#Ken Kramer

[x-files-polls]

Dorothy Bahnsen: Literally gave the x-files their name but okay

Dr. Alexander Ivanov: Gotta admire a man with little robots

Don't like this propaganda? Reblog it with your own or send some in my askbox

To jog your memory, here are the episodes they're from:

Travelers: In 1990, a bizarre murder leads young agent Fox Mulder to question a former FBI Agent who investigated one of the first X-Files dating back to the 1950s – a case which may have involved Mulder's father.

War of the Coprophages: A small town is plagued by deaths in which the bodies are found covered in cockroaches. Working from home, Scully has scientific explanations for all of them but Mulder—at the crime scene with an attractive bug expert—suspects the insects may not be organic, or earthly.

[qtrayz]

My Loyal Customer

FIRST NAME Ken

LAST NAME Kramer

OCCUPATION uber driver

PHYSICAL APPEARANCE reddish brown hair, no longer than his shoulder blades; hair half up half down more often than not; 5’6; hazel almost green eyes, silver band ring on his right ring finger that match his plain silver coloured earrings

PERSONALITY DESCRIPTION most people would consider him an overall calm, quiet, collected, and well mannered dude, which he really is! He’s just… possessive, over things that are his due to some past experiences. But that’s fine, right?

LIKES sour candy; action comics; computer cafes; his personal car; road trips(especially long ones); big dogs; work; country music; holidays that involve dancing and drinking; at above all else, you<3

YANDERE TYPE possessive; overprotective; and manipulative

˚₊· ͟͟͞➳❥

How could someone ever understand him so much? Are you an angel? How could he not fall for you when you’re his most loyal and kindest customer he’s ever had? Girlfriend? Who cares?! You deserve better, and he’s definitely better then that bossy thing, right? Plus! All you need is him! He who listens to you rant, listens to you sing, laugh, cry. He’s there for you. Isn’t that all that matters?

[carouselshotgun]

20 YEARS OF SAW!

never before seen SAW (2004) behind the scenes photos; shared by james wan in his newest instagram video

[shittysawtraps]

(Barbie voice) Hello Ken. You have gotten me gift after gift, and devoted your attention to me and me exclusively. But when have you given time to care about yourself? Your obsession with me prevents you from appreciating the life you have been given. Now you must make a choice. Burn all of these photos of me, and of us together. Set fire to the one thing you need to truly be free. Failure to finish this task in fifteen minutes will result in the room being flooded with paint cleaner. You and I both know as dolls how... dangerous that can be. Live or die. Make your choice.

[hofftrans]

ok actually building more on the idea of jigsaw apprentice grocery shopping trips and the various reasons they all suck at it (John doesn't go out bc he's too ill and also way too recognisable)

Amanda - It's not really Amanda's fault that she sucks at getting the groceries, she struggles with chronic nausea as a side effect of her sobriety so she ends up buying lots of small, bland snack foods and forgets to get actual ingredients for big meals. She does eventually start buying more fruit to make smoothies for John as his cancer gets worse and she flips her shit when she catches hoffman stealing it for himself later

Lawrence - Lawrence should be the best at getting the groceries but he forgets that basically only hoffman and himself can cook (and hoffman sticks to simple staple meals.) He buys a lot of fancy preserved foods and fresh ingredients assuming the other apprentices will cook with them only to find Adam eating feta out of the jar with a fork.

Mark - Hoffman is usually the one to actually get the groceries as he does buy a decent amount of food and he's an okay cook (he used to have regular family dinners with angelina where he'd cook her comfort foods.) He cooks a lot of pasta bakes and roasts, tends to stick to stodgy, hearty meals. The rest of the stuff he buys is usually microwave ready meals and those big chunky meat soup cans for big boys. One year Amanda buys him one of those super cheap kiss the cook aprons as a joke and he now unironically wears it every time he cooks.

Adam - They let Adam buy the groceries one single time and he ended up bringing home seven bags of frozen potato gems, four litres of mountain dew and a pack of darts. John doesn't talk to him for two weeks.

