Born in Detroit in 1941. Studied English Literature at the University of Michigan and earned a PhD in Performing Arts. Was a resident artist at the British National Theatre and an actor and director in Broadway plays. In 1979, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began writing scripts and working for United Artists and NBC as a script reviewer. In 1983, with a Fulbright scholarship, he started a seminar on scriptwriting at the University of Southern California, the starting point of a teaching career that would take him around the world: from Geoffrey Rush to David Bowie, including William Goldman, Julia Roberts, Kirk Douglas, and Jane Campion, a large number of personalities have attended his seminars. He continues to be a consultant for major film and television producers such as 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, and MTV, and even for companies like Microsoft and organizations like NASA. In 1999 his book The Screenplay. Story (1997), a worldwide success published in this same collection, won the Kraszna-Krausz Foundation Award for Best Book on Moving Images in the United Kingdom. He is also the author of The Dialogue (2016) and The Character (2022), both published in this collection. A popular icon, he has been featured in the film The Orchid Thief (2002) and in an episode of The Simpsons.
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