Bo Goldman, the Academy Award-winning screenwriter, who co-wrote ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ (1975) and ‘Melvin and Howard’ (1980), died in Helendale, California. He was 90.
Director Todd Field, his son-in-law, confirmed the death, but did not give a cause, reports ‘Deadline’.
Goldman’s career took off when director Milos Forman read his first screenplay and invited him to adapt Ken Kesey’s ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ novel for film.
The resulting script shared screenwriting credit with Lawrence Hauben and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Adapted from Other Material. The film was also named Best Picture, and earned Oscars for Forman, lead actor Jack Nicholson, and Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched.
As per ‘Deadline’, in 1980, ‘Melvin and Howard’ won Goldman his second Oscar, this time for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Goldman later worked with director Martin Brest on two other acclaimed films, ‘Scent of a Woman’ (1992) and ‘Meet Joe Black...
Director Todd Field, his son-in-law, confirmed the death, but did not give a cause, reports ‘Deadline’.
Goldman’s career took off when director Milos Forman read his first screenplay and invited him to adapt Ken Kesey’s ‘Cuckoo’s Nest’ novel for film.
The resulting script shared screenwriting credit with Lawrence Hauben and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Adapted from Other Material. The film was also named Best Picture, and earned Oscars for Forman, lead actor Jack Nicholson, and Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched.
As per ‘Deadline’, in 1980, ‘Melvin and Howard’ won Goldman his second Oscar, this time for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen. Goldman later worked with director Martin Brest on two other acclaimed films, ‘Scent of a Woman’ (1992) and ‘Meet Joe Black...
- 7/27/2023
- by Agency News Desk
- GlamSham
Bo Goldman, an Academy Award-winning screenwriter for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975) and Melvin and Howard (1980), died Tuesday in Helendale, CA. He was 90.
Director Todd Field, his son-in-law, confirmed the death, but did not give a cause.
Goldman’s career took off when director Milos Forman read his first screenplay and invited him to adapt Ken Kesey’s “Cuckoo’s Nest” novel for film.
The resulting script shared screenwriting credit with Lawrence Hauben and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Adapted from Other Material. The film was also named Best Picture, and earned Oscars for Forman, lead actor Jack Nicholson, and Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched.
In 1980, Melvin and Howard won Goldman his second Oscar, this time for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
Goldman later worked with director Martin Brest on two other acclaimed films, Scent of a Woman (1992) and Meet Joe Black (1998).
Born in New York City,...
Director Todd Field, his son-in-law, confirmed the death, but did not give a cause.
Goldman’s career took off when director Milos Forman read his first screenplay and invited him to adapt Ken Kesey’s “Cuckoo’s Nest” novel for film.
The resulting script shared screenwriting credit with Lawrence Hauben and won the Oscar for Best Screenplay Adapted from Other Material. The film was also named Best Picture, and earned Oscars for Forman, lead actor Jack Nicholson, and Louise Fletcher, who played Nurse Ratched.
In 1980, Melvin and Howard won Goldman his second Oscar, this time for Best Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen.
Goldman later worked with director Martin Brest on two other acclaimed films, Scent of a Woman (1992) and Meet Joe Black (1998).
Born in New York City,...
- 7/27/2023
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Troy, a tale of heroism and ignominious defeat, unfolds on a grand scale with an armada of 1,000 ships, vast armies, huge egos and volcanic passions. At least that's the movie's design. As executed by director Wolfgang Petersen, who should have the right background for films about war and men under stress, Troy is a protracted and uninvolving affair in which men battle over issues that audiences may struggle to find compelling, and no central figure emerges to take command of the film.
Clearly, Warner Bros. backed this expensive movie -- reportedly as costly as $175 million -- in the hope of throwing a Gladiator-like toga party at the boxoffice. Casting blond and newly buffed Brad Pitt as sullen Greek hero Achilles certainly boosts its chances worldwide, but the battles tend to look like those body pileups in rugby matches, and the drama remains stubbornly unfocused and remote. Warners may also have a tough job selling male audiences conditioned by video-game combat on a movie where soldiers beat on one another with primitive Bronze Age weapons.
