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Michael Tolkin

American screenwriter, novelist, and director (born 1950)

Summary

American screenwriter, novelist, and director (born 1950)

Field	Value
name	Michael Tolkin
image	Michael Tolkin.jpg
caption	Tolkin at Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara, 2009
alma_mater	Middlebury College (BA)
birth_date
birth_place	New York City, U.S.
occupation	Writer, film director
spouse	Wendy Mogel
children	2

Michael L. Tolkin (born October 17, 1950) is an American screenwriter, novelist, and director. He has written numerous screenplays, including The Player (1992), which he adapted from his own 1988 novel of the same name, and for which he received the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture Screenplay (1993) and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. He later wrote a follow-up to the novel, titled The Return of the Player, which was published in 2006.

In 2018, Tolkin served as co-creator of the miniseries Escape at Dannemora with Brett Johnson. The series was based on the real-life 2015 Clinton Correctional Facility escape that led to a massive manhunt for two escaped convicts in upstate New York. In 2022, he served as creator of the miniseries The Offer, which is about the making of The Godfather.

Biography

Tolkin was born to a Romanian-Jewish and Ukrainian-Jewish family in New York City, the son of Edith (née Leibovitch), a studio executive and film industry lawyer, and the late comedy writer Mel Tolkin.

He is a 1974 graduate of Middlebury College.

Tolkin lives in Los Angeles with his wife, author Wendy Mogel. They have two daughters, Susanna and Emma.

Filmography

Film

Year	Title	Notes
1982	Gossip	Unfinished
1989	Gleaming the Cube
1991	The Rapture
1992	The Player	BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated — Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay
Nominated — BAFTA Award for Best Film
Nominated — Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay
Deep Cover
1994	The New Age
1998	Deep Impact
2002	Changing Lanes
2009	Nine

Uncredited writing roles

The Haunting (1999)
Domestic Disturbance (2001)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
The Punisher (2004)

Television

Series

Year	Title	Notes
1979	Delta House	3 episodes
1980	Taxi	Episode "Shut It Down: Part 1"
2007	Masters of Science Fiction	Episode "Jerry Was a Man"
2014–15	Ray Donovan	Wrote 4 episodes
2018	Escape at Dannemora	Miniseries
2022	The Offer

TV films

Year	Title	Writer	Producer
1994	The Burning Season
1997	The Player
2008	1%

Bibliography

The Player (1988)
Among the Dead (1993)
Under Radar (2003)
The Return of the Player (2006)
NK3 (2017)

References

[http://www.middlebury.edu/giving/difference/recognition/honorroll/ug/1970-1979/1974 "Middlebury College Alumni Honor Roll"] {{Webarchive. link. (2016-07-26 , Middlebury College website)
0-87113-228-1
0-8021-1801-1
Andreeva, Nellie. (June 2, 2017). "Paul Dano Joins Benicio del Toro & Patricia Arquette As Ben Stiller's Prison Break Limited Series Gets Showtime Green Light".
Rosenman, Howard. (March 20, 2019). "Hollywood Writer Michael Tolkin on Judaism, Awards and Global Warming". [[The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles]].
[http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/205193/michael-tolkins-american-midrash Tablet Magazine: "Michael Tolkin’s American Midrash" by Michael Lee] retrieved June 2, 2017
[http://www.filmreference.com/film/55/Michael-L-Tolkin.html Filmreference.com]
"Michael Tolkin".
[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/01/magazine/01parenting.html New York Times: "So the Torah Is a Parenting Guide?" by Emily Bazelon] October 1, 2006
[https://www.salon.com/2006/10/26/tolkin/ Allen Barra] "The Return of the Player," ''Salon'', October 26, 2006.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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