William Goldman comes from a literature background. In his early twenties he wrote many short stories, without success. Later he wrote novels and a handful of plays that are responsible for three Broadway flops. Further, Cliff Robertson rejected Goldman’s first screenplay in the mid sixties.

Lee Martin finished high school, started to work in business, and later went to night classes. He became an attorney but soon dropped out of that to be a full time writer of every sort of genres. People like Terry Porter and Jack Thompson sustained his first steps into the film industry.

After high school, Shirley Tallman worked as a flight attendant. Later she came into journalism, writing a newspaper column. Eventually she began writing novels and had success. Today she also writes screenplays, mostly in co-authorship with Nancy Hersage.

Quentin Tarantino started his professional career with some rather strange jobs and ended up in Video Archive where he spent five years, during which he got to know Roger Avary who came from a film academy. Both used to talk a lot about movies and, so, inspired producer John Langley, who hired them as production assistants. Working in Cinetel productions, they wrote their first screenplay, Reservoir Dogs.