Scott Frank Discusses The Films He’s Worked On As A Script Doctor, Including ‘Saving Private Ryan,’ ‘Gravity’ And “A Lot Of The X-Men Movies”

In a recent New Yorker profile, Craig Mazin, who wrote The Last of Us and Chernobyl, calls Queen’s Gambit co-creator Scott Frank “one of the best screenwriters of all time.”

Long a known quantity for Get Shorty, Out of Sight, A Walk Among the Tombstones, Marley and Me, The Wolverine and Logan, Frank opens up to the magazine about his less-recognized work: The nearly 60 films he has worked on as a script doctor, earning at times $300,000 a week.

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Among the films on that less-well-known list are, according to the piece, Saving Private Ryan, The Ring, Gravity, Night at the Museum, Unfaithful, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Night at the Museum and, says Frank, “a lot of the X-Men movies.” Which ones? “I don’t remember their titles,” he said.

“Ninety-percent of what I get called in on is character work,” Frank told The New Yorker. But Paul Thomas Anderson maintained that Frank also has a master’s understanding of structure.

“He’s a formalist, and I mean that as the highest compliment,” Anderson said. “It’s what I always admired and wanted to emulate. He understood classic structure in a way most people can’t ever grasp.”

Frank downplays the accolades.

“I’m a bit of a hack,” he once said.

Of his success, he told the New Yorker, “I find myself very content, not particularly tormented. Even my demons have gotten bored.”

Frank’s next project is Monsieur Spade for AMC, on which he and Tom Fontana serve as co-creators, writers and executive producers. Frank also serves as director.

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