Word: zaillian
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...thank heaven, a particularly magnificent one. Travolta and writer-director Steve Zaillian, compressing complex issues and characters with admirable craft, make it clear that greed and ego, more than compassion, drive Schlichtmann. Only when he reaches straits as dire as his clients' does he (non-melodramatically) achieve something like full humanity. Meantime, we've enjoyed a richly acted--see especially Robert Duvall's dreamy-fox opposition lawyer--subtly suspenseful, blessedly unmoralizing morality play...
...What's truly appealing about the film is that it plays fair with all this material and the audience. Unlike the typical action movie, which is always trampling over narrative logic in order to rush on to the next explosion, this movie had writers (John Milius, Donald Stewart, Steven Zaillian; the film is based on a Tom Clancy novel) who take the time to keep us in the picture. You may not remember all of it later, but as the plot unfolds, its logic is, you might say, clear and present...
...HEADSET. How did the agents do? Of the seven winners in the acting, writing and directing categories, CAA represents three (Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Jane Campion), ICM two (Holly Hunter and Tommy Lee Jones), and the little-known Harold Greene Agency one (Schindler's List screenwriter Steven Zaillian). Eleven-year-old Anna Paquin is represented by the even-less-known Double Happy agency of New Zealand. The William Morris Agency was shut...
...process energized Spielberg, who "felt liberated for the first time in my career." He was finally realizing a dream he first entertained more than a decade ago and delayed while awaiting both the script he wanted (it was provided by Steven Zaillian, writer-director of Searching for Bobby Fischer) and the maturity in himself he felt he needed. Onlookers say he never sat down, never retreated to his trailer, and that he one day made an astonishing 51 setups. Yet always he moved in an aura of "austere calm . . . a man at peace with himself," in the words...
...turns mawkish and affecting, the film might be called Rocky, 8. The boxing match is a chess match, the plucky challenger is 3 1/2 ft. tall, and his ultimate opponent is an Apollo Creed kid with killer moves and no-soul eyes. Zaillian, whose early screenplays (The Falcon and the Snowman, Awakenings) turned real-life psychodrama into italicized melodrama, underlines the emotions here too, as if the subject weren't strong enough to hold the interest of a Nintendo child or a Home Alone parent...