Iranian American screenwriters in Hollywood
Writing a commercially successful screenplay in Hollywood is not an easy task even for native English speakers, yet several Iranian-American screenwriters have enjoyed commercial and/or critical success in Hollywood:
Massy Tadjedin: Born 1978 in Tehran and raised in Orange County, California, Tadjedin studied English Literature at Harvard before starting to write screenplays. Her movie credits include Leo (original screenplay, 2002, directed by Mehdi Noroozian, Iranian-American director), The Jacket (adapted screenplay 2005), Le Voyeur (recently picked up by Columbia Pictures for Will Smith and James Lassiter to produce through their Sony-based Overbrook Entertainment), Last Night (2010, Massy's directorial debut, starring Keira Knightley and Eva Mendes - pictured above). Massy's other current projects: The Case Study (written and produced by Tadjedin) and Lady Gold (a drama with director Mel Gibson, distributed by Icon Entertainment International and Paramount Pictures). Tadjedin is married to Dr. Babak Fardin, an Iranian American ophthalmologist in Orange County. The couple met at Harvard.
Ramin Bahrani: Born 1975 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina to Iranian parents, Bahrani received his BA from Columbia University in New York City. His first feature film, Man Push Cart (2005), premiered at the Venice Film Festival (2005) and screened at the Sundance Film Festival (2006). The film won over 10 international prizes, was released theatrically around the world, and was nominated for three Independent Spirit Awards. Bahrani was named by renowned film critic Roger Ebert as "the director of the decade" for "Chop Shop," Bahrani's second film (2007).
Goodbye Solo (poster shown below), Bahrani's third feature film, premiered as an official selection of the Venice Film Festival (2008) where it won the international film critic's FIPRESCI award for best film, and was called a "masterpiece" by numerous critics including Roger Ebert and A.O. Scott of The New York Times. In 2009, Bahrani received the prestigious 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship and was also selected as a member of jury in prestigious Venice Film Festival. He film studio is Noruz Films.
Cyrus Nowrasteh: Born 1956 in Boulder, Colorado to Iranian parents, and raised in Madison, Wisconsin, Nowrasteh graduated in 1977 from the prestigious School of Cinema at University of Southern California. He began his career in 1986 writing on the CBS television series, The Equalizer, and later wrote the pilot for the USA network show La Femme Nikita (1996). In 2001 Nowrasteh received the Pen USA West Literary Award for writing and directing "The Day Reagan Was Shot," a Showtime presentation starring Richard Dreyfuss. The film's executive producer was Oliver Stone.
Despite association with the liberal Dreyfuss and Stone, Nowrasteh has been accused of rightwing and ultraconservative views for his ABC docudrama "The Path to 9/11," in which he blames the Clinton Administration for many of the events that led to September 11 attacks. Another film by Nowrasteh, "The Stoning of Soraya M." (2008) starring James Caviezel and Iranian American Shohreh Aghdashloo, has been criticized in some liberal circles. The movie was written by Nowrasteh and his wife (pictured below), screenwriter Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, and based on the true story of a woman falsely convicted of adultery in Iran and subsequently stoned to death according to Islamic laws. The Iranian information hub Kodoom.com reported that shortly after the release of the movie, Iran's parliament considered suspending harsh Islamic rules such as stoning and hand cutting. Nevertheless, Nowrasteh has been criticized by some critics for historical inaccuracies and conservative bias in his documentary works.
Khashyar Darvich: Born 1966 in Washington DC to an Iranian father and American mother, Darvich graduated (1991) in English/Creative Writing from Cleveland's Baldwin-Wallace College and moved to Colorado to write as a news reporter in the small Colorado mountain town called Black Hawk. There he founded his film production company, "Wakan Films" and wrote "Black Hawk Waltz: Tales of a Rocky Mountain Town," which was adapted into a documentary and broadcast (1996- 1997) on the History Channel and PBS stations, and won several awards.
In 2000, he founded a nonprofit foundation, "The Wakan Foundation for the Arts," to serve humanitarian causes through film and other forms of arts. When Dalai Lama of Tibet invited 40 of the West's leading, most innovative thinkers to his residence in the Himalayan Mountains of Northern India to discuss the world's problems and offer solutions, Darvich was invited to capture the summit. After several years, Khashayar finished editing 140 hours of video footage that a 18-person, 5-camera film crew captured from the summit in the Himalayas, into an award winning documentary "Dalai Lama Renaissance," (trailer shown below) narrated by Harrison Ford (pictured with Khashayar below). Khashyar lives in Hollywood, California, with his wife Lena and his African Grey parrot "Bodhi."
Farhad Safinia: Born in Tehran, Iran, in 1975, Safinia left Iran during the 1979 revolution with his family to live in Paris, and later London, where he studied Economics but also acted in a number of stage productions for the Cambridge University Amateur Dramatic Club. After graduating, Safinia moved to New York to study film at the New School University and at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. In 2006, Safinia co-wrote, with Mel Gibson, the commercial hit "Apocalypto."
In the summer of 2007 he married actress Laura Regan in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 2009, Safinia was asked to write the screenplay for Sir Ridley Scott's big screen adaptation of Aldous Huxley's 1931 futurist science fiction classic "Brave New World" starring Leonardo DiCaprio.
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