Screenwriter

PRAGUE — Jiri Krizan was expelled from high school and blocked from attending college, all because the Communists who once ran Czechoslovakia did not like his father’s politics. The Czech screenwriter overcame those obstacles to help Vaclav Havel draft demands for basic human rights, the manifesto that helped bring down the communist regime in 1989, before becoming a trusted presidential adviser when Havel took power. Mr. Krizan, 68, died of a heart attack Wednesday in Branky village, Jan Krystof, of the TOP 09 political party, said Thursday.

NEW YORK - Tonino Guerra, a prolific Italian screenwriter and poet, died Wednesday at his home in Santarcangelo di Romagna, in northern Italy near the Adriatic coast. He was 92. His death was announced on the website of the Tonino Guerra Cultural Association. His roster of film collaborators, including Michelangelo Antonioni, Federico Fellini, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Theo Angelopoulos, amounted to a who's who of European cinema's golden age. In a screenwriting career covering a half-century, Mr. Guerra earned three Academy Award nominations and had a long partnership...

NEW YORK - Kate Phillips, who had mostly supporting roles and bit parts in more than 50 films during the 1930s and '40s, and co-wrote the 1958 cult movie "The Blob," has died in Keene, N.H., her son said. She was 94. Ms. Phillips, who died Friday at Cheshire Medical Center, went by the name of Kay Linaker. She had small parts in a number of popular films, such as "Drums Along the Mohawk," "Blood and Sand," "Laura," and a number of the "Charlie Chan" detective movies. One of her more notable roles was a rich society matron who marries Ginger Rogers' former husband in the 1940...

A federal judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit filed by an Iraq war veteran who claimed "The Hurt Locker" was based on his experiences as a bomb disposal expert. The ruling ended Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver 's case against the producers of the Oscar-winning film, its screenwriter, and director Kathryn Bigelow . Sarver sued over the film days before it went on to win best picture at the Academy Awards in 2010. Sarver claimed screenwriter Mark Boal based the film on him and that he was presented in a false light.

A federal judge yesterday dismissed a lawsuit filed by an Iraq war veteran who claimed "The Hurt Locker" was based on his experiences as a bomb disposal expert. The ruling ended Sergeant Jeffrey Sarver 's case against the producers of the Oscar-winning film, its screenwriter, and director Kathryn Bigelow . Sarver sued over the film days before it went on to win best picture at the Academy Awards in 2010. Sarver claimed screenwriter Mark Boal based the film on him and that he was presented in a false light.

A Turkish drama about an immigrant from Macedonia coping with the death of her mother and her grieving father has clinched the top prize at China’s top international film festival, with leading man Sevket Emrulla also taking home best actor honors. Organizers of the Shanghai International Film Festival announced late Sunday that Orhan Oguz’s “Hayde Bre’’ won the Golden Goblet for best feature film. The jury led by “Rain Man’’ director Barry Levinson said in a statement it was impressed by Oguz’s “stark, honest, unflinching look at a mother dealing with a modern world and...

In 1964, Groucho Marx was asked which of his contemporaries he considered fastest on the draw in terms of "one-line impromptus. " Marx replied, "George S. Kaufman, Oscar Levant, and Irving Brecher. " Irving Brecher? Before his death last year, at 94, screenwriter and professional curmudgeon Brecher was one of Hollywood's best-kept secrets. Which is surprising when you consider that he turned out scripts for the likes of Fred Astaire, Judy Garland, Dick Van Dyke, and Lucille Ball. While even the most devout movie buffs may not know Brecher's name, his contributions to cinema are...

Regards: The Selected Nonfiction of John Gregory Dunne Thunder's Mouth, 403 pp., paperback, $16.95 Imagine walking into a dark-wood hotel bar or a neighborhood saloon and the first thing you hear is this voice -- not loud, but commanding. The guy behind the bar is going on about having worked in the movie business and at a big-name magazine, about living in California, and about the Kennedys and O. J. Simpson and other figures of fame or infamy. He serves up his inside info while dropping names of celebrated neighbors,...

LOS ANGELES -- Bernard Gordon, a screenwriter blacklisted during Hollywood's anti-communist crusade in the 1950s, has died. He was 88. Mr. Gordon died Friday at his Hollywood Hills home after a long battle with cancer, according to his daughter, Ellen Gordon. "He was highly principled, scrupulously honest," his daughter said. "He could argue anybody under the table. " Mr. Gordon wrote dozens of movies but many never carried his name until the Writers Guild of America began restoring credits to blacklisted writers in 1980.

LOS ANGELES -- Leonard Schrader, who earned an Academy Award nomination for his adaptation of "Kiss of the Spider Woman" and co-wrote the critically praised "Mishima," died Nov. 2 of heart failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 62. Mr. Schrader had a number of ailments, including cancer, said his brother, "Taxi Driver" screenwriter Paul Schrader. A resident of Los Angeles, Mr. Schrader was born in Grand Rapids, Mich., to a family of Dutch Calvinists who forbade the brothers to see any movies.

