mighty heart Tagged Articles at Cinematical

John Orloff got his break writing two episodes of the Emmy-winning HBO mini-series Band of Brothers. His latest script is another true-life tale -- Michael Winterbottom's A Mighty Heart, just out on DVD. Heart focuses on Mariane Pearl (Angelina Jolie), a reporter whose husband Daniel, an American journalist, was kidnapped and murdered in Pakistan. The script just earned Orloff an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best First Screenplay. The awards will be held on February 23rd.

Cinematical: When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

John Orloff: I still don't know whether I want to be a writer! I went to UCLA Film School, and I had a great writing teacher who thought I had a particular skill in that department. So I kept taking that teacher for the whole time I was at UCLA, kept on writing. At the end of it I was 22, it was the late 80s, and people weren't really hiring young writers, so I started to work in advertising. Spent about ten years miserably working in commercials, until I met a woman -- who is now my wife -- who was working in the business as a development exec at HBO. And she was bringing home all these screenplays, and they were horrible! Just awful! And these people had agents, and they were working. So I pitched my wife a non-fiction movie that I had been thinking about writing for ten years, with the incredibly commercial idea of a sixteenth century English melodrama. It was actually about the Shakespeare authorship issue -- who wrote the plays? I wrote the script and had the misfortune of writing it two months before Shakespeare in Love came out. But I sent out this script, trying to get an agent, and did finally get "hip-pocketed" by an agency.

Cinematical: And that script eventually got you your big break with Tom Hanks -- pretty decent guy to start out with, no?

JO: Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, yes! The most important thing that happened out of the Shakespeare script was that Tom's company was among the readers. They liked it, and I met with Tom about another project, but every time I sat down with him I would ask if he had hired writers on Band of Brothers. I'm a huge World War II buff, and I think I eventually just wore him down. He finally asked me to write a script, and I wrote one episode. He was very happy with it and asked me to write another. So, that was my first paying gig.

The beautiful and talented Angelina Jolie, lately more well-known perhaps for her real-life child adoptions splashed across the tabloids than for her acting roles, has nevertheless found time to squeeze in some acting work here and there. After a supporting appearance in last year's excellent The Good Shepherd, Jolie is next set to grace the silver screen in A Mighty Heart, a docudrama based on the life of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was assassinated in 2002. In the film, based on the book A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl by Mariane Pearl, Jolie plays Mariane, who launches an investigation of her own to find out the truth behind what happened.

Over the months we haven't heard much about this film except that it was, in fact, being made. But now, thanks to Joblo, we can bring you a poster for the film and some stills featuring Jolie, co-stars Dan Futterman as Daniel Pearl and Wil Patton as, one can assume, some sort of government type either helping or hindering Jolie's quest in the film. Daniel Pearl's death was a great tragedy and if this story is to be adapted for the big screen, it deserves a sensitive and well-done cinematic treatment. With the casting of Jolie, Patton and Futterman and under the direction of Michael Winterbottom, I feel this story is in good hands. A Mighty Heart premieres at the Cannes Film Festival in May followed by a platform release on June 22.