Benedict Fitzgerald
Writing
Biography
Benedict Fitzgerald (March 9, 1949 – January 17, 2024) was an American screenwriter who co-wrote the screenplay for the 2004 film The Passion of the Christ with its director, Mel Gibson. His other writing credits include an uncredited television screenplay for Moby Dick in 1998 and Wise Blood in 1979. He was a consulting producer on the Paramount+ television series Evil.
Known For
A graphic portrayal of the last twelve hours of Jesus of Nazareth's life.
The Passion of the Christ
In the deep south during the 1930s, three escaped convicts search for hidden treasure while a relentless lawman pursues them.
O Brother, Where Art Thou?
At the end of the 1950s, in a more innocent America, the brutal, meaningless slaying of a Midwestern family horrified the nation. This film is based on Truman Capote's hauntingly detailed, psychologically penetrating nonfiction novel. While in prison, Dick Hickock, 20, hears a cell-mate's story about $10,000 in cash kept in a home safe by a prosperous rancher. When he's paroled, Dick persuades ex-con Perry Smith, also 20, to join him in going after the stash. On a November night in 1959, Dick and Perry break into the Holcomb, Kansas, house of Herb Clutter. Enraged at finding no safe, they wake the sleeping family and brutally kill them all. The bodies are found by two friends who come by before Sunday church. The murders shock the small Great Plains town, where doors are routinely left unlocked. Detective Alvin Dewey of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation heads the case, but there are no clues, no apparent motive and no suspects...
In Cold Blood
A Southerner--young, poor, ambitious but uneducated--determines to become something in the world. He decides that the best way to do that is to become a preacher and start up his own church.
Wise Blood
A trading company manager travels up an African river to find a missing outpost head and discovers the depth of evil in humanity's soul.
Heart of Darkness
Famous 1920s modernist writer F. Scott Fitzgerald and his eccentric Flapper socialite wife Zelda Sayre's relationship began quite passionately, but he slowly fell into alcoholism and she was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.
Zelda
The screenwriter offers some background on Huston's film.