[bebx]

oh so it’s happening again. let’s goooo

[movies-to-add-to-your-tbw]

Title: Next Avengers: Heroes of Tomorrow

Rating: PG

Director: Jay Oliva

Cast: Noah Crawford, Brenna O'Brien, Fred Tatasciore, Nicole Oliver, Michael Adamthwaite, Aidan Drummond, Adrian Petriw, Tom Kane, Dempsey Pappion, Shawn Macdonald, Ken Kramer

Release year: 2008

Genres: science fiction, adventure, action

Blurb: The children of the Avengers hone their powers and go head-to-head with the very enemy responsible for their parents' demise.

[insanepoll]

WELCOME TO THE INSANE CHARACTER TOURNAMENT

Here's where your favourite insane characters will battle to the death for the first spot! More below the "keep reading" line.

Pre-match rounds start April 12th at 1PM (EDT)! Each round will have 24h to vote. For propaganda, you can go ahead and submit it in the askbox or through normal submissions. If you want to post your own propaganda, be sure to tag me so I can reblog it! I hope to see y'all there!!!

Round 1-A matches:

Alex Kralie (Marble Hornets) VS The Antagonist (Hatred (2015))

Drusilla (Buffy the Vampire Slayer) VS Hisoka (Hunter x Hunter)

Tokishige Usami (Golden Kamuy) VS Enerjak (Sonic the Hedgehog)

Harry Du Bois (Disco Elysium) VS Evan (EverymanHYBRID)

Azula (ATLA) VS Knock Knock (Phantom Spirits (2002))

Eric Cartman (South Park) VS Wade Wilson / Deadpool (Marvel)

Orochimaru (Naruto) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH I

Sasuke Uchiha (Naruto Shippuden) VS Delirium (Sandman)

Castiel (Supernatural) VS Simon Keyes (Ace Attorney Investigations 2)

Opal Koboi (Artemis Fowl) VS Bibble (Barbie Fairytopia)

Hamlet (The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark) VS The Observer (TribeTwelve)

Misty Quigley (Yellowjackets) VS Lestat de Lioncourt (Interview with the Vampire)

Will Graham (NBC Hannibal) VS Shou Tucker (FMA)

Ophelia (The Tragical History of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark) VS Starscream (Transformers)

Bill Cipher (Gravity Falls) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH II

The Narrator (Fight Club) VS Gamzee Makara (Homestuck)

Round 1-B matches:

Dabi (My Hero Academia) VS Shinobu Sensui (Yu Yu Hakusho)

The entire cast of Blaseball (Blaseball) VS Trexel Geistman (Stellar Firma)

Seo Moon-jo (Strangers from Hell) VS Sammy Lawrence (Bendy and the Ink Machine)

Sebastian Morgenstern (The Shadowhunter Chronicles) VS GIR (Invader Zim)

Aerion Targaryen (A Song of Ice and Fire) VS Lucille Bluth (Arrested Development)

Dottore (Genshin Impact) VS Helena (Orphan Black)

GLaDOS (Portal (Game Series)) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH III

Dr. Franken Stein (Soul Eater) VS Tyrian Callows (RWBY)

Samarie (Fear and Hunger 2: Termina) VS Mahito (Jujutsu Kaisen)

Cersei Lannister (A Song of Ice and Fire) VS Lee Dongsik (Beyond Evil)

Anakin Skywalker / Darth Vader (Star Wars) VS Rebecca Bunch (Crazy Ex-girlfriend)

John Kramer (Saw) VS The Mad Hatter (Alice in Wonderland)

Light Yagami (Death Note) VS Komaeda Nagito (Danganronpa 2)

The Master (Doctor Who) VS Simon Laurent (Infinity Train)

Gollum (Lord of the Rings) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH IV

Roman Roy (Succession) VS Jack (The Shining)

Round 1-C matches:

Jinx (Arcane) VS Niki Sanders / Jessica Sanders (Heroes)

Micolash, Host of the Nightmare (Bloodborne) VS Professor Henry Hidgens (Hatchetfield)

Victor Frankenstein (Frankenstein) VS Cicero (Skyrim)

Renfield (Dracula) VS Dr. Gregory House (House MD)

Tim Drake (DC) VS Ultra Violet (Lego Ninjago)

Donatello Hamato (ROTTMNT) VS Spamton G. Spamton (Deltarune)

The Ice King (Adventure Time) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH V

Villanelle (Killing Eve) VS Kira Yoshikage (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure)

Max (Sam and Max) VS Loki (The Mechanisms)

