in Los Angeles and attended Hollywood High ...

The Shawshank Redemption - 10/10 The Green Mile - 10/10 The Mist - 9/10

6. Billy Wilder

Writer | The Apartment

Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many ...

Stalag 17 - 10/10 Double Indemnity - 9/10 The Lost Weekend - 9/10 Sunset Boulevard - 9/10 Ace in the Hole - 9/10 Witness for the Prosecution - 9/10 The Apartment - 9/10 Irma la Douce - 9/10 The Fortune Cookie - 9/10 The Front Page - 9/10 Five Graves to Cairo - 8/10 Sabrina - 8/10 Some Like It Hot - 8/10 Avanti! - 8/10 The Seven Year Itch - 7/10 The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes - 7/10

7. Sergio Leone

Writer | Once Upon a Time in America

Sergio Leone was virtually born into the cinema - he was the son of Roberto Roberti (A.K.A. Vincenzo Leone), one of Italy's cinema pioneers, and actress Bice Valerian. Leone entered films in his late teens, working as an assistant director to both Italian directors and U.S. directors working in ...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 10/10 A Fistful of Dollars - 9/10 For a Few Dollars More - 9/10 Once Upon a Time in the West - 9/10 Once Upon a Time in America - 9/10 Duck, You Sucker - 8/10

8. Jonathan Nolan

Writer | Westworld

Attended Loyola Academy in Wilmette, Illinois, graduating in 1994.

Graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1999. Majored in English.

Shortly after graduating from Georgetown University, Jonathan Nolan served as a production assistant on Memento (2000).

Wrote the short story, "...

The Prestige - 10/10 The Dark Knight - 9/10 The Dark Knight Rises - 9/10 Interstellar - 9/10

9. Christopher McQuarrie

Writer | The Usual Suspects

Christopher McQuarrie is an acclaimed producer, director and an Academy Award® winning writer. McQuarrie grew up in Princeton Junction, New Jersey and in lieu of college, he spent the first five years out of school traveling and working at a detective agency. He later moved to Los Angeles to pursue...

The Usual Suspects - 10/10 Edge of Tomorrow - 9/10 Mission: Impossible - Fallout - 9/10 Jack Reacher - 7/10 Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation - 7/10

10. Eric Roth

Writer | Dune

Mr. Roth won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay for Forrest Gump & has been nominated for his screenplays of The Insider, Munich, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, A Star is Born, & Dune. He wrote Mr. Kurosawa's Rhapsody in August, The Horse Whisperer, Ali, & Best Picture Nominee, Extremely ...

Forrest Gump - 10/10 The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - 9/10 The Insider - 8/10 Munich - 8/10 Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close - 8/10

11. Damien Chazelle

Writer | La La Land

Damien Sayre Chazelle is an American director and screenwriter. He was born in Providence, Rhode Island. His mother, Celia Sayre (Martin) Chazelle, is an American-Canadian writer and professor of history at The College of New Jersey. His father, Bernard Chazelle, is a French-American Eugene Higgins...

Whiplash - 10/10 La La Land - 9/10 10 Cloverfield Lane - 8/10

12. Luciano Vincenzoni

Writer | Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo

Luciano Vincenzoni, born in Treviso, March 7, 1926, studied law in Rome and Padua. In 1952, with his friend Tony Roma, he produced "Oliva Incantesimo Tragico", starring María Félix. In 1954, he wrote his first script "Hanno Rubato un Tram", directed by Aldo Fabrizi. In this year, he met 'Pietro ...

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly - 10/10 For a Few Dollars More - 9/10 Duck, You Sucker - 8/10

13. Steven Zaillian

Writer | Searching for Bobby Fischer

Steven Zaillian was born on January 30, 1953 in Fresno, California, USA. He is a writer and producer, known for Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993), The Irishman (2019) and The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011). He is married to Elizabeth Zaillian. They have two children.

Schindler's List - 10/10 Awakenings - 9/10 Searching for Bobby Fischer - 8/10 Gangs of New York - 8/10 American Gangster - 8/10 Moneyball - 8/10 The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo - 8/10 Mission: Impossible - 7/10

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14. Martin Scorsese

Producer | Killers of the Flower Moon

Martin Charles Scorsese was born on November 17, 1942 in Queens, New York City, to Catherine Scorsese (née Cappa) and Charles Scorsese, who both worked in Manhattan's garment district, and whose families both came from Palermo, Sicily. He was raised in the neighborhood of Little Italy, which later ...

