posted March 09, 2009 09:59 AM            

9 March 2009 9:15 AM, PDT

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Tullio Pinelli has died at the age of 100.

The Italian stage and film scribe passed away on 7 March in Rome.

Beginning his career in the 1940s, Pinelli was best known for his collaborations with director Federico Fellini.

Together, they earned recognition for movies like 1953's I Vitelloni, 1954's La Strada, 1960's La Dolce vita and 1963's 8 1/2 - all of which were nominated for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay Academy Awards.

Pinelli was also noted for his work on Pietro Germi's 1951 crime film Four Ways Out, starring Gina Lollobrigida, and Fellini's La voce della luna in 1990.

The star is also widely acknowledged for his contributions to Italian cinema's golden age with Monicelli comedies like 1975's Amici miel and 1981's Il Marchese del Grillo.

posted June 11, 2009 08:53 AM            

11 June 2009 4:59 AM, PDT

Actress Thandie Newton is to step away from the camera to try her hand at writing screenplays.

The Crash star is following in her writer husband Ol Parker's footsteps by putting pen to paper for her first big screen project.

And Newton insists she could be tempted to become a full-time writer - because the work schedule suits her busy lifestyle as a mum of two.

She says of her first movie, "It's a comedy feature film. It's been really nice to do that: be at home, be around the kids. It's just a really nice lifestyle - I've been doing other, smaller jobs to supplement it and so on.

posted August 05, 2009 09:29 PM            

NEW YORK – Budd Schulberg, the son of a studio boss who defined the Hollywood hustle with his novel "What Makes Sammy Run?" and later proved himself a player with his Oscar-winning screenplay for "On the Waterfront," died Wednesday at age 95.

His wife, Betsy Schulberg, said he died of natural causes at his home in Westhampton Beach, on Long Island. She said he was taken to a nearby medical center, where doctors unsuccessfully tried to revive him.

"He was very loved and cherished," she said.

"On the Waterfront," directed by Elia Kazan and filmed in Hoboken, N.J., was released in 1954 to great acclaim and won eight Academy Awards. It included one of cinema's most famous lines, uttered by Marlon Brando as the failed boxer Terry Malloy: "I coulda been a contender."

Schulberg never again approached the success of "On the Waterfront," but he continued to write books, teleplays and screenplays — including the Kazan-directed "A Face in the Crowd" — and scores of articles. Spike Lee was an admirer, dedicating the entertainment satire "Bamboozled" to Schulberg and working with him on a film about boxer Joe Louis.

"What Makes Sammy Run?" was published in 1941 and follows the shameless adventures of Sammy Glick (born Shmelka Glickstein) as he steals, schmoozes and backstabs his way from office boy at a New York newspaper to production chief at a major Hollywood studio.

Unlike Nathaniel West's "The Day of the Locust," which immortalized the desperation of show business outsiders, Schulberg's book was an insider's account. Hollywood was fascinated, and betrayed. Everybody from movie executives to Walter Winchell were convinced they knew the real-life model for Glick. Schulberg later said he based the character on numerous hustlers he had encountered.

"What I had, when I read through my notebook, was not a single person but a pattern of behavior," he later wrote.

The model for countless Hollywood satires to come, Schulberg's novel was adapted for television, Broadway (a flop musical starring Steve Lawrence), but, ironically, has waited decades to be made into a film. A planned DreamWorks production featuring Ben Stiller was "in development" in recent years.

"I have a feeling they're not going to do it," Schulberg told The Associated Press in 2006. "It's still a little tough for them."

Like Glick, Schulberg had working knowledge of the movie business; he was the son of Paramount studio head B.P. Schulberg. And like the "On the Waterfront" hero Malloy, who testifies about corruption on the docks, Schulberg informed on his peers. In 1951, he named names as he acknowledged a Communist past before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

In 2003, Schulberg was voted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame as an "observer," a category established the previous year for journalists and historians. In his later years, he worked on a memoir, drawing upon correspondence with Robert Kennedy, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others.

He was a supporter of Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and was among the last to speak with the Democratic candidate before he was assassinated in Los Angeles.

Schulberg remained active in his 90s, collaborating in 2008 on a stage version of "On the Waterfront" presented at the famous Fringe arts festival in Edinburgh, Scotland. He told The New York Times that he always felt Brando's character should realistically have been killed in the end for testifying against organized crime. But the director of the festival play stuck with a happy ending, just as Kazan had done a half-century earlier, Schulberg said.

Schulberg's prose was scrappy and streetwise, but the streets of his childhood were well paved. Born in New York City, he grew up in Hollywood and remembered riding in a fancy Lincoln town car, complete with gold wicker and carriage lights.