Darcy (Amphibia) VS Cheryl Tunt (Archer)

Harrowhark Nonagesimus (The Locked Tomb) VS Dr. Baxter Stockman (TMNT 2003)

Izzy (Total Drama) VS Alfred Drevis (Mad Father)

Michael Distortion (The Magnus Archives) VS Vegas Theerapanyakul (Kinnporsche)

Doomguy (Doom) VS Gabriel Agreste (Miraculous)

Ben Chang (Community) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH VI

Fëanor (The Silmarillion) VS Ryuki (AI: The Somnium Files)

Round 1-D matches:

Eliot Cardale / Eli Ever (Villains Duology) VS Knives Millions (Trigun)

Denji (Chainsaw Man) VS Bubby (Half Life: VR but the AI is Self Aware)

Tsukishima Hajime (Golden Kamuy) VS Alucard (Hellsing Ultimate)

Hannibal Lecter (NBC Hannibal) VS Heathcliff (Wuthering Heights)

Johnny C. (Johnny The Homicidal Maniac) VS Leopold Fitz (Marvel)

Midori (Your Turn To Die) VS Ken Kaneki (Tokyo Ghoul)

Pugsley Addams (The Addams Family) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH VII

Billy Lenz (Black Christmas (1974)) VS Grell Sutcliff (Black Butler)

Goro Akechi (Persona 5) VS Fintan Pyren (Keeper of the Lost Cities)

Galahad (The Mechanisms) VS Alexander Hilbert (Wolf 359)

Armand (Interview with the Vampire) VS Spinel (Steven Universe)

Jīn Guāngyáo (Mo Dao Zu Shi (The Untamed)) VS Himiko Toga (My Hero Academia)

Morgana Pendragon (BBC Merlin) VS Nikolai Gogol (Bungo Stray Dogs)

Harley Quinn (DC) VS Xue Yang (Mo Dao Zu Shi (The Untamed))

Eren Jaeger (Attack on Titan) VS WINNER PRE-MATCH VIII

Chat Blanc (Miraculous) VS Volo (Pokemon Legends Arceus)

But first, we'll have the pre-match rounds that will determine if any of the following characters that almost didn't survive the cut will manage to secure a spot in the competition! They are as follows:

PRE-MATCH I: Caleb (Blood (1997)) VS Tuco Salamanca (Better Call Saul)

PRE-MATCH II: Pinkie Pie (My Little Pony) VS Amy Kirio (Mairimashita! Iruma-kun)

PRE-MATCH III: Magic Man (Adventure Time) VS Mindbender (GI Joe Renegades)

PRE-MATCH IV: Jevil (Deltarune) VS Midari Ikishima (Kakegurui)

PRE-MATCH V: Dennis Reynolds (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) VS Eddie Gluskin (Outlast)

PRE-MATCH VI: Vanilla Ice (Jojo's Bizarre Adventure) VS Roberto (Futurama)

PRE-MATCH VII: Jonathan Crane / The Scarecrow (DC) VS Annie Wilkes (Misery)

PRE-MATCH VIII: Ben Linus (Lost) VS Kristoph Gavin (Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney)

[teethburied]

'The controversial nude wrestling scene in the 1969 film Women in Love was passed for release only as the result of a secret pact between the then British Board of Film Censors and director Ken Russell, it has been revealed in archive correspondence released by the BBFC. More than 40 years after Oliver Reed and Alan Bates writhed naked by the fireplace – the first time that many viewers had seen full frontal nudity in British cinemas – it has emerged that Russell was in cahoots with the chief censor, John Trevelyan, to ensure the scene did not have to be cut. He and producer Larry Kramer offered to take Trevelyan out to lunch and keep him involved at every stage of the creative process: eventually, Kramer offered to dim the lighting during the controversial scene after Trevelyan expressed concern that its homosexual overtones be "handled discreetly" and said he was worried about "clearly visible genitals". So pleased were Russell and Kramer at the helpful attitude of the censor that the producer was moved to write a letter expressing their gratitude. "Dear John, can I say how grateful Ken and I are for your understanding help throughout these past months," he wrote. Trevelyan's level-headed approach is clear from his own earlier letter, in which he told the film-makers: "We all think it's a brilliant film and are taking this into account in our judgement of it." The exchange has been revealed after thousands of letters between film-makers and censors over the past century were made public for the first time. They offer a fascinating picture of the shifting moral landscape of Britain from the early 1900s to the early 1990s.'

