The Amazing Leigh Brackett

Consider this--Leigh Brackett wrote or cowrote the following films:

Howard Hawks' classic private eye flick THE BIG SLEEP
Robert Altman's revisionist PI flick THE LONG GOODBYE
Hawks' John Wayne western classic RIO BRAVO
The Hawks/Wayne remake of RB, El DORADO
and THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

That's a heap of different tones and textures, genres and genre-revisionism to come from the typewriter of one person.

I have a new piece up about Brackett over at Criminal Element called Adventures In Screenwriting. Check it out.

You might also like this, a pretty-damn delightful personal essay Brackett wrote at the time of her first publication in the sci-fi mag AMAZING STORIES. The first line sets the tone: "In quite undramatic fashion, I began by being born."