Philip Kaufman

Worked with George Lucas developing Lucas' "Indiana Jones" project, coming up with the basic story of the search for the Ark of the Covenant, leading to his story credit on Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981).

Kaufman's first hit as director was Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), a remake of Don Siegel's 1956 sci-fi classic (in fact, Siegel has a cameo in it as a cab driver), and later, Kaufman was nominated for an Oscar for Best Screenplay on Material from Another Medium in 1988 for The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988).

He was the screenwriter for The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and was to direct it but was replaced as director by Clint Eastwood.

He spent 8 months in the mid-1970s working on a script for a Star Trek movie. At this same time, his friend George Lucas was making the first Star Wars film. Due to the poor buzz surrounding Star Wars prior to its release, Paramount decided to pull the plug on Kaufman's Star Trek project, with one of the studio executives saying "there's no future in science fiction." His script, which centered on the character of Spock, was abandoned and Paramount went in another direction when they resumed production on the first Star Trek film following the success of Star Wars.

Director and screenwriter Philip Kaufman was born in Chicago, Illinois. He attended the University of Chicago and later Harvard Law School. He won the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at Cannes in 1965 for his film Goldstein (1964).

Met Anaïs Nin in 1962. Later, in 1990, he made a movie called Henry & June (1990) about her, her affairs with Henry Miller, and his wife June.

Biography in John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume Two, 1945-1985," pp. 492-495. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1988.