– How Women in Love's nude wrestling scene romped past the 1960s censors

[bourtange]

i want to study at a San Diego university

i will spell bro as bruh and complain if the weather goes below 68 or above 73 degrees fahrenheit. i would watch Ken Kramer's About San Diego on KPBS all night while drinking a craft brewery's unpalatable IPA with my minimum of 11 roommates. i'll have carne asada fries every day that's worth 26 dollars. i would go to rock shows where no one dances every night. i am also more likely to meet jarheads, Blink-182, Tony Hawk and Darrell Issa.

i wish i was san diegan :(

[denimbex1986]

'In one corner, veteran heavyweight Christopher Nolan. In the other, nimble visionary Greta Gerwig. Their big films come out on the same day – but whose will triumph at the box office?

We live in divisive times. Opinion is more tribal and entrenched than ever, the value of reasoned argument and willing compromise plummeting by the day. This volatility could spread to the multiplex next month, where a battle of the blockbusters is destined to make previous cinematic standoffs – Mothra v Godzilla, Alien v Predator, Kramer vs Kramer – look like games of playground pat-a-cake. Get ready, then, for Barbie v Oppenheimer.

Directed by celebrated auteurs (Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan respectively), and hyped by multiple trailers over the past year, both movies are scheduled to open on the same crowded day. Forget your QR codes: this is one time to buy a physical ticket and save the stub to show your grandchildren. Future generations will want to know where you stood on 21 July 2023 when Barbie met the bomb.

In the pink corner is Gerwig’s DayGlo toy story starring Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, who while away their days happily but vacuously in Barbie-land. In a plot apparently borrowed from Enchanted and The Purple Rose of Cairo, with a dash of Don’t Worry Darling, they swap their cosseted fairytale existence for our harsh modern world. (The trailer shows Barbie having her police mugshot taken after walloping a Venice Beach groper in the face.) The cast incorporates hot young things Issa Rae, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Jamie Demetriou and, most excitingly, the new Doctor, Ncuti Gatwa, as well as old hands Michael Cera, Kate McKinnon and Will Ferrell; Helen Mirren is on narrating duties.

The 39-year-old Gerwig is arguably as big a selling point as Robbie or Gosling, as well as a guarantor of quality control. The three-time Oscar nominee directed Lady Bird and Little Women, as well as co-directing with Joe Swanberg the long-distance love story Nights and Weekends, back in the days when she was the doyenne of the lo-fi indie “mumblecore” movement. Her co-writer on Barbie is her partner, the director Noah Baumbach, with whom she wrote gems such as Frances Ha and Mistress America. Back in 2010 when she was promoting Greenberg, the bittersweet Baumbach comedy which became her Hollywood springboard, she spoke of her childhood habit of jumbling up the letters in her name: “In second grade, I’d be writing ‘Great Gerwig, Great Gerwig’ on everything,” she said. These days, it’s more than just an anagram.

Her opponent is the 52-year-old Nolan, a five-time Oscar nominee who has heft on his side. His is the weightier directing CV (12 films), with Oppenheimer his longest yet: he recently confirmed that it is “kissing three hours”, which makes it more than an hour longer than Barbie. This is serious, spectacular event cinema, shot with Imax cameras and booked long ago into all that format’s venues – to the apparent chagrin of Tom Cruise, whose latest Mission: Impossible adventure opens a week earlier but will be relegated to smaller screens the instant Oppenheimer drops.

Nolan’s cast is every bit as impressive as Gerwig’s; as well as the perpetually haunted Cillian Murphy as the physicist Robert J Oppenheimer, father of the atomic bomb, Nolan has assembled Florence Pugh, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Robert Downey Jr, Gary Oldman and Kenneth Branagh. The chances of any of them rollerblading à la Gosling in Barbie are negligible, which may help explain why Gerwig’s film is on track to have the more impressive opening weekend. Not that Oppenheimer will exactly bomb.