Goodfellas - 9/10 Casino - 9/10 Mean Streets - 8/10 Silence - 8/10

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15. Guy Ritchie

Director | Sherlock Holmes

Guy Ritchie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK on September 10, 1968. After watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) as a child, Guy realized that what he wanted to do was make films. He never attended film school, saying that the work of film school graduates was boring and ...

Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels - 9/10 Snatch - 9/10 RocknRolla - 8/10 The Man from U.N.C.L.E. - 8/10 King Arthur: Legend of the Sword - 7/10

16. Paul Thomas Anderson

Director | Punch-Drunk Love

Anderson was born in 1970. He was one of the first of the "video store" generation of film-makers. His father was the first man on his block to own a V.C.R., and from a very early age Anderson had an infinite number of titles available to him. While film-makers like Spielberg cut their teeth making...

Magnolia - 9/10 There Will Be Blood - 9/10 The Master - 9/10 Hard Eight - 8/10 Boogie Nights - 8/10 Phantom Thread - 8/10 Punch-Drunk Love - 6/10

17. Akiva Goldsman

Writer | A Beautiful Mind

Akiva Goldsman was born on July 7, 1962 in New York City, New York, USA. He is a producer and writer, known for A Beautiful Mind (2001), Batman & Robin (1997) and Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (2022).

A Time to Kill - 9/10 A Beautiful Mind - 9/10 Cinderella Man - 9/10 The Da Vinci Code - 8/10 I Am Legend - 8/10 I, Robot - 7/10 Angels & Demons - 7/10

18. Asghar Farhadi

Writer | Forooshande

Asghar Farhadi was born in 1972 in Iran. He became interested in cinema in his teenage years and started his filmmaking education by joining the Youth Cinema Society of Esfahan in 1986 where he made 8mm and 16mm short films. He received his Bachelors in Theater from University of Tehran's School of...

About Elly - 9/10 A Separation - 9/10 The Salesman - 9/10 The Past - 8/10

19. Brian Helgeland

Writer | Finestkind

Brian Helgeland was born in Providence, Rhode Island and raised in New Bedford Massachusetts. A born worker, Helgeland has endeavored to achieve in the following fields: snow shoveler, scrap newspaper collector, dishwasher, nursing home janitor, drug store clerk and unreliable nightshift gas ...

L.A. Confidential - 9/10 Mystic River - 9/10 Man on Fire - 8/10 42 - 8/10 Legend - 8/10

20. Oliver Stone

Director | JFK

Oliver Stone has become known as a master of controversial subjects and a legendary film maker. His films are filled with a variety of film angles and styles, he pushes his actors to give Oscar-worthy performances, and despite his failures, has always returned to success.

William Oliver Stone was ...

Midnight Express - 9/10 Scarface - 9/10 JFK - 9/10 Platoon - 8/10 Snowden - 8/10 Natural Born Killers - 7/10 8.33

21. David Koepp

Writer | Jurassic Park

David Koepp is an American film director and screenwriter. He is known for writing Jurassic Park directed by Steven Spielberg, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Spider-Man directed by Sam Raimi and Panic Room directed by David ...

Jurassic Park - 9/10 Carlito's Way - 9/10 Panic Room - 8/10 Spider-Man - 8/10 Mission: Impossible - 7/10 Angels & Demons - 7/10 8

22. Hideo Oguni

Writer | Tengoku to jigoku

Hideo Oguni was born on July 9, 1904 in Aomori, Japan. He was a writer and director, known for High and Low (1963), Ikiru (1952) and Ran (1985). He died on February 5, 1996.

High and Low - 9/10 Ran - 9/10 Ikiru - 8/10 Throne of Blood - 8/10 The Bad Sleep Well - 8/10

23. Akira Kurosawa

Writer | Kakushi-toride no san-akunin

After training as a painter (he storyboards his films as full-scale paintings), Kurosawa entered the film industry in 1936 as an assistant director, eventually making his directorial debut with Sanshiro Sugata (1943). Within a few years, Kurosawa had achieved sufficient stature to allow him greater...