"I hated that car so much that when I had to be driven to school in it I would lie on the floor and crawl out a block away so my school mates wouldn't see my shame," he recalled years later.

He went East to be educated at Deerfield Academy and Dartmouth but returned to Hollywood to work in movies, describing himself as an underworked $25-a-week "reader, junior writer and utility outfielder."

"I passed the time writing short stories," he said, and his first six efforts, including a tale titled "What Makes Sammy Run," were bought by leading national magazines.

He then isolated himself in Vermont and expanded the story into a novel. Despite a modest first printing, the book was a huge success and was widely praised.

"A biting but nonvicious appraisal of Hollywood," wrote the New York World-Telegram. Dorothy Parker and Damon Runyon were also admirers.

But, inevitably, Schulberg made enemies. Samuel Goldwyn fired him, and Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM, said Schulberg should be "deported." John Wayne feuded with him for decades.

Some Jews were concerned that Glick would reinforce negative stereotypes. But Schulberg responded that many of Glick's victims were Jewish and noted a supportive quote from Parker: "Those who hail us Jews as brothers must allow us to have our villains, the same, alas, as any other race."

In later years, Schulberg was dismayed when young people cited Glick as a role model.

"I grew up hating him," he said. "Now I'm being made to feel as if I'd written a how-to book: 'How to Succeed in Business While Really Trying.'"

During World War II, Schulberg spent 3 1/2 years in Washington and Europe on duty with the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the CIA. All the while, he wrote short stories.

In 1947, he published "The Harder They Fall," a fictionalized expose of boxing, a sport he remained close to all his life; he wrote newspaper columns on it in later years. The 1955 screen version of "The Harder They Fall," which Schulberg also wrote, was Humphrey Bogart's last movie.

___

posted August 06, 2009 04:09 PM            

6 August 2009 2:07 PM, PDT | From IMDb News

John Hughes, the director of the 80s "brat pack" films Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club, as well as the writer-producer of blockbuster hit Home Alone, died suddenly of a heart attack in Manhattan on Thursday; he was 59.

Very few details were known at the initial announcement, as both Variety and TMZ reported that the director was on vacation in Manhattan and suffered the heart attack while on a morning walk.

posted September 11, 2009 03:53 PM            

Larry Gelbart, the comedy writer who developed the TV series "M*A*S*H" and co-wrote the film "Tootsie," died Friday morning at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 81.

Gelbart was diagnosed with cancer in June, his wife told the Los Angeles Times.

He co-wrote the book "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" with Burt Shevelove and watched the work go on to become a Broadway smash in 1962 with aid from Stephen Sondheim's musical score. The play ran on Broadway for over two years and won a Tony Award for best musical.

When the play moved to London, Gelbart and his family followed and lived in the city for nine years. During that time, he wrote the 1966 comedy film "The Wrong Box" and a number of westerns for Clint Eastwood.

He travelled back to Los Angeles to write the iconic 1970s series "M*A*S*H," which he wrote 97 episodes for during its 11-year run.

Set in an Army hospital during the Korean War, "M*A*S*H" was extremely popular and won an Emmy for outstanding comedy series in 1974.

"Larry not only had the wit and the jokes," the show's producer and director Gene Reynolds told the New York Times in 1989, "he had a point of view. He not only had the ribald spirit, he had the sensibility to the premise -- the wastefulness of war."

Gelbart also received an Oscar nomination for his 1977 screenplay for "Oh, God!," a film starring George Burns and John Denver.

Another Academy nod for his screenwriting came for "Tootsie," the 1982 comedy in which Dustin Hoffman dresses as a woman to get a job and becomes a star.

Born Feb. 25, 1928, in Chicago, Gelbart's career began when he was only a 16-year-old student at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. His father, a Beverly Hills barber, often told his clients -- including comedian Danny Thomas -- how funny his son was. As a result, Gelbart was soon writing for "Duffy's Tavern" and radio shows starring the likes of Bob Hope and Jack Paar.

Soon after, Gelbart served in the Army with the Armed Forces Radio Service for just over a year. He wrote for the Army's "Command Performance" but still continued to write bits for Joan Davis and Paar.

In 1950, he began working in television with Hope and joined Mel Brooks and Neil Simon on the writing staff of "Caesar's Hour" five years later. While working on the show, he shared three Emmy nominations for comedy writing in 1956, '57 and '58.

In 1976-78, he wrote another Broadway comedy based on Ben Jonson's "Volpone" called "Sly Fox." He also penned the book for the 1989-92 Broadway comedy musical "City of Angels," for which he won a Tony.

He continued writing until three weeks ago, his wife told the LA Times.