Barbie also has the edge when it comes to marketing opportunities, as might be expected of any movie adapted from merchandise. This goes way beyond the valley of the dolls: among the many tie-in products is an inflatable Barbie pool-float golf-cart, a Barbie dog’s basket, and an electric toothbrush capable of 36,000 sonic vibrations a minute – the same effect you get from watching Oppenheimer in Imax.

Unlike Barbie, Nolan’s film probably doesn’t have its own Exclusive Oral Beauty Partner, though given his protagonist’s chain-smoking tendencies there may be a teeth-whitening deal in the offing. And we shouldn’t rule out Oppenheimer throwing its hat in the ring when it comes to headgear. As far back as 2010, one plaintive user on thefedoralounge.com was searching “for a lid like the one the famous nuclear physicist wore,” citing a “2½-inch snap brim and a very thin ribbon” and concluding that “such a hat would be positively atomic”. Factor in the Cillian Murphy effect – this is the man who helped popularise the Peaky Blinders newsboy cap/undercut combo – and the Oppenheimer fedora and brown wool coat could be the look to replace Barbie’s summery pink once the nippier months roll around.

Some mild shade has already been thrown between the film’s respective camps on social media. “Greta Gerwig could do Oppenheimer but Christopher Nolan couldn’t do Barbie,” observed one tweet. Another overreached by proposing that “Margot Robbie could do Oppenheimer but Cillian Murphy couldn’t do Barbie” – clearly the work of someone who has never seen him in Breakfast on Pluto or Peacock. But the encouraging thing about the Barbie v Oppenheimer discourse is that, by and large, it has not followed the contours that often prevail in our online interactions. For anyone who loves cinema, the vibe feels closer to a cuddle than a cage fight.

There is real genius in this tactic of opening films catering for different audiences on the same day (known as counter-programming). The canny part is not what separates Nolan and Gerwig but what unites them: despite a clear contrast of style and sensibility, both directors possess a comparable skill, intelligence and passion, and tend to inspire loyalty in their fans. This same situation could never have arisen had Oppenheimer been pitted against, say, The Super Mario Bros Movie. Though that film is a smash, having grossed more than $1bn worldwide to date, it has nothing in it to propel cultural conversation along with profits.

Opening two films together that share similar DNA would also produce less of a spark. The experience of going to an afternoon screening of Ghostbusters on opening day in December 1984, then coming out and going straight back in to see Gremlins at teatime, was thrilling for my friends and me as 13-year-olds (especially as Gremlins was rated 15), but it was a routine sort of double bill on reflection: both were comedies that trafficked in the scary or supernatural.

What makes the combination of Barbie and Oppenheimer sing is that it is unlikely but not nonsensical. And though the films’ subjects are markedly different, there will be some overlap between their audiences. The major Rorschach test of our era, one Twitter user has suggested, will be whether you follow Oppenheimer with Barbie or vice versa. It’s no longer the case of “either/or” that it first appeared to be but rather “which one first?”. The Picturehouse chain is even extending the double bill idea by screening a selection of both directors’ past work in the coming weeks; audiences can see Lady Bird take flight alongside Interstellar, or pair Little Women and Dunkirk in a double bill of wartime stories, albeit from different wars.

Contrary to the way the rivalry was initially framed, this is no replay of the hostile Blur v Oasis Britpop war of the mid-1990s. Even the formulation of Barbie v Oppenheimer misrepresents the tenor of this unusual pairing: shouldn’t it be the more harmonious Barbie x Oppenheimer, in the style of today’s brand collaborations? Whichever film prevails financially, the result will be less meaningful to audiences than what these movies represent in a post-pandemic landscape that has seen famished exhibitors begging for new product.

Next month’s clash only came about in the first place because of Nolan’s commitment to cinemas over streaming. He would likely have set up Oppenheimer at his usual home, Warner Bros, had that studio not instigated a policy in 2021 (no longer in force today) of releasing its films simultaneously in cinemas and on HBO Max, in response to uncertainty during the pandemic. (Nolan, remember, had ruled out a streaming release for his previous film, Tenet, back in 2020 when cinema exhibition was at its most precarious.) Warner Bros still hopes to woo him back. Barbie is a Warners film, and if the studio had been distributing both pictures, they would never have let them go out on the same day. But Nolan took Oppenheimer to Universal – hence the scheduling pile-up.

