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Warren Skaaren (March 9, 1946 – December 28, 1990) was an American screenwriter and film producer. [1]
May 30, 2017 · Austin film historian Alison Macor discovered 64 boxes of Warren’s papers at UT’s Harry Ransom Center. Skaaren, it turns out, kept everything; tapes and transcripts of meetings, letters, a detailed personal journal, and all the drafts of his work.
- (14)
- Hardcover
- Alison Macor
Sep 6, 2019 · Alison Macor’s biography of Warren Skaaren is a remarkable piece of scholarship detailing the inner workings of Hollywood screenwriting in the 1980s, WGA regulations and politics, and the psycholog...
- Tyson Stewart
- 2019
May 31, 2017 · Whether writing love scenes for Tom Cruise on the set of Top Gun, running lines with Michael Keaton on Beetlejuice, or crafting Nietzschean dialogue for Jack Nicholson on Batman, Warren Skaaren collaborated with many of New Hollywood’s most powerful stars, producers, and directors.
- He Sold Hollywood on Texas.
- He Masterminded The Coat and Tie Rebellion at Rice University.
- He Introduced Leatherface to The Mob.
- He Saved Top Gun.
- He Unleashed Beetlejuice.
- He Also Wrote Beetlejuice 2.
- He Could Have Been A Part-Time Mogul.
- He Helped The Joker Go Wild.
- He Fueled Tom Cruise’s Need For Speed.
- He Wrote Romancing The Stone III with Michael Douglas.
Twenty-five-year-old Skaaren, working in the Governor of Texas’s office, drafted a proposal for the state’s film commission. Governor Preston Smith appointed him as the first executive director of the Texas Film Commission in May 1971. Under Skaaren’s four-year tenure, he brought Hollywood films like The Getaway, The Sugarland Express, and Lovin’ M...
As student body president at Rice, Skaaren kept a campus-wide protest from turning ugly when he led students and faculty in a peaceful protest against the hiring of a controversial new university president. Nicknamed the Coat and Tie Rebellion because of its formally attired participants, this protest—and Skaaren’s efforts—resulted in the resignati...
While still head of the Texas Film Commission, Skaaren worked behind the scenes to land a distributor for an independent horror movie called The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. All of the major film companies passed, but a fledgling distributor named Bryanston Pictures showed interest. Run by Louis “Butchie” Peraino and his uncle Joseph, a “made” man in ...
A young Tom Cruise, hot off the success of Risky Business, was ready to bail on a film about hotshot fighter pilots at an elite training academy. Producing partners Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson hired Skaaren over the phone after he wowed them with his treatment, which humanized Cruise’s character, Maverick, and ditched Maverick’s bimbo gymnast...
Twenty-five-year-old Tim Burton was looking for his next picture after the surprise success of Pee-wee’s Big Adventure. Introduced to Skaaren by agent Mike Simpson, who represented them both, Burton flew to Austin, where the two spent a weekend seeing local sights and discussing their mutual interest in the afterlife. Skaaren mined Native American ...
Thrilled by Beetlejuice‘s financial success, producer David Geffen and Tim Burton approached Skaaren about writing a follow-up in the fall of 1989. Ironically, after Skaaren’s untimely death in 1990, Michael McDowell took over the screenplay. The project never got made although drafts of Skaaren’s script for Beetlejuicein Lovereside in his archive ...
Executives at Warner Bros. were so impressed with his unique ability to communicate with the suits as well as creatives like Tim Burton that they offered him a part-time executive position at the studio. He turned it down.
Hired to rewrite Sam Hamm’s screenplay for Batman, Skaaren finally connected with the initially distant star Jack Nicholson (The Joker) when he wrote dialogue inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche, one of Nicholson’s favorite philosophers. Batman’s blockbuster success would catapult Skaaren into an elite group of million-dollar script doctors.
Over a 1988 dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Los Angeles, Tom Cruise asked Skaaren to write the script for a race car movie Cruise was eager to make. Skaaren spent two years on the project, learning how to race at Rockingham Speedway and eventually writing 10 drafts of a screenplay for what would become Days of Thunder.
Douglas hired Skaaren to script the third film in the Romancing the Stone trilogy after the two hit it off at a meeting at Skaaren’s West Austin home. Skaaren traveled to Hong Kong to research the illegal exotic animal trade and scout locations for a screenplay titled Crimson Eagle. Kathleen Turner’s pregnancy delayed the project, and then Douglas’...
Nov 24, 2009 · What do Batman, Top Gun, and Beverly Hills Cop II have in common? All were rewritten by versatile screenwriter and “script doctor” Warren Skaaren.
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Sep 20, 2017 · The life and times of forgotten screenwriter Warren Skaaren double as an education on the convoluted beast that was New Hollywood.
