David Koepp. This young Midwesterner has emerged as one of the most successful screenwriters of mainstream 1990s Hollywood genre movies. Initially interested in acting, Koepp began writing plays as an undergraduate in his native Wisconsin . A viewing of Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark " (1981) inspired him to segue to screenwriting. Taking the advice of a writing professor, Koepp transferred to UCLA to study film history and screenwriting. While working as a script reader, he impressed the Argentine actor-turned-director Martin Donovan, who asked the then 23-year-old Koepp to collaborate on a project for an Italian producer. The result was "Apartment Zero" (1988), a dark psychodrama about a nervously repressed cinephile who rents a room to a mysterious young charmer suspected in a series of murders.
Koepp's first solo writing credit was the independently produced "Bad Influence" (1990), a story of a nice yuppie (James Spader) menaced by a psychopathic hanger-on (Rob Lowe). Prior to this production, the neophyte writer boldly turned down an offer from Universal exec Casey Silver who offered to buy and produce "Bad Influence", Koepp's fifth spec script, as a comedy. Impressed by both the finished product and the young writer's moxie, Silver, by then president of Universal Pictures, offered Koepp a regular paycheck as an "on-the-lot" contract screenwriter. Koepp accepted and, over the next four years, earned screenwriter credits on "Death Becomes Her" (1992), "Jurassic Park" and "Carlito's Way" (both 1993), and "The Paper" and "The Shadow" (both 1994).
Robert Zemeckis' "Death Becomes Her", a special effects-laden black comedy starring Goldie Hawn, Meryl Streep, and Bruce Willis, marked Koepp's reteaming with Donovan as screenwriters. Far more momentous was his collaboration with Michael Crichton on the sci-fi spectacular, " Jurassic Park ", for Steven Spielberg. This unprecedented box-office success catapulted Koepp to the A-list even if detractors found his screenplay deficient on a human level. Later that year, he followed up with another high-profile adaptation, "Carlito's Way", a socially conscious gangster movie for Brian De Palma. Generally perceived as an
inferior retread of the previous De Palma-Al Pacino salsa-flavored gangster opus "Scarface" (1983), the film fizzled commercially.
On his own, Koepp first indulged his hunger to direct (as well as script) with a short entitled "Suspicious" (1994). Screened at film festivals and on PBS, the 13-minute film starred Janeane Garofalo as a nervous young woman who drives into a gas station late at night and finds an attendant (Michael Rooker) whose intense stares make her uncomfortable. Koepp subsequently provided the story and served as one of a number of screenwriters on De Palma's " Mission : Impossible" (1996) for producer-star Tom Cruise. Despite complaints of narrative incoherence, the film emerged as one the major summer blockbusters, grossing over $175 million domestically. With another massive success on his resume, Koepp made his feature debut as a writer-director with "The Trigger Effect" (1996), a modestly budgeted ($8 million), grimly stylized think-piece in the Rod Serling tradition. The film, which opened to mixed reviews, depicted the psychological effects of an unexplained power outage on three characters in southern California played by Kyle MacLachlan, Elisabeth Shue and Dermot Mulroney. Reteaming with Spielberg, Koepp penned the script for the much anticipated sequel "The Lost World: Jurassic Park " (1997).
Since then, Koepp has gone on to pen "Stir Of Echoes", and the massive spec-turned Jodie Foster blockbuster "Panic Room." Most notably, however, he took screenplay credit on the Marvel/Columbia adaptation of " Spider Man. "
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