Paddy Chayefsky

Darabont craves films that draw from genuine lived human experience.

He praises playwrights like Eugene O'Neill and Paddy Chayefsky for putting real life onto the page.

He points to a military drama like Courage Under Fire, starring Denzel Washington, as an example of a film that honors real human trauma and moral ambiguity.

ambiguity.He contrasts those character-driven stories with big, loud, derivative Hollywood blockbusters that are just trying to chase the formula of the last big hit.

Right, right.

And I felt what Paddy Chayefsky captured so well was the moment when network news departments had, were told they had to make a profit.

Mm-hmm.

Because there was a time as, as we remember, when news departments were sacrosanct and they were providing a service that went beyond entertainment.

You may have heard of what I'm talking about.

Paddy Chayefsky, three Academy Awards for screenwriting, the man who wrote Network, published a novel called Altered States in 1978 about a Harvard scientist who combined an isolation tank with a hallucinogen and begins physically regressing through evolutionary history.

The scientist's name is Eddie Jessup.

The scientist is John Lilly, with serial numbers filed off.

The same year, Robinson returned to Broadway for the first time in 26 years.

In Paddy Chayefsky's Middle of the Night, he played a widow garment manufacturer who falls in love with a much younger woman, played by Gena Rowlands.

The production ran for 477 performances, and Robinson received a Tony nomination for Best Actor.

But while Robinson's professional life was beginning to recover, the life he had built at home was coming apart.

Julie Andrews plays Emily Barham, a British military driver who has suffered personal losses due to the war and finds herself drawn to Madison's unconventional outlook on life.

The film's screenplay, adapted by Paddy Chayefsky from William Bradford Huai's novel, is a standout feature.

Chayefsky's script is rich with intellectual debate and biting commentary on the absurdities of war.

The dialogue is sharp and often cynical, exploring themes such as the contrast between American and British perspectives on the war, the exploitation of service and honour, and the preoccupation with optics and finance within military leadership.

Unfortunately, he just passed away, which obviously gave it new life and a lot of people are seeing it now, but a real pleasure to do that.

And then I did one on Paddy Chayefsky, the great screenwriter, the only one who's won three solo Academy Awards.

So this one, uh, on Vincent Price, I've always had a fascination with horror and, um, you know, horror i- in a sense is having its renaissance now, and you kinda wanna know the origin of all that and who the people are who came before, why it's such a popular genre.

But then you find that Vincent Price as a person, as an actor, as a character, wasn't just, you know, contained in the horror genre.

It's about allowing people to see someone in a full-bodied, uh, beyond the screen type of sensibility, and then hopefully they can have a takeaway from it.

Even if one person, maybe two people out there are so inspired that that makes it all worthwhile.

So it's like when I did the Paddy Chayefsky, someone will be writing the next great screenplay, whether it be Alan Pakula, someone will be inspired to make films like he made them.

And with Vincent Price, it's I, I believe the takeaway is have a full life, have a joyful life, have a life away from, you know, movies.

My father, Stephen David Kornbluth, was a great Bronx Jew, like Paddy Chayefsky and Ralph Lauren.

I bet nobody here ever thought that they hear my father lumped in between those two.

Did you? For those still wondering who the hell Paddy Chayefsky is, he won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay for Network.

And I'm mad as hell at all the boomers here that didn't get that reference either.

I always tell my kids, my glorious seedlings, that something in life is either complete crap, medium suck, or great.