Scott Frank

Early life and education

Frank was born to a Jewish family in Fort Walton Beach, Florida, on March 10, 1960. His family moved to Los Gatos, California where he attended high school while his father worked as a pilot for Pan Am. He attended the University of California, Santa Barbara, graduating in 1982 with a Bachelor of Arts in film studies.

Career

While a student at the University of California, Frank first had the idea for what would become the script for Little Man Tate in 1981, thinking that, in the aftermath of the Iran hostage crisis there was "a slight petulance to world events at the time" and envisioning "an eight year old who was making more sense of the world than Ted Koppel." After graduation he worked as a bartender while attempting to sell the script, which eventually led to his hiring an agent, and subsequently being hired by Paramount Pictures in 1984. It would take several years before the script was produced, with Frank's first filmed work being the 1987 film Plain Clothes, which he would later describe as "terrible." Little Man Tate was ultimately made in 1991 as the directorial debut of Jodie Foster.

In the years to follow, Frank's filmography included scripts for Dead Again, Malice, Heaven's Prisoners, and Get Shorty. The latter earned him his first award nominations with both the Writers Guild and the Golden Globes. He credited the success of Get Shorty with reviving his interest in the job after a bad experience on Malice, and was particularly pleased as a longtime fan of Elmore Leonard's novels that he felt had not received satisfactory film adaptations previously. This success led to his being asked to work on another Elmore Leonard adaptation, Steven Soderbergh's 1998 film Out of Sight starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez. The film was not a commercial success but earned critical plaudits. Frank won both the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

Frank was recruited by Steven Spielberg to work on the script for Minority Report, a Philip K. Dick adaptation, which he would later say was "a very difficult screenplay to write because it was loaded with so much technical detail." He performed second unit directing duties for one segment of the film, an area of filmmaking he had contemplated moving into for some time. Minority Report earned him the Saturn Award for Best Writing and several other nominations, including for Hugo and Nebula awards. Other credits from this period included The Interpreter and Marley & Me, the latter described as a film he would not have imagined himself working on but which he developed "a big soft spot for." By 2024, Frank had worked on nearly 60 films, including uncredited rewrites on films such as Saving Private Ryan, Entrapment, Dawn of the Dead, Night at the Museum and Gravity.

Frank made his directorial debut in 2007 on The Lookout, whose script he had begun in 1998 and which was originally meant to be directed by Sam Mendes, who eventually departed the project to make Road to Perdition while encouraging Frank to take on the task himself. He had also attempted to recruit Sydney Pollack, the director of The Interpreter whom he considered a mentor, to direct the project. He won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature for his work on the film. His second film as a director, 2014's A Walk Among the Tombstones, had a more mixed reception. In January 2016, Frank published his first novel, Shaker, a crime mystery published by Penguin Random House. He also worked in the burgeoning superhero genre, making two films with director James Mangold, The Wolverine (2013) and Logan (2017). For the latter, he received his second Academy Award nomination.

Having had previous experience working for network television, Frank had begun to develop Godless, previously intended as a film, into a miniseries for HBO. However, Netflix outbid HBO for the project, which Frank wrote and directed. The miniseries earned Frank numerous award nominations, including from the Directors Guild and three Primetime Emmy Awards. The success of Godless led Frank to pitch further projects to Netflix, several of which were rejected, until they expressed interest in The Queen's Gambit, an adaptation of a Walter Tevis novel that Frank had previously attempted to make as a film. Frank said that he viewed the novel as exploring "the cost of genius", a theme that he had first intended to explore in Little Man Tate but "didn't quite get there with it."

Frank won the 2021 Emmy for Outstanding Directing for a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

Filmography

Film

Screenwriter

Director

Producer

Television

Awards and nominations

References

• Scott Frank, www.hollywood.com, 2025-07-29, dead, October 31, 2007, mdy-all
• Bloom, Nate, Anton Yelchin's final role lands in 'Thoroughbreds'; Appatow's 'Love' returns, J, The Jewish News of Northern California, March 6, 2018
• Scott Frank biography, dead, October 6, 2014, New York City, , , New York, Movies & TV Dept., The New York Times, 2014, March 13, 2015
• Keefe, Patrick Radden, December 25, 2023, How a Script Doctor Found His Own Voice, The New Yorker, February 4, 2024, 0028-792X
• Scott Frank bio, Penguin Random House, March 26, 2013, University of California, Santa Barbara, March 13, 2015, January 31, 2015, dead
• Bazer, Mark, March 25, 2007, Screenwriter Frank takes action After years spent creating scripts, he's directing, dead, April 2, 2015, The Boston Globe, Boston, Massachusetts, March 16, 2015
• Miller & Son — AFI, Miller & Son, January 12, 2020, August 5, 2022, dead
• Screenwriting Chat: Scott Frank, 2002, Screenplay.com, en-US, April 9, 2021, April 10, 2021, dead
• Full transcript: Screenwriter, novelist and director Scott Frank on Recode Media, March 3, 2017, Vox, April 10, 2021
• Scott Frank, November 30, 2020, www.goldenglobes.com
• Scott Frank: Screenwriters' Lecture, March 3, 2017, guru.bafta.org, October 1, 2012
• Shaker, Penguin Random House, February 18, 2016
• www.publishersweekly.com, January 12, 2020, Shaker
• Interview: Scott Frank on Finishing His Debut Novel 'Shaker' Fifteen Years After He Began, March 14, 2017, /Film, January 12, 2020
• For Queen's Gambit Creator, the Vineyard Is a Creative Force, December 21, 2020, The Vineyard Gazette - Martha's Vineyard News
• An interview with Scott Frank: THE QUEEN'S GAMBIT, December 21, 2020, Writers Guild of America, East
• The Queen's Gambit creator on 'bringing sexy back to chess' and the series' long journey to TV, October 25, 2020, Entertainment Weekly, April 9, 2021
• Scott Frank, IMDb, March 12, 2021
• Winners & Nominees 2018, Primetime Emmy Awards, April 11, 2021, September 17, 2018
• Here Are the 44th Annual Saturn Awards Nominations, Bleeding Cool, March 15, 2018
• Winners & Nominees 2021, Golden Globe Awards, April 11, 2021, February 28, 2021, February 3, 2021, dead
• 'The Great,' 'Queen's Gambit,' 'Mrs. America' Take Early Wins at Writers Guild Awards 2021 (Updating Live), Variety, March 21, 2021
• Producers Guild Awards Winners (Updating Live), Variety, March 24, 2021
• DGA Awards: Chloe Zhao and 'Nomadland' Take Top Honor, The Hollywood Reporter, April 10, 2021, April 10, 2021
• USC Scripter Awards: 'Nomadland' and 'Queen's Gambit' Named Best Adaptations, Scott, Feinberg, The Hollywood Reporter, March 14, 2021
• Emmy Nominations: 'The Crown', 'The Mandalorian' Top List; HBO/HBO Max Edges Netflix For Top Spot – Full List Of Nominees, Deadline, Patrick, Hipes, July 13, 2021, July 13, 2021

External links