No matter. The impact of Covid and the streaming revolution have been bruising, even in some cases annihilating, to parts of the industry. But contrary to the tagline from Alien Vs Predator – “Whoever wins … we lose” – the outcome of Barbie opening in lockstep with Oppenheimer can only be positive. Whichever one triumphs, cinema rules.'

[weshney]

DP Writing Prompt

Someone in the DP universe suddenly starts acting weird.

They seem to have gained additional personalities. Except. The personalities aren't random.

Your challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to write this person using any personas available on the voice actor's roster.

For instance, Dark Dan would be Eric Roberts in the US version.

Some fun characters for Dan that you could play around with include:

Sal Maroni from The Dark Knight

Dante in Dante's Hell Animated

Dr. Lee Parsons in Star Trek: Captain Pike

Detective Jack Boudin in Beverly Hill Bandits

Steven from the Drew Carrey Show

The Master/Bruce from Doctor Who

Raymond "The Madman" Ricci from Falcone

Sam Winfield or Roy Hubert from Law and Order

Mongul from Justice League

Agent Thompson from Heroes

Ken Kramer from CSI: Miami

Andy Armus from Criminal Minds

Reed Perkins from Burn Notice

Senator Starling from High Heels, Low Standards

Richard Sheridan from Hawaii-five-0

Charles Forstman from Suits

Dr. Albert Beck in Stalked by my Doctor and all the sequels lol

I find it so funny to think about Dan just constantly switching between a spy, lawyer, cop or mafia man until he just randomly gets a small bout of "I am now Duffy the talking cat," or "I am suddenly the fundraising coordinator for the Glee club." XD

The cause of this phenomenon could be a parallel universe problem or not. I leave that up to you.

You could also include an Easter egg that Dan is convinced Julia Roberts is his sister. XD

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

Set-up of a hypothetical Saw movie (part 1 of this poll series):

Several years after the events of Saw 7 (Saw 3D), Dr. Lawrence Gordon is kidnapped by a mysterious, cloaked figure. When he wakes up, he realizes he’s been locked inside a warehouse alongside five other individuals. It’s then revealed that the kidnapper is Judy Sing, the widow of the late Detective Steven Sing.

Judy has been obsessed with hunting down Jigsaw and all of his apprentices in order to avenge her husband. After years of investigating, she believes that she managed to find the last of Jigsaw’s accomplices. Since she’s unsure who the accomplice actually is on her list of suspects, Judy decided to capture everyone on the list. Those people are the ones being held hostage in the room alongside Dr. Gordon.

What’s the group’s punishment? In a bit of irony, Judy decides to put each person through a Saw-style trap. “Since you like doing this to other people, let’s see how you all fare in your own fucking traps,” she says. The rest of the movie focuses on Dr. Gordon’s attempts to escape, as well as figuring out how Judy Sing may have potentially discovered his past as a Jigsaw apprentice.

Current cast:

TBD

[freakslullaby]

Kramer was the original Ken

[justforbooks]

In the late 1970s, Bo Goldman was researching a script about Melvin Dummar, the unassuming Utah factory worker, gas station owner and former “Milkman of the Month” who was named as a $156m beneficiary in a will supposedly written by Howard Hughes but later successfully contested in court. Slowly, a realisation dawned on the screenwriter: “This man is a failure just like I am.”

It seemed an unusual conclusion to reach. After all, Goldman had written the book and lyrics for a Broadway musical, First Impressions, based on Pride and Prejudice, before he was 30, and won his first best screenplay Oscar (shared with Lawrence Hauben) for adapting One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), Ken Kesey’s novel set in a psychiatric institution, by the time he was 45.

A second Oscar later came his way for Melvin and Howard (1980), his humane and warmly funny script about Dummar, lovingly directed by Jonathan Demme.

But Goldman, who has died aged 90, was haunted at the time by his inability to sell one of his earliest scripts, Shoot the Moon, or to follow up that 1959 Broadway debut, and by the years he spent in poverty and debt, struggling to provide for his wife and their six children. “I can’t tell you what it does to a man,” he said in 1982. “You feel awful. I respected my wife so much, but felt lousy about myself.”

Hollywood was impressed by Shoot the Moon, the story of a brutal marital break-up that he wrote in the early 1970s, but no one wanted to make it. The writing was strong enough to earn him an $8,000 commission from the director Miloš Forman to re-write Hauben’s script for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. One of Goldman’s first suggestions – that the iconoclastic patient McMurphy, played by Jack Nicholson, should kiss his admitting officers at the hospital – helped win him the job.

