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Revision as of 22:49, 5 January 2007 by BillDeanCarter (talk | contribs) (on Tripoli and Kingdom of Heaven)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)William Monahan (born November 3 1960, Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts) is an American screenwriter. Monahan was born in Dorchester and spent his early years in Roslindale, moving to the suburbs of Boston later on when his parents split.
Monahan attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Afterwards, he moved to New York City and worked as a journalist, essayist, critic, and editor at the now-defunct Spy magazine. In 1997 he became better-known after winning a Pushcart Prize for short fiction. In 2000 he garnered critical acclaim for his first novel Light House: A Trifle.
Monahan originally wanted to be a “man of letters” but found they no longer exist in America, so he decided to concentrate on screenwriting. He broke into Hollywood when Warner Bros. optioned his satirical novel Light House: A Trifle. In 2001, 20th Century Fox bought Monahan's spec script "Tripoli" for mid-six figures to be produced by Mark Gordon. The script was given to Ridley Scott to direct. Monahan was having breakfast with Ridley Scott to discuss "Tripoli" on the day the 9/11 attacks took place of all times and Ridley Scott mentioned how he always wanted to do a knight movie. Monahan suggested the Crusades as a setting because "you've got every conceivable plot imaginable there, which is far more exotic than fiction." Scott was impressed and hired Monahan to write the screenplay for Kingdom of Heaven. Tripoli was shelved but Monahan's screenwriting career had begun.
| "I wanted to be an old-fashioned man of letters, so I essentially prepared myself very carefully through my 20s for a job that doesn't exist anymore; You may be able to find a man of letters in Syria or the Horn of Africa, but you could work Manhattan or London with dogs for a year and never find one. Anthony Burgess is dead, Vidal is the last lion, and at any rate belles-lettres aren't where they were left. Anyway, I'm making movies now. Just before all this happened, I thought, 'Out of everything you can do or think you can do, pick one thing and be it.' What I picked was to be the screenwriter." |
| William Monahan |
Monahan also wrote the script for The Departed, a Martin Scorsese film adaptation of the Chinese crime drama, Infernal Affairs. The Departed takes place in Boston, and Monahan has been praised for capturing the blur of blue-collar speech in Boston and getting the city right for the first time on the big screen.
In 2006 Monahan started a production company on the Warner Bros. lot called Henceforth and inked a first-look producing deal with the studio. Henceforth's first project will be to produce John Pearson's true-crime novel The Gamblers which the WB has acquired the rights to.
William Monahan co-wrote (with John Sayles) the script for Jurassic Park IV, film due out in 2008. He also wrote the adaptation of the Louis Begley novel, Wartime Lies.
William Monahan will be honored for his film writing at the Second Annual "Oscar Wilde: Honoring Irish Writing In Film", held at the Ebell Wilshire in Los Angeles on February 22, 2007. Other honorees include fellow film writer Terry George and famed musican Van Morrison. The event is intiatied by the US-Ireland Alliance, a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC.
He currently resides at his home on the North Shore in Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and two children.
References
- "The art of writing and making films: The Departed". The Writing Studio. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
- Dylan Callaghan (2006-10-13). "A Man of Letters". Writers Guild of America, West. Retrieved 2007-01-01.
- Cathy Dunkley, Jonathan Bing (2001-11-27). "Monahan 'Tripoli' spec lands on Gordon's shore". Retrieved 2007-01-05.
- Garth Franklin (2005-05-04). "Interview: Ridley Scott "Kingdom of Heaven"". Dark Horizons. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
- ^ Sam Allis (2006-12-31). "The Storyteller". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-01-02.
- Michael Fleming (2006-10-05). "'Departed' scribe digs WB: Studio inks overall deal with Monahan". Variety. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
- Sam Allis (2006-10-03). "Standing at the corner of Shakespeare and Scorsese". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2007-01-01.