Tom Benedek: Hollywood Artist and Screenwriter

Tom Benedek

Tom Benedek was still wet behind the ears when he arrived in Hollywood with his first script in the suitcase, hailing from Great Neck, Long Island. It was 1974. Having just arrived, he had his driver’s license renewed at the DMV, when he saw Jack Nicholson standing in the line in front of him. For Benedek, who doesn’t believe in coincidences, it was like a personal welcome. And it really was: in the Eighties and Nineties, he would move on to become one of the most successful screenwriters in Hollywood.

However, his success did not come over night: Benedek started out with acting classes, worked odd jobs in order to support himself and wrote one screen play after another, without knowing if he would ever sell anything. Then, he wrote the script that opened doors for him. It was a thriller about a Russian spy–after all, it was still the times of the Iron Curtain. Benedek received a call from Laurence Kasdan, who had just started being really successful with the fifth Star Wars installment The Empire Strikes Back. Kasdan said, he loved Benedek’s script and wanted to produce it. Kasdan’s friend Robert Zemeckis, later known for films such as Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, and Cast Away, was supposed to be the director. However, his hopes got damped: none one the studios wanted to finance the project.

Benedek kept on writing. Six months later, Zemeckis was looking for an author for a film he was supposed to be directing: the studio had been presented a novel that was supposed to be re-written into a script. The title: Cocoon. It was Benedek’s breakthrough in Hollywood.

Tom Benedek: I'm Free

What is it that makes a ‘big player’ big in Hollywood? “Being attitude-free,” says Benedek. He must know this; after all, he worked with directors such as Martin Scorcese, Sidney Pollack and Ron Howard. What counts in film business is the ability to conjure magic onto screen, to make films that have meaning for people. And then there are those who have the perfect sense for business, and the power to make scripts into reality; people who have a measure of heart and ingenuity.

Benedek keeps on learning, always staying open for new challenges: he took a course and learned how to write a novel–and his first novel is just about to be published. Besides this, he is co-writing a script with Joe Swanberg, a writer from Chicago.
And he has developed his very own art form: he burns, buries and shoots old screenplays, and photographs them in their new shape. He vehemently negates the question if this happens out of a certain frustration.

He is in love with the written word, he says, playing innocently with the pages through fire, water and earth in order to explore and invent new measures of expressions.

There is no doubt that Benedek is wise enough to know that love needs innovation.

Tom Benedek: Plot Holes Number 21