Films

CURRENT PROJECTS:

  • THE WALL – Writer / Producer.  When a former CIA operative turned reporter is assigned to Berlin to cover Reagan’s famous speech (“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall…”), he finds himself involved with a young German mother whose troubled past harbors a dark secret. Caught up in the events that will ultimately bring down the Wall, he realizes that reporting alone is not enough. To effect change, he must act. Inspired by true events. (Winner 2016 WGA Feature Writer Access competition).
  • POET, PLAYER, LOVER, SPY…A Portrait of Shakespeare as a Young Dog Writer / Producer. This is the story of Shakespeare before he was Shakespeare! A young man with a thirst for life.  From wenching… to dueling… to being sent as an agent of the Crown to the Scottish court of King James… and a love affair with a girl who might one day rule England…  For this is a young man on the make.  A story of action with a comic edge reminiscent of Tony Richardson’s Tom Jones or Richard Lester’s Three & Four Musketeers.  A story of murder, romance and intrigue set in Elizabethan England. 

PRODUCED SCREENPLAYS:

  • A RARE BREED (aka: Carnauba)…….”Written by”…. for New World/Jack Cox Producer
  • MIRACLE LANDING…..”Written by”…. for CBS Entertainment/Norman Powell Producer

SCRIPTS WRITTEN AS “WORK-FOR-HIRE”:

  • WEST OF THE RISING SUN …Written for Interscope Communications (now Radar Pictures)/ Script was developed (8 outlines/5 drafts) under the aegis of Scott Kroopf and Adam Leipzig for director Vincent Ward. Eventually made as THE LAST SAMURAI (Uncredited).
  • THE ORACLE OF MERMAID AVENUE (Written for Martin Ransohoff/Columbia Pictures)
  • OH, SAY CAN YOU SEE…? (Written for Martin Erlichman/MGM)
  • THE EASTER RISING (Written for Dennis Patrick/Pillar Productions/ National Geographic Feature Films).

SPEC SCRIPTS… (Available upon request):

  • A COOL STATE OF BLOOD… (Contemporary Legal Thriller) Fifteen years ago, following a successful prosecution of a rare bodyless murder, an Assistant DA in Philadelphia was confronted by irrefutable evidence proving the innocence of the one he convicted. Unfortunately, that person had already been killed in prison. Having given up the practice of law for teaching, he is now confronted by a similar crime. Volunteering to work for the defense as an act of atonement, he must help a young, untested female public defender uncover the truth. In the process, he solves both the current crime and the one that haunts his past. (Winner 2015 WGA Feature Writer Access competition).
  • DUST [fka: THE LAST WESTERN] (Western) Set in Oklahoma Territory in 1906. A fictional US Marshal attempts to use a new invention — moving pictures — to save a headstrong kid from a hanging judge. A script that once reminded Sam Peckinpah of Ride the High Country. Here are the facts: (1) In 1903 the Thomas Edison Company made the first Western, The Great Train Robbery. Pirated and copied, it forced Edison to send out a small army of lawyers and leg-breakers to protect his copyright. (2) In 1906 in the town of Lawton Oklahoma, a young would-be actor named Lon Chaney was arrested. In the jail’s ledger he lists his occupation as “photographer.” (3) Among those who frequented the Lawton lock-up was Apache Chief Geronimo, then in his seventies but still a colorful hell-raiser. And (4) a few years later, a real life lawman named Bill Tilghman made several motion pictures using real outlaws and real lawmen in an attempt to show the Old West as it really was.
  • THE POSSESSION OF EDGAR POE (Historical Mystery Thriller) Enlisting in the Army under mysterious circumstances, Edgar Allan Poe quickly rose to the rank of Master Sergeant. In 1830 he was accepted into West Point. Yet within a year he was brought before a courts-martial and dismissed (all historical facts). The question lingers: Why? Perhaps it is his involvement in a series of macabre murders that haunt the Point. Or perhaps it is the dark evil that invades his soul… and his obsessive love of Annabel Lee.
  • THE LAST DRUID KING (Revisionist History / Action Adventure / Love Story) The Arthurian legend as a political thriller. Handed down through oral tradition for a 1,000 years before Thomas Mallory turned it into Mort d’Arthur, the real story of Arthur, King of the Britons begins in the 6th Century. The Romans are 100 years gone. The Picts are scrambling over Hadrian’s Wall. The Celts raid from beyond the Irish Sea while the Saxons come screaming down the coast. Standing alone at the edge of the world, the Britons are in chaos. Forget what you think you know. For this is Arthur re-imagined. Indeed, the story as it might have been.
  • THE WHITE RAJAH (Historical Action Adventure) Lawrence of Arabia set in the Far East. This is the story of James Brooke, the First White Rajah of Sarawak, an English adventurer who fought the pirates of the South China Sea. Knighted by Queen Victoria, empowered by the Sultan of Brunei, tried by Parliament for treason, Brooke inspired Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King” and Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim as well as T.E. Lawrence, himself, who, half a century later, would go off to Arabia in search of adventure. The chilling irony is that the descendants of the pirates Brooke fought still prowl the waters of the South China Sea today.
  • BLOODED HORSES (Suspense/Thriller) When a famous mare in foal to a Triple Crown winner disappears, an out-of-work trainer is hired to recover her, no questions asked. But his search brings him into conflict with old money and dark secrets as nothing is what it seems and death lingers in the darkness. In the mold of Chinatown.
  • TIE-BREAKER (Sports/Romantic Comedy) An aging over-the-hill star of the Men’s Tennis Circuit is challenged to a high-stakes showdown at Mandalay Bay in Vegas by the 19 year-old girl who’s just taken the Women’s US Open by storm — winner-take-all.
  • RIDE THE TIGER (Action Thriller) Set in Malaysia. A former diplomat and soldier of fortune goes in search of $2 billion in gold and jewels that was plundered by Japanese General Tomoyuki Yamashita and disappeared at the close of WWII.

ADAPTATION (Writing sample only — available upon request):

  • SHIBUMI (from the novel by Trevanian)

PROJECTS PENDING / TREATMENTS… (Available upon request):

  • LONGBOW – Set in 11th Century England, it is an historical re-imagining of Robin Hood.
  • AMERICAN COUP D’ETAT – The true account of an attempt by certain Wall Street moguls to overthrow the newly elected President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Among the cast of characters are General Douglas MacArthur, his aide-de-camp Major Dwight Eisenhower, J. Edgar Hoover, J.P. Morgan, and Marine Corps General S.D. Butler, the only soldier to be awarded the Medal of Honor twice.
  • WIND RIDERS – The story of the Wright Brothers, their personal turmoil and triumphs in the quest for flight.