Brooklyn, N.Y.—Over the past year, two former students of the Brooklyn College Film Department, Oren Moverman and Michael Martin, have been making a big splash in the entertainment industry.
A winner of the Silver Bear Award for the best script at the 2009 Berlin Film Festival, Moverman saw his movie The Messenger, released in the United States last November.
Starring Ben Foster, Woody Harrelson and Samantha Morton, the movie narrates the consequences of war without actually showing scenes of carnage. Instead, Foster and Harrelson play officers who, after completing their tours in Iraq, are reassigned stateside with a new mission—to inform the designated relatives of a soldier that their loved one has become a casualty of war. This complex story about grief cowritten with Alessandro Camon is Moverman’s directorial debut. The script has been nominated for an Academy Award, while Harrelson has been nominated for best supporting actor.
A former Israeli soldier who moved to the United States in 1988, Moverman has cowritten other screenplays, such as Jesus Son, and a Bob Dylan biopic, I’m Not There, both with Todd Haynes. Two other scripts are currently in production, including William Burroughs’ Queers, for actor/director Steve Buscemi.
Michael Martin, who was featured in the fall 2008 issue of Brooklyn College Magazine, is the brain behind the script for Brooklyn’s Finest, which is about to open in major movie theaters.
Directed by Anton Fuqua of Training Day fame, the movie was shot in the streets of East New York, where Martin grew up. It stars Richard Gere, Don Cheadle and Ethan Hawke, all of whom liked Martin’s compelling script so much that they were more than willing to take pay cuts in order to be part of it.
Martin was still in physical therapy, recovering from a car accident, when his script came in second in a screenwriting competition. But Brooklyn’s Finest caught the interest of a Hollywood agent, who pitched it to a producer, who optioned it. The rest is cinematic history.