Interview:
Alison Macor,
author,
“Rewrite Man:
The Life and Career of
Screenwriter Warren Skaaren"
One of Hollywood’s elite script doctors of the 1980s, the Austin-based Warren Skaaren enjoyed quick success saving Top Gun, Beverly Hills Cop II, Beetlejuice and Batman from possible creative and commercial disaster. In 1990, while writing a sequel to Beetlejuice for director Tim Burton, Skaaren was diagnosed with bone cancer and died months later. Written by the Austin-based author Alison Macor, the new biography “Rewrite Man: The Life and Career of Screenwriter Warren Skaaren” chronicles Skaaren’s rise from the first executive director of the Texas Film Commission in the early 1970s to his behind-the-scenes contributions to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to the script doctor every Hollywood studio wanted to hire in the late 1980s. “Rewrite Man” also employs Skaaren’s conflicts with the Writers Guild of America to reveal the hoops a screenwriter or a script doctor must jump in order to receive a writing credit, which Skaaren was denied for two Tom Cruise films, Top Gun and Days of Thunder. Published by UT Press, “Rewrite Man” represents author Alison Macor’s follow up to 2010’s Chainsaws, Slackers, and Spy Kids: Thirty Years of Filmmaking in Austin, Texas. Holding a PhD in film history from UT, Macor wrote for The Austin Chronicle and the Austin American-Statesman and has taught film courses at UT and Texas State University. “Rewrite Man” is now in bookstores and available online.
Aired: June 15, 2017 Web sites: http://www.alisonmacor.com and https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/alison-macor-rewrite-man |
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