Jeff Vintar

Jeff Vintar (1964 in Oak Park, Illinois) is an American screenwriter.

Vintar is most known for his screenplay "Hardwired", which became the basis for the Will Smith film "I, Robot". He attended the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, where he completed his thesis of short stories, including "The Big Oops", "Opportunity Community Goes to the Zoo", and "The Johnny Jumps", and published a series of bizarre satirical cartoons in several issues of Random House's "The Quarterly", before leaving to pursue a career in Hollywood. Carving out a living during those early years as a factory worker, cabinet-maker, English teacher, and transit bus driver, Vintar broke into the business when he sold three original screenplays in the span of six months. The first, "The Long Hello and Short Goodbye", was made into a German-language film by Warner Bros. in 1999, featuring German cinema star Katja Riemann. The cutting-edge structure of the story created concern for the producers, who re-edited the neo-noir into a more simple linear film, a move which polarized critics and audiences alike. An English-language version of Vintar's original "Long Hello" script struggled to reach the screen for many years under "Moebius" director Gustavo Mosquera and "Face/Off" director-producer John Woo. The second screenplay, "Spaceless", has remained in active development for a decade, first at specialty division Fox 2000, then Fox Animation, and finally at the main live-action division of Twentieth Century Fox. The script is a pet project of Gore Verbinski, who directed "The Ring" and "Pirates of the Caribbean". The third spec sale, "Hardwired", survived development hell at Walt Disney Pictures under director Bryan Singer, who was just coming off "The Usual Suspects", only to be picked up by Twentieth Century Fox for "The Crow's" Alex Proyas. The resulting film, eventually re-named by the studio "I, Robot" after the Isaac Asimov short story collection, made $350 million worldwide and boosted the career of star Will Smith, who had been coming off several poorly-received films. Vintar's "Hardwired" and early "I, Robot" drafts remain well-known within the industry for their smarts, while the finished film was re-drafted for star Smith as an action-heavy summer blockbuster, though general audiences seemed to have accepted it as a popcorn movie with a surprising amount of brains. While his original screenplays have struggled through the usual development hell, Vintar has carved out a niche for himself writing edgy adaptations of sci-fi literary classics, including Frederik Pohl's "Gateway", Isaac Asimov's "Foundation", Cordwainer Smith's "Scanners Live in Vain", and Greg Bear's "Blood Music"--all of which remain in active development. Other screenplays include early drafts of the comic book properties "Iron Man", co-written with Stan Lee, and "Y--the Last Man", as well as the rewrite of "Final Fantasy" that originally landed the ground-breaking animated film its high-profile voice cast. Vintar has an increasingly well-known collection of sci-fi pulps and digests from the golden age of science-fiction, and regularly blogs on several internet sites in which he supports young writers, instructing them to "Keep the faith and keep on writing!" He is married to Michele McCain, a well-respected teacher of the blind and visually-impaired, who has spent the last several years raising their daughter, and working as script and story editor.

Filmography

*"I, Robot" (2004)
*"" (released as "Fainaru Fantaji" in Japan) (2001)
*"Long Hello and Short Goodbye" (1999)

External links

*imdb name|id=0899113