Seven Samurai - 9/10 High and Low - 9/10 Ran - 9/10 Rashomon - 8/10 Ikiru - 8/10 Throne of Blood - 8/10 The Bad Sleep Well - 8/10 Yojimbo - 8/10 8.37

24. James Cameron

Writer | Avatar: The Way of Water

James Francis Cameron was born on August 16, 1954 in Kapuskasing, Ontario, Canada. He moved to the United States in 1971. The son of an engineer, he majored in physics at California State University before switching to English, and eventually dropping out. He then drove a truck to support his ...

Aliens - 9/10 Terminator 2 - 9/10 Titanic - 9/10 The Terminator - 8/10 The Abyss - 8/10 Avatar - 8/10 8.5

25. Michael Mann

Producer | The Insider

As a director, screenwriter, and producer, four-time Academy Award nominee Michael Mann has established himself as one of the most innovative and influential filmmakers in American cinema. After writing and directing the Primetime Emmy Award-winning television movie The Jericho Mile (1979), Mann ...

Heat - 9/10 Thief - 8/10 The Insider - 8/10 Public Enemies - 8/10 8.25

26. Stanley Kubrick

Director | 2001: A Space Odyssey

Stanley Kubrick was born in Manhattan, New York City, to Sadie Gertrude (Perveler) and Jacob Leonard Kubrick, a physician. His family were Jewish immigrants (from Austria, Romania, and Russia). Stanley was considered intelligent, despite poor grades at school. Hoping that a change of scenery would ...

Paths of Glory - 9/10 Dr. Strangelove - 9/10 2001: A Space Odyssey - 9/10 A Clockwork Orange - 9/10 Barry Lyndon - 9/10 The Shining - 9/10 Full Metal Jacket - 9/10 The Killing - 8/10 Eyes Wide Shut - 8/10 8.77

27. John Hughes

Writer | Planes, Trains & Automobiles

John Hughes was an American film director, film producer, and screenwriter. He was credited for creating some of the most memorable comedy films of the 1980s and the 1990s, when he was at the height of his career. He had a talent for writing coming-of-age stories, and for depicting fairly realistic...

The Breakfast Club - 9/10 Ferris Bueller's Day Off - 9/10 Sixteen Candles - 8/10 Planes, Trains & Automobiles - 8/10 Home Alone - 7/10 8.16

28. I.A.L. Diamond

Writer | The Apartment

I.A.L. Diamond was born on June 27, 1920 in Ungheni, Romania [now Moldova]. He was a writer and producer, known for The Apartment (1960), Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970). He was married to Barbara Diamond. He died on April 21, 1988 in Beverly Hills, California...

The Apartment - 9/10 One, Two, Three - 9/10 Irma la Douce - 9/10 The Fortune Cookie - 9/10 The Front Page - 9/10 Some Like It Hot - 8/10 Avanti! - 8/10 8.71

29. Kim Ki-duk

Writer | Bin-jip

He studied fine arts in Paris in 1990-1992. In 1993 he won the award for Best Screenplay from the Educational Institute of Screenwriting with "A Painter and A Criminal Condemned to Death". After two more screenplay awards, he made his directorial debut with Crocodile (1996) ("Crocodile"). Then he ...

Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter... and Spring - 9/10 3-Iron - 9/10 Pieta - 9/10 The Bow - 8/10 Samaritan Girl - 8/10 8.6

30. Ethan Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

The younger brother of Joel, Ethan Coen is an Academy Award and Golden Globe winning writer, producer and director coming from small independent films to big profile Hollywood films. He was born on September 21, 1957 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In some films of the brothers- Ethan & Joel wrote, Joel...

Blood Simple. - 9/10 Miller's Crossing - 9/10 Fargo - 9/10 The Big Lebowski - 9/10 No Country for Old Men - 9/10 Inside Llewyn Davis - 9/10 Unbroken - 9/10 Bridge of Spies - 9/10 Barton Fink - 8/10 O Brother, Where Art Thou? - 8/10 The Man Who Wasn't There - 8/10 Burn After Reading - 8/10 A Serious Man - 8/10 True Grit - 8/10 Raising Arizona - 7/10 The Hudsucker Proxy - 7/10

31. Joel Coen

Producer | The Ballad of Buster Scruggs

Joel Daniel Coen is an American filmmaker who regularly collaborates with his younger brother Ethan. They made Raising Arizona, Barton Fink, Fargo, The Big Lebowski, True Grit, O Brother Where Art Thou?, Burn After Reading, A Serious Man, Inside Llewyn Davis, Hail Caesar and other projects. Joel ...