Troy is "inspired" by The Iliad, Homer's epic poem about the Greek siege of Troy. The filmmakers chose that word carefully. Not only does much of their story derive from ancient literary sources other than Homer and the script often take extreme liberties with Greek mythology, but Petersen and writer David Benioff jettison Zeus and the whole Olympian cosmos. Yes, this version of The Iliad is godless.
Admittedly, it's virtually impossible to simulate onscreen the wildly dysfunctional family of self-centered immortals that compose Greek polytheism. But to remove the gods from what is, after all, a Greek myth is to gut your story. By playing down the divine, you lose the story's sense of fate, destiny and tragedy.
These people believe in their gods. When a hero fights "like a god," many genuinely wonder if he might not be born of a god and therefore undefeatable. And a leader who heeds seers and omens looks foolish rather than wise, as he does in Homer. This is a key element of the ancients' psychology, and it turns up missing here.
Instead, you have Hollywood god Pitt preening before the camera as long-haired Achilles, who fights for no one but himself and the future glory of his name. His opposite number and defender of Troy is Eric Bana's Hector -- here, as in Homer, the tale's most sympathetic figure. But the film domesticates him too much. While there is nothing wrong with viewing Hector as a man of family and honor, he spends too much time indoors. Bana is not a particularly athletic actor, so his fighting looks staged. Nor does the script ever allow him to flush with anger or take charge of his own destiny.
The legendary war circa 1200 B.C. ignites, of course, when Paris (a much too pretty Orlando Bloom), Prince of Troy and Hector's younger brother, steals away Helen (Diane Kruger), the much younger wife of Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), the brutish King of Sparta. Menelaus' wily brother, Agamemnon (Brian Cox), King of the Mycenaeans, unites the tribes of Greece to attack Troy not so much to expunge family dishonor as to bring into his empire the previously unsacked citadel that is Troy. Inside that walled city, aging King Priam (Peter O'Toole) counts on its massive walls, his son Hector and the god Apollo -- oops, never mind about Apollo -- to protect his people.
Petersen's big sequences -- the CG armada, the massive battles between surging armies and the trickery of the Trojan horse (borrowed from The Aeneid) -- are impressive in long shots but lack power and terror in their details. When the screen clears for individual matchups, things improve, but this kind of hand-to-hand combat is heavy going and brutal rather than nimble and exciting.
The film's more intimate scenes between generals in conflict or families in peril bog down with strained, even corny dialogue and static action. When Paris slips into Helen's bedroom as her husband revels downstairs and she pouts, Last night was a mistake, the film veers off course into bedroom comedy. When Agamemnon and Menelaus rage against their generals or the world, you sense their thuggery but never their cunning.
The actors give robust performances, but Benioff's characters lack complexity. A few, such as Sean Bean's Odysseus and O'Toole's magisterial king, manage to suggest people with balance in their lives and a tinge of self-doubt. The rest, like today's politicos, stay stridently "on message," never deviating from their elemental selves and without much growth or inner conflict.
Pitt's Achilles is almost amusingly self-involved. He is mentally writing the Legend of Achilles even as he performs heroic deeds. Indeed, he confronts Hector on the first day while storming the beach but fails to engage him in battle. It's too early to kill princes, he haughtily declares.
There is a good scene between O'Toole and Pitt late in the movie, and the look on O'Toole's face as he watches his city burn is simply fine acting. But mostly the film lacks memorable scenes or even memorable moments.
Nigel Phelps' art design is all over the place. While no one knows what Troy looked like, the archeology here is Old Hollywood. Troy is vaguely pre-Islam Middle Eastern, with exteriors reminiscent of D.W. Griffith's Babylon sequence in Intolerance and interiors Cecil B. DeMille would have loved. The fire-lit banquet hall in Sparta looks medieval, but the costumes read Roman.
James Horner's music has the requisite sweep and majesty for an epic, and Roger Pratt's cinematography, while relying too much on helicopter shots, helps bring the ancient world to life.
