Lawrence Kasdan

You might not have heard of Lawrence Kasdan, but you've definitely heard his dialogue: It appeared in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi as well as Raiders of the Lost Ark. He was born in sunny Miami, Florida, and had dreams of becoming an English teacher after graduating from the University of Michigan. But he loved screenwriting, too, which prompted him to send all kinds of scripts to Hollywood in hopes that they'd be published.

His first one, The Bodyguard, was intended for Steve McQueen and Diana Ross, but eventually turned into that Kevin Costner/Whitney Houston thing about twenty years ago. This should give you a good idea of how long this man had to wait for his moment. It was a long, hard slog in the beginning, and he initially had no idea that bullwhip-wielding immortality awaited him.

After selling Steven Spielberg his script for a romantic comedy called The Continental Divide, Spielberg asked Kasdan to join their secret cabal of awesome filmmakers. His first job? Turning George Lucas and Philip Kaufman's ideas into the screenplay for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Nine out of ten movie geeks agree that he knocked it out of the park. (And that last guy is a sad, confused soul.)

As a screenwriter for hire, he had to bow to the vision of the folks who signed the checks, though you can see inklings of who and what he was underneath the surface. The man loved westerns, for instance (he went on to write and direct a couple of them in a time when westerns were at death's door), and you can see shades of classic cowboy stories woven into Indy's DNA. He's essentially a variation of the lone hero riding into the dirty town to take out the bad guys, except in this case, the bad guys are Nazis and the dirty town is an archaeological dig in the middle of Egypt. And, hey, he's even got a white horse.

On a pure technical level, Kasdan's writing reflects his background in English literature. The man just knows dialogue. His words roll off of the tongue like butter and carry the kind of snap that Indy's bullwhip dreams about at night.

That comes from his hard-earned master's degree… and the fact that he paid attention in poetry class. Sure, the dialogue isn't as symbolic or alliterative as a proper poem, but the beats—the "feet" in fancy poet talk—are deliberate and specific. Let's take a look at an example: at one point early on, Indy says,

INDIANA JONES: "I'm going after a find of incredible historical significance, you're talking about the boogeyman."

Repeat that line aloud.

See how easy it is to repeat? How it just kind of hums out? That's the power of a metered line, using stressed syllables in a particular pattern that makes it easy to repeat. "in-CRE-di-BLE his-TOR-i-CAL sig-NI-fi-CANCE." Those are big words, but Kasdan makes them as catchy as a pop song. Add that to last-minute escapes and some well-developed character, and you've got a screenplay built to last. If you're interested, and we know you are, we have a whole section on poetry that expounds further.

Kasdan didn't limit himself to writing. The same year that Raiders opened, he made his directorial debut with the very steamy erotic thriller Body Heat. More directing jobs followed: mostly talky dramas like The Big Chill and Grand Canyon, or westerns like Silverado and Wyatt Earp. But he came back to the Lucasfilm fold to help write the new Star Wars films (episodes VII-IX), so some of that pulp adventure still beats in his grizzled old heart.