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1 day ago · Unhappy with the film, Towne decided to remove his name from the credits. Instead, he acknowledged P.H. Vazak, his Hungarian sheepdog, as the film's screenwriter. This cheeky move led to Vazak – or rather, Towne – scoring an Oscar nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Thus, in a comedy of errors, a dog was nominated for an Oscar in a ...
Dec 29, 2023 · The 1984 movie Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes received a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination at the 1985 Oscars. P.H. Vazak, who was actually a dog, was credited with co-writing the film, but the real writer behind the dog's credit was Robert Towne, the pet's owner.
- Robert Rich // The Brave One
- Pierre Boulle // The Bridge on The River Kwai
- Nathan E. Douglas // The Defiant Ones
- P.H. Vazak // Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of The Apes
- Roderick Jaynes // Fargo
- Donald Kaufman // Adaptation.
Dalton Trumbo—the subject of the Oscar-nominated 2015 biopic Trumbo—was famously part of the infamous Hollywood blacklist during the Communist-hunting McCarthy Era. But he wouldn’t let a ban keep him from writing, and he did so under not one pseudonym, but dozens. Two of them won Academy Awards. Trumbo was a member of the Communist Party USA who se...
This one is slightly misleading, because Pierre Boulle did actually exist. Not only did he write the novel The Bridge Over the River Kwai, he also penned the Planet of the Apes book. But even though Boulle won an Oscar for writing the screenplay for Bridge on the River Kwai, he didn’t actually write it—nor did he speak or read any English whatsoeve...
Similarly, Nathan E. Douglas was invented to cover for Nedrick Young, a writer who was blacklisted after invoking his Fifth Amendment rights during his trial by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences gave him credit for the Oscar win in 1993, 25 years after Young’s death. Young was also nomina...
Well, P.H. Vazak did exist. But if he wrote Greystoke, he deserves an entry in Ripley’s Believe It Or Not as well as the Oscar history books, since P.H. Vazak was a Hungarian sheepdog. The real writer behind the screenplay, Robert Towne, was unhappy with the direction some rewrites had taken and decided he didn’t want credit for them. Though it sur...
Roderick Jaynes is a pretty talented guy for not being a real person. Jaynes has edited all of the Coen brothers' movies and was even nominated as one of Entertainment Weekly’s Smartest People in Hollywood in 2007. Joel Coen explained that Jaynes probably wouldn't be making an appearance at the 2008 Oscars, despite the nomination. “He’s very old—la...
In the late 1990s, Charlie Kaufman was hired to write a film adaptation of Susan Orlean’s best-selling novel, The Orchid Thief. He promptly came down with a killer case of writer’s block, but instead of letting it stop the process, Kaufman wrote it into the story he was struggling with. He created a fictional brother named Donald, who helped him wr...
- Stacy Conradt
Jul 1, 2016 · [The dog, P.H. Vazak, is credited as one of two screenwriters, along with Michael Austin.] The screenplay was Oscar-nominated. It’s the only dog that’s ever been nominated for an Oscar.”
Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes is a 1984 adventure film directed by Hugh Hudson based on Edgar Rice Burroughs ' novel Tarzan of the Apes (1912).
Feb 17, 2024 · P.H. Vazak was a pup who belonged to acclaimed screenwriter Robert Towne, one of the most famous screenwriters in the industry with credits that include the first two Mission: Impossible...
Mar 6, 2024 · Why was Vazak the dog credited for Tarzan? Towne was a prolific screenwriter, director and producer after his career as an actor. He was a key part of the New Hollywood movement and produced...
