Paul Attanasio

“Your job is to follow the pulse of the story and you need to have that

gut connection with what you’re doing.”

Paul Attanasio is not just a former film critic turned screenwriter, he is also one of the most successful, with a reputation for producing scripts that challenge expectations and vivid characters who you care about, and a notable track record in both film and TV. Throughout a twenty-five year career, he has won or been nominated for every major award. The hallmarks of his style are: dramatic story told with humor; unlikely heroes; and an elliptical narrative strategy that with withholds as much as it reveals.

Attanasio’s career

With degrees in hand from Harvard and Harvard Law School, Attanasio began his career as the chief film critic for the Washington Post. At age 24, he was the youngest major film critic in the country. While a critic, he also hosted the Cinemax program, “The Movie Show”. With the encouragement of the great writer and director Joseph Mankiewicz, who mentored his early work, Attanasio left the Post in 1987 to begin his screenwriting career.

His first break came when he was hired to write “Donnie Brasco,” beginning a fruitful partnership with another great writer/director, Barry Levinson. While “Brasco” was the last of Attanasio’s films to appear under Levinson’s Baltimore Pictures banner, it was actually the first to be written; an early version, to be directed by Stephen Frears, got shelved by the studio. Based on a book by Joe Pistone relating his five-and-a-half year odyssey as an FBI man undercover in the Mafia, the project began with Levinson’s notion to do “Diner” in the New York underworld. Freed of studio meddling, Attanasio instantly flourished under Levinson’s umbrella and his emphasis on humor and originality.

Levinson next offered him the film, “Quiz Show,” based on a chapter in Richard Goodwin’s memoir, which had originally been brought to him by Richard Dreyfuss (as a potential starring vehicle for Dreyfuss). Again, the artistic intentions of both films clashed with the studio mandate.

While both scripts were stalled, Levinson offered Attanasio a third project, “Homicide: Life on the Street,” based on the book by David Simon, at the time a Baltimore police beat reporter (who would go on to a remarkable writing career himself as the creator of HBO’s “The Wire”). The project began with Levinson’s original notion of a police show without either guns or car chases, which played to Attanasio’s flair for characters and dialogue. With the more streamlined decisionmaking process of television and the enthusiasm of NBC’s boss, Don Ohlmeyer, “Homicide” became the first of Attanasio’s scripts to be produced. It premiered after the Super Bowl and garnered Attanasio the first of his three WGA Award nominations. The critically-acclaimed show lasted six seasons on NBC and won three Peabody Awards.

At this point, Oscar-winning director Robert Redford (“Ordinary People”) attached himself to “Quiz Show”; as a starving painter in New York, the young Redford had himself appeared on a quiz show, and he sparked to the morality tale about three representative men of the era. Notwithstanding Redford’s great prestige, the film was again put into turnaround, finally landing at Disney. The film debuted to universally enthusiastic reviews and went on to be nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, as well as a Best Adapted Screenplay nomination for Attanasio, another WGA nomination, and a BAFTA award.

While “Quiz Show” was in postproduction, Levinson approached Attanasio to rewrite Michael Crichton’s script for his own novel, “Disclosure”. Unlike the lengthy process on “Donnie Brasco” and “Quiz Show,” “Disclosure” needed to be shot in the summer (when Michael Douglas was available) for a Christmas release date (which was already set). With Crichton’s blessing, Attanasio discarded the script and went back to the novel, producing a shooting script in 11 weeks.  “Quiz Show” premiered in September and “Disclosure” premiered in December, providing back-to-back triumphs for Attanasio. The stylish, thought-provoking thriller was the 13^th highest-grossing film of the year, earning 214 million dollars worldwide.

The success of Attanasio’s other films helped to loosen the studio logjam, and “Donnie Brasco” came together with Al Pacino, Johnny Depp, and director Mike Newell, a film that would go on to become a reference title for the genre, and garner Attanasio his second Academy Award nomination and his third WGA nomination. Owen Glieberman, writing for Entertainment Weekly, described the screenplay as “a rich, satisfying gumbo of back stabbing, shady business maneuvers, and mayhem.” Similarly, Janet Maslin of the New York Times, described Donnie Brasco as “the best crime movie in a long while”, praising it for being “a sharp, clever encounter, overturning all manner of genre cliches and viewer expectations.”

Attanasio turned to writing and producing films and television outside of the Baltimore Pictures umbrella, beginning with “Gideon’s Crossing,” starring Andre Braugher and based on the book, “The Measure of Our Days,” by New Yorker writer Jerome Groopman. The critically-acclaimed series led to a three-year, seven-figure deal at Universal Television for Attanasio and his producing partner, Katie Jacobs. (Attanasio and Jacobs were also married at the time.) While Attanasio continued to write screenplays (for example, “The Sum of All Fears”) and became a highly sought-after script doctor, the television business (as well as the demands of a young family) increasingly took up much of his time.

The failure of the television deal to produce a hit in the three years of its term weighed heavily on Attanasio; by mutual agreement, the deal was extended for a fourth year in a last-ditch attempt to live up to its promise, and the result was “House, MD,” which went on to become the most watched show on television (with 82 million viewers worldwide) and earn over a billion dollars in revenues. “House” ran for eight years on Fox, earning numerous nominations and awards for its writers and actors, as well as several Emmy nominations for Attanasio as executive producer, and a fourth Peabody award.

During this time, Attanasio wrote “The Good German,” adapting the Joseph Kanon novel for director Steven Soderbergh. Shot in black-and-white with an all-star cast that included George Clooney, Cate Blanchett and Tobey Maguire, the film has become a cineaste favourite. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone Magazine described the final product as “pure moviegoing bliss” and wrote that “Paul Attanasio has adapted the novel by Joseph Kanon to evoke 1940s classics such as The Third Man and Casablanca with a skeptical modern squint. In short, the movie works on its own, with a gleam of seductive corruption that doesn’t allow for a happy ending.”

Attanasio’s current projects include a third iteration of the gangster film, “Scarface,” placing him in the heritage of two screenwriting heroes, Ben Hecht and Oliver Stone. He continues to create and produce television, now under his own “Atelier Paul Attanasio” banner.