Word: scenarists
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Even Perelman's enthusiasms are vinegary. He had famously collaborated on Monkey Business and Horse Feathers, but when an editor plans to anthologize portions of the film scripts, their scenarist responds, "If illiterates and rock fans (synonymous) can only be led to purchase my work by dangling before them the fact that I once worked for the Marx brothers, then let us find some other publisher." James Agee and Dorothy Parker were friends of Perelman's, but readers would never know it from his keyhole view of the beach house the two shared: "They both exist...
...origins: Nathan Weinstein, soon to be better known as Nathanael West, the author of Miss Lonelyhearts. The two men were close friends, then relatives when Perelman married West's sister Laura. It was not, Herrmann reports, a conventional union. Early on, the Perelmans went to Hollywood, where a fellow scenarist, Dashiell Hammett, once noted, "Last night I ran into Sid . . . and wound up by doing a little pimping for him." Soon afterward, Hammett and Laura had a brief fling. It was, Herrmann speculates, "perhaps her way of punishing Sid for his numerous infidelities...
Bryan Forbes, 59, is something of a ringer among amateurs: he has written several other books, including an autobiography. But he is better known for a nearly 40-year film career as a scenarist (Seance on a Wet Afternoon), actor (The League of Gentlemen) and director (The Wrong Box). Unlike many writers who are savvy about movies, Forbes does not produce sketchy treatments, prepackaged for adaptation; each of his works is carefully and densely detailed...
...plot of Purple Rain, which Scenarist William Blinn (Roots, Fame) and first-time Feature Director Albert Magnoli both deny is specifically biographical, nevertheless hews roughly to the broad outlines of Prince's life. (Prince declines all interviews.) Shot entirely in Minneapolis, where Prince Rogers Nelson was born and grew up, and where he became a regent of the local music scene even before that first album came out in 1978, the movie uses everyone's real name for characters ("We've all called Prince 'The Kid' for a long time," says Band Member Lisa Coleman...
Robin Williams, who seems to have absorbed something of the Russian soul while acquiring a persuasive Russian accent, is excellent. He provides all the sweetness any picture needs. One keeps hoping Mazursky and Co-Scenarist Leon Capetanos will introduce some contrasting flavors. Until Vladimir encounters some afterthought muggers, everyone he meets is unfailingly helpful and kind; he has no difficulty finding jobs, an apartment, friends of both sexes. Yet every fairy tale needs to have a wicked witch; her broomstick is always useful as a lever to pry us upright in our seats and as a goad to keep...