NEW YORK - David Zelag Goodman, a prolific screenwriter who, with Sam Peckinpah, wrote "Straw Dogs" and was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on the romantic comedy "Lovers and Other Strangers," died Monday in Oakland, Calif. He was 81. The cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, a neurological disorder, his wife, Marjorie, said. Mr. Goodman's most memorable work involved converting a Gordon Williams novel, "The Siege of Trencher's Farm," into the psychological thriller "Straw Dogs" (1971)

With "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" breaking box-office records, the most lucrative film saga this side of the James Bond pictures finally concludes. That saga has had one constant throughout - the near-demented fecundity of J.K. Rowling's highly Dickensian imagination - and two near-constants. The first has been the identity of the actors in recurring roles. (Really, it's the beard and hat you notice with Dumbledore, not whether it's Richard Harris or Michael Gambon.)

A Turkish drama about an immigrant from Macedonia coping with the death of her mother and her grieving father has clinched the top prize at China’s top international film festival, with leading man Sevket Emrulla also taking home best actor honors. Organizers of the Shanghai International Film Festival announced late Sunday that Orhan Oguz’s “Hayde Bre’’ won the Golden Goblet for best feature film. The jury led by “Rain Man’’ director Barry Levinson said in a statement it was impressed by Oguz’s “stark, honest, unflinching look at a mother...

PRAGUE — Jiri Krizan was expelled from high school and blocked from attending college, all because the Communists who once ran Czechoslovakia did not like his father’s politics. The Czech screenwriter overcame those obstacles to help Vaclav Havel draft demands for basic human rights, the manifesto that helped bring down the communist regime in 1989, before becoming a trusted presidential adviser when Havel took power. Mr. Krizan, 68, died of a heart attack Wednesday in Branky village, Jan Krystof, of the TOP 09 political party, said...

ROME — Screenwriter Suso Cecchi D’Amico, who emerged from the male-dominated post-war Italian cinema to become a celebrated artist and contribute to such milestones as “Bicycle Thieves’’ and “The Leopard,’’ died yesterday at age 96. Ms. Cecchi D’Amico worked with some of the most renowned Italian directors, including Franco Zeffirelli, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Mario Monicelli, whose movie “Casanova 70’’ earned her...

ROME — Furio Scarpelli, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who co-wrote some of the best Italian comedies of the postwar period and who ventured into the spaghetti-western genre with the “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’’ died Wednesday, his family said. He was 90. Mr. Scarpelli died in his house in Rome shortly after midnight, his son, Matteo Scarpelli, told the Associated Press. He had long suffered heart problems. During a decades-long prolific partnership with Agenore Incrocci, Mr. Scarpelli co-wrote some of Italy’s finest postwar movies, including...

What if this review of PBS's remarkable "Little Dorrit" opens with a comparison to ABC's "Lost"? That's like holding an antique fountain pen next to a computer mouse - or is it? Like "Lost," the new five-part Charles Dickens adaptation is built around an intricate, coincidence-filled backstory and a daisy chain of characters with carefully chosen names (Kate Austen, meet Edmund Sparkler). Across eight rich hours, this new "Masterpiece" miniseries sets forth the pieces of a TV puzzle with a narrative sprawl surprisingly similar to "Lost," whose producers, by the way, are known Dickens aficionados.

ROME — Furio Scarpelli, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter who co-wrote some of the best Italian comedies of the postwar period and who ventured into the spaghetti-western genre with the “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,’’ died Wednesday, his family said. He was 90. Mr. Scarpelli died in his house in Rome shortly after midnight, his son, Matteo Scarpelli, told the Associated Press. He had long suffered heart problems. During a decades-long prolific partnership with Agenore Incrocci, Mr. Scarpelli co-wrote some of Italy’s finest postwar movies, including the...

NEW ORLEANS — David Mills, a veteran television writer who worked on the award- winning series “ER’’ and “The Wire,’’ died after collapsing on the set of his latest production. He was 48. Mr. Mills died Tuesday night in New Orleans, said HBO spokesman Diego Aldana. Doctors at Tulane Medical Center said he suffered a brain aneurysm, according to a statement from Mills’s latest production, “Treme.’’ Mr. Mills was on the set of the new HBO series as it filmed a scene at Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter when he was...

Sitting at a “leftover table’’ at the wedding of his daughter’s best friend, Jack Griffin, the main character in Richard Russo’s new novel, pumps his fist in solidarity with the young people on the dance floor, as they shout the refrain of a Jon Bon Jovi tune: “Oh-oh! We’re halfway there.’’ Worried that his wife, Joy, was right - that he had “too little faith - in the world, in her, in himself, in their good lives’’ - Griffin wonders whether he wants, once again, to be halfway there.