Screenwriter Frank Pierson ["Cool Hand Luke", "Dog Day Afternoon"] 1925-2012

[Zoneboy]

Exceptional screenwriter and director Frank Pierson who became presidents of both the Writers Guild, West, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences has died, according to his manager. He was 87. Gentlemanly yet ornery, meticulous yet creative, Pierson compiled a remarkable writing resume, starting in the 1950s with television shows like Have Gun – Will Travel and Playhouse 90, followed by five decades of films like Cat Ballou (screenplay by Walter Newman and Frank R. Pierson), Dog Day Afternoon (screenplay by Frank Pierson), A Star Is Born (screenplay by Joan Didion & John Gregory Dunne and Frank Pierson), In Country (screenplay by Frank Pierson and Cynthia Cidre), and Presumed Innocent (screenplay by Frank Pierson and Alan J. Pakula). In his later years he worked for HBO as a consulting producer on Mad Men. He also wrote some of the most iconic quotes in motion picture history, as the WGA itself pointed out: “Odds are, all of you know the famous line he came up with while writing 1967’s Cool Hand Luke (screenplay by Donn Pearce and Frank Pierson): “What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” The line was not in Pearce’s original novel. (“The phrase just sort of appeared on the page. I looked at it and thought, ‘Now that’s interesting.’” Pierson to the WGA described his process this way: “Sit down at 10 o’clock in the morning and write anything that comes into my head until 12. One of the few things I’ve discovered about writing is to form a habit that becomes an addiction so that if you don’t put something down on paper every day, you get really mean and awful with withdrawal symptoms, and your wife and your dog and your kids are going to kick your ass until you get back to it because they can’t bear you in that state of mind.”

Pierson was born in Chappaqua, NY and attended Harvard. (Pierson’s parents, family and their lives, were the subject of the 1945 film Roughly Speaking, starring Rosalind Russell and Jack Carson.) He got his break in Hollywood in 1958 as scripted editor for Have Gun, Will Travel and moved on to write for the television series Naked City, Route 66 and others. He went on to write or co-write many notable Academy Award-nominated films including Cat Ballou and Cool Hand Luke. It was Dog Day Afternoon which won Pierson his Oscar. He directed and contributed to the screenplay of A Star Is Born. The in-fighting on the film between himself, Barbra Streisand, her boyfriend/producer Jon Peters, and Kris Kristofferson led him to write the notorious and controversial article “My Battles With Barbra And Jon” in New West magazine. Many flt that his talking-out-of-school about Hollywood bigwigs irreparably damaged his career.

Later Pierson directed several notable films produced for television, including Dirty Pictures, Citizen Cohn, Conspiracy (which won him a Directors’ Guild Award for Best Television Movie, and his second Peabody and BAFTA Award), and Somebody Has To Shoot The Picture.

He was President of the Writers Guild of America, West, from 1981—1983 and again from 1993—1995. He also was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences from 2001-2005. In 2003, Pierson was the recipient of the Austin Film Festival’s Distinguished Screenwriter Award. He also was a member of the teaching staff of Sundance Institute, and Artistic Director of the American Film Institute.

http://www.deadline.com/2012/07/r-i-p-frank-pierson/