32. Ernest Lehman

Writer | North by Northwest

One of the most critically and commercially successful screenwriters in Hollywood history, Lehman grew up on Long Island, graduated from NY's City College. One of his first jobs was as a copywriter for a Broadway publicist. This experience would later be reflected in his novel and screenplay, "...

Sweet Smell of Success - 9/10 Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? - 9/10 Sabrina - 8/10 North by Northwest - 8/10 8.5

33. Federico Fellini

Writer | Le notti di Cabiria

The women who both attracted and frightened him and an Italy dominated in his youth by Mussolini and Pope Pius XII - inspired the dreams that Fellini started recording in notebooks in the 1960s. Life and dreams were raw material for his films. His native Rimini and characters like Saraghina (the ...

The Nights of Cabiria - 9/10 8½ - 9/10 La Dolce Vita - 9/10 La Strada - 8/10 Amarcord - 8/10 I Vitelloni - 8/10

34. Tullio Pinelli

Writer | La dolce vita

Tullio Pinelli was born on June 24, 1908 in Turin, Piedmont, Italy. He was a writer, known for La Dolce Vita (1960), The Road (1954) and 8½ (1963). He was married to Madeleine Lebeau. He died on March 7, 2009 in Rome, Lazio, Italy.

The Nights of Cabiria - 9/10 8½ - 9/10 La Strada - 8/10 La Dolce Vita - 8/10 8.5

35. Aaron Sorkin

Writer | The West Wing

Aaron Sorkin grew up in Scarsdale, a suburb of New York City where he was very involved in his high school drama and theater club. After graduating from Syracuse University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater, Sorkin intended to pursue a career in acting. It took him only a short time to ...

A Few Good Men - 9/10 The Social Network - 9/10 Charlie Wilson's War - 8/10 Moneyball - 8/10 Steve Jobs - 8/10 Molly's Game - 8/10 8.33

36. Charlie Kaufman

Writer | I'm Thinking of Ending Things

Avid reader Charlie Kaufman wrote plays and made short films as a young student. He moved from Massapequa, New York to West Hartford, Connecticut in 1972 where he attended high school. As a comedic actor, he performed in school plays and, after graduation, he enrolled at Boston University but soon ...

Adaptation. - 9/10 Synecdoche, New York - 9/10 Being John Malkovich - 8/10 Confessions of a Dangerous Mind - 8/10 Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - 8/10 Anomalisa - 6/10 8

37. John Logan

Writer | Skyfall

John Logan was a playwright in Chicago for ten years before writing, on spec, his first screenplay, "Any Given Sunday." He won the 2010 Tony, Drama Desk, Drama League and Outer Critics Circle awards for his play RED, which premiered at the Donmar Warehouse in London and the Golden Theatre on ...

Gladiator - 9/10 The Aviator - 9/10 The Last Samurai - 8/10 Rango - 8/10 Hugo - 8/10 Skyfall - 8/10 Spectre - 8/10 Alien: Covenant - 7/10 8.12

38. William Goldman

Writer | Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid

Screenwriter, novelist, playwright, non-fiction author. Born in Highland Park, Illinois, USA, began his career as a novelist in 1957. Started writing screenplays in 1965 with "Masquerade". A two-time Academy Award Winner, he is one of the most successful screenwriters and script doctors in ...

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid - 9/10 All the President's Men - 8/10 The Princess Bride - 8/10 Misery - 8/10 Chaplin - 8/10 8.2

39. Andrew Niccol

Writer | GATTACA

New Zealand-born screenwriter-director Andrew Niccol began his career in London, successfully directing TV commercials before moving to Los Angeles in order to make films "longer than 60 seconds." He interested high-powered producer Scott Rudin in his The Truman Show (1998) script, but Rudin was not...

The Truman Show - 9/10 Lord of War - 9/10 Gattaca - 8/10 In Time - 7/10 8.25