Ted Tally

Ted Tally (born April 9, 1952) is an Academy Award winning American playwright and screenwriter. He was born in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and grew up in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Career

Screenwriter

Born William Theodore Tally in North Carolina, Tally was educated at Yale College and the Yale School of Drama, and has also taught at each of them. His most notable credit is the screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Screenplay as well as the Writers Guild of America Award, Chicago Film Critics Award and an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America. Other scripts include White Palace, Before and After, Outbreak, and All the Pretty Horses.

After declining to write the screenplay for Hannibal, Tally returned to the Hannibal Lecter franchise to write Red Dragon. When asked by Inside Film Online magazine why he opted not to write the screenplay for Hannibal, he responded, "For a lot of reasons. I didn't like the book. The director, Jonathan Demme, and I read it and were horrified. We didn't see how we could make a movie from it that we could be proud of and not feel sleazy about it, without making it a totally different story, which we could have done on our own. It was upsetting because we had a friendship with Tom Harris and felt we owed him a lot. But he was defensive and didn't want anything changed and it was frustrating because it would have been the biggest payday for all of us, putting us up there in Spielberg territory." ^[1]

Playwright

In addition to Terra Nova, which won an Obie Award, and Coming Attractions, which won the Outer Critics Circle Award, Tally's plays include Hooters, Little Footsteps, and Silver Linings. His television scripts include The Comedy Zone, Hooters, Terra Nova for BBC-TV, and The Father Clements Story which won him the Christopher Award. His other honors include fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation.

Other activities

Tally is also credited as an associate producer for Mission to Mars (2000), as well as creative consultant for Madagascar (2005) and story consultant for Shrek 2 (2004).

He has attended various film festivals in Los Angeles, CA and Austin, TX.

Personal life

Tally lives with his wife and two children in Pennsylvania, outside of Philadelphia, in Bucks County.

References

External links

• Ted Tally at the Internet Movie Database
• Times 1982 review of Hooters
• Hooters on Amazon.com
• Filmmaker Interviews