TROY
Warner Bros. Pictures
A Radiant production in association with Plan B
Credits:
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Screenwriter: David Benioff
Inspired by The Iliad by: Homer
Producers: Wolfgang Petersen, Diana Rathbun, Colin Wilson
Director of photography: Roger Pratt
Production designer: Nigel Phelps
Music: James Horner
Co-producer: Winston Azzopardi
Costume designer: Bob Ringwood
Editor: Peter Honess
Cast:
Achilles: Brad Pitt
Hector: Eric Bana
Paris: Orlando Bloom
Helen: Diane Kruger
Agamemnon: Brian Cox
Odysseus: Sean Bean
Menelaus: Brendan Gleeson
Priam: Peter O'Toole
Briseis: Rose Byrne
Andromache: Saffron Burrows
Thetis: Julie Christie
Running time -- 163 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
Clearly, Warner Bros. backed this expensive movie -- reportedly as costly as $175 million -- in the hope of throwing a Gladiator-like toga party at the boxoffice. Casting blond and newly buffed Brad Pitt as sullen Greek hero Achilles certainly boosts its chances worldwide, but the battles tend to look like those body pileups in rugby matches, and the drama remains stubbornly unfocused and remote. Warners may also have a tough job selling male audiences conditioned by video-game combat on a movie where soldiers beat on one another with primitive Bronze Age weapons.
Troy is "inspired" by The Iliad, Homer's epic poem about the Greek siege of Troy. The filmmakers chose that word carefully. Not only does much of their story derive from ancient literary sources other than Homer and the script often take extreme liberties with Greek mythology, but Petersen and writer David Benioff jettison Zeus and the whole Olympian cosmos. Yes, this version of The Iliad is godless.
Admittedly, it's virtually impossible to simulate onscreen the wildly dysfunctional family of self-centered immortals that compose Greek polytheism. But to remove the gods from what is, after all, a Greek myth is to gut your story. By playing down the divine, you lose the story's sense of fate, destiny and tragedy.
These people believe in their gods. When a hero fights "like a god," many genuinely wonder if he might not be born of a god and therefore undefeatable. And a leader who heeds seers and omens looks foolish rather than wise, as he does in Homer. This is a key element of the ancients' psychology, and it turns up missing here.
Instead, you have Hollywood god Pitt preening before the camera as long-haired Achilles, who fights for no one but himself and the future glory of his name. His opposite number and defender of Troy is Eric Bana's Hector -- here, as in Homer, the tale's most sympathetic figure. But the film domesticates him too much. While there is nothing wrong with viewing Hector as a man of family and honor, he spends too much time indoors. Bana is not a particularly athletic actor, so his fighting looks staged. Nor does the script ever allow him to flush with anger or take charge of his own destiny.
The legendary war circa 1200 B.C. ignites, of course, when Paris (a much too pretty Orlando Bloom), Prince of Troy and Hector's younger brother, steals away Helen (Diane Kruger), the much younger wife of Menelaus (Brendan Gleeson), the brutish King of Sparta. Menelaus' wily brother, Agamemnon (Brian Cox), King of the Mycenaeans, unites the tribes of Greece to attack Troy not so much to expunge family dishonor as to bring into his empire the previously unsacked citadel that is Troy. Inside that walled city, aging King Priam (Peter O'Toole) counts on its massive walls, his son Hector and the god Apollo -- oops, never mind about Apollo -- to protect his people.
Petersen's big sequences -- the CG armada, the massive battles between surging armies and the trickery of the Trojan horse (borrowed from The Aeneid) -- are impressive in long shots but lack power and terror in their details. When the screen clears for individual matchups, things improve, but this kind of hand-to-hand combat is heavy going and brutal rather than nimble and exciting.
The film's more intimate scenes between generals in conflict or families in peril bog down with strained, even corny dialogue and static action. When Paris slips into Helen's bedroom as her husband revels downstairs and she pouts, Last night was a mistake, the film veers off course into bedroom comedy. When Agamemnon and Menelaus rage against their generals or the world, you sense their thuggery but never their cunning.
The actors give robust performances, but Benioff's characters lack complexity. A few, such as Sean Bean's Odysseus and O'Toole's magisterial king, manage to suggest people with balance in their lives and a tinge of self-doubt. The rest, like today's politicos, stay stridently "on message," never deviating from their elemental selves and without much growth or inner conflict.