He also scripted the Bette Midler vehicle The Rose (1979), inspired by the life of Janis Joplin, but turned down offers to write Kramer vs Kramer and Ordinary People, both future best picture Oscar winners, because the terrain felt too similar to his unproduced script, which he still hoped would be filmed eventually.

It finally was. The British filmmaker Alan Parker directed Shoot the Moon in 1982, coaxing powerful work from Albert Finney and Diane Keaton as the warring couple, and touchingly natural performances from the four children cast as their daughters.

The critical response was positive. Even Pauline Kael, no fan of Parker’s, said she was “a little afraid to say how good I think [the film] is” and praised the script’s “theatrical richness.” Goldman was disappointed nevertheless by its box-office failure.

After his third Oscar nomination, for Scent of a Woman (1992), he said: “I’m always surprised when anything good happens to me.” That film starred Al Pacino as a blind, cantankerous ex-army officer who cuts loose when he is assigned a prep-school student (Chris O’Donnell) as his companion for Thanksgiving weekend.

Goldman based Pacino’s character on a combination of his father, one of his brothers and a sergeant under whom he had served. Pacino won an Oscar; on that occasion, the writer did not.

He was born Robert Spencer Goldman in New York City. It was at Princeton that he changed his name to “Bo”; the college newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, misprinted his byline, and it stuck.

His mother was Lillian Levy, a millinery model, his father, Julian Goodman, a sometime Broadway producer and the owner of a chain of more than 70 department stores, which went into receivership during the Depression shortly before Bo was born. That dramatic fall informed and even overshadowed the rest of Bo’s life, with its occasionally incongruous juxtapositions. He grew up, for instance, in a spacious, rent-controlled Park Avenue apartment yet the family was usually penniless. His father would leaf through scrapbooks from his glory days, even making annual visits to the stables in Chantilly where he kept his prize-winning race-horses.

Though this precarious economic situation was known to Bo throughout his youth, it was not until much later that he discovered his father had another estranged family, and that his parents had never married.

He was educated at the Dalton school and Phillips Exeter academy prior to Princeton. There he wrote lyrics for the college’s Triangle Show and developed an enthusiasm for writing for the stage. He was in the US army for several years, then made inroads into the television industry, starting in the CBS postroom before progressing to script editing and producing on shows such as Playhouse 90.

Though First Impressions, which starred Farley Granger, was poorly received, he devoted most of the 1960s to writing a civil war musical, Hurrah Boys, Hurrah, which was never staged. He took odds and ends of TV work, but was plagued by thoughts of his father’s ignominies, and bruised by his own. “The only thing which kept me going was my wife and the kids who never cared about my success or lack of it,” he said. “They only cared because it was causing me pain.”

Around the time Shoot the Moon was released, his wife, Mab (nee Ashforth), whom he had met at Princeton and married in 1954, and who supported the family financially through endeavours such as her fish and bread shop, Loaves and Fishes, reflected on the disparity between the bad times and the good: “People were so contemptuous of us … it’s remarkable how success has transformed us into acceptable people.”

Goldman became a sought-after script doctor, working uncredited on Forman’s Ragtime (1981), Demme’s Swing Shift, the coming-of-age comedy The Flamingo Kid (both 1984), Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy (1990) and the Arthurian adventure First Knight (1995).

Credited screenplays include Little Nikita (1988), an espionage thriller with River Phoenix and Sidney Poitier, and Meet Joe Black (1998), starring Brad Pitt as the pretty personification of death. Goldman also shared a story credit with Beatty on the period comedy-drama Rules Don’t Apply (2016). This was another Howard Hughes-related project, with Beatty playing the reclusive billionaire.

Though Goldman came close several times, his enduring dream of directing was never realised. “I think of myself as a filmmaker,” he said. “I’m a writer only because that is what they pay me to do.”

Mab died in 2017. He is survived by five of his children, Mia, Amy, Diana, Serena and Justin. A sixth child, Jesse, died in 1981.

🔔 Bo (Robert Spencer) Goldman, screenwriter, born 10 September 1932; died 25 July 2023

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at Just for Books…?