Pitt's Achilles is almost amusingly self-involved. He is mentally writing the Legend of Achilles even as he performs heroic deeds. Indeed, he confronts Hector on the first day while storming the beach but fails to engage him in battle. It's too early to kill princes, he haughtily declares.
There is a good scene between O'Toole and Pitt late in the movie, and the look on O'Toole's face as he watches his city burn is simply fine acting. But mostly the film lacks memorable scenes or even memorable moments.
Nigel Phelps' art design is all over the place. While no one knows what Troy looked like, the archeology here is Old Hollywood. Troy is vaguely pre-Islam Middle Eastern, with exteriors reminiscent of D.W. Griffith's Babylon sequence in Intolerance and interiors Cecil B. DeMille would have loved. The fire-lit banquet hall in Sparta looks medieval, but the costumes read Roman.
James Horner's music has the requisite sweep and majesty for an epic, and Roger Pratt's cinematography, while relying too much on helicopter shots, helps bring the ancient world to life.
TROY
Warner Bros. Pictures
A Radiant production in association with Plan B
Credits:
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Screenwriter: David Benioff
Inspired by The Iliad by: Homer
Producers: Wolfgang Petersen, Diana Rathbun, Colin Wilson
Director of photography: Roger Pratt
Production designer: Nigel Phelps
Music: James Horner
Co-producer: Winston Azzopardi
Costume designer: Bob Ringwood
Editor: Peter Honess
Cast:
Achilles: Brad Pitt
Hector: Eric Bana
Paris: Orlando Bloom
Helen: Diane Kruger
Agamemnon: Brian Cox
Odysseus: Sean Bean
Menelaus: Brendan Gleeson
Priam: Peter O'Toole
Briseis: Rose Byrne
Andromache: Saffron Burrows
Thetis: Julie Christie
Running time -- 163 minutes
MPAA rating: R...
- 6/11/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Mark Protosevich has been hired to write The Poseidon Adventure, the remake that Wolfgang Petersen's Radiant Pictures and reality TV impresario Mike Fleiss are producing for Warner Bros. Pictures. The original movie, released in 1972 by 20th Century Fox, told the story of a ragtag group of survivors trapped on a passenger ship after it is capsized by a monster wave. Produced by Irwin Allen, it was part of a cycle of big-budget disaster movies that proved popular in the 1970s. It was followed by the 1979 sequel Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, which was released by Warner Bros. The new movie, which is being eyed as a big-budget tentpole, would be set in the present day and follow a new set of characters as they brave fires, explosions and flooding corridors in their attempt to survive after a tidal wave flips the S.S. Poseidon. Radiant's Diana Rathbun also is producing, and the company's Samuel Dickerman is executive producing. Chris Briggs is co-producing. Protosevich is no stranger to writing on large canvases. He is the screenwriter of A Princess of Mars, which Paramount Pictures has developed for Robert Rodriguez to direct, and he wrote New Line Cinema's The Cell. He also scripted Warners' I Am Legend and Paramount's Stranger in a Strange Land. Protosevich is repped by CAA.
- 4/28/2004
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
German-born, Paris-based actress Diane Kruger has been tapped to play Helen of Troy in Warner Bros. Pictures/Village Roadshow Pictures' Troy for director Wolfgang Petersen. The project, a sweeping epic based on Homer's Illiad, will be filmed in England, Malta and Los Cabos, Mexico. Principal photography is scheduled to begin April 22 in England. Written by David Benioff, Troy stars Brad Pitt, Eric Bana, Orlando Bloom, Julie Christie, Peter O'Toole and Garrett Hedlund. Petersen, Diana Rathbun and Colin Wilson are producing. "Diane is not only a stunning beauty but a gifted actress with tremendous emotional depth and presence," Petersen said. "The role of Helen is charged with the grandeur of history and legend. I am confident that Diane has the charisma and artistry that this compelling character demands." Kruger, repped by CAA and Independent Artists Network, began her career as a ballet dancer and model before making her acting debut in last year's indie feature The Piano Player opposite Dennis Hopper and Christopher Lambert. Her French film credits include Mon Idole and the upcoming Michel Vaillant. She recently wrapped shooting opposite Josh Hartnett the untitled MGM/Lakeshore Entertainment production formerly titled Wicker Park.
- 4/11/2003
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
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