In Hollywood, lives are shortened all the time by envy and jealousy, but only screenwriters die of encouragement. People are happy to tell writers how much they adore their scripts, but actually getting them made is a whole other story. You can win an Oscar and still put in years of struggle trying to get your next project going.
But here's one exception: Robert Mark Kamen. And he has the world's greatest writing partner, a crazy French film visionary who has made a string of action-thriller hits, is building his own film studio and -- dream of all screenwriter's dreams -- doesn't ever rewrite Kamen's work.
If this were a script, it would be an offbeat buddy picture. At 61, Kamen is the crafty old veteran, with credits going back to 1981's "Taps" (which gave Tom Cruise his first major role) and 1984's "The Karate Kid." His writing partner is Luc Besson, the celebrated French director who burst to prominence with a series of visually striking thrillers, most notably "La Femme Nikita," "The Professional" and "The Fifth Element." Despite his success as a director, it turned out that Besson's real dream was to produce international hits and start his own studio. He's well on his way.
The year's biggest action hit, "Taken," which has grossed $118 million and is still the No. 3 box-office movie after five weeks in release, was produced by Besson and co-written by Kamen. The duo have collaborated on a string of action thrillers, beginning with 1997's "The Fifth Element." They also worked on Jet Li's "Kiss of the Dragon" (2001) and "Unleashed" (2005).
But more notably, Besson and Kamen are behind the "Transporter" action film franchise. Besson has become the model of an international film producer, making action films -- like "Taken" -- that play just as well in Europe and Asia as in the United States but cost far less than a movie made by a Hollywood studio. Besson has already broken ground on a Paris-based studio that will feature 10 soundstages, post-production facilities, a cinema craft school, a five-screen multiplex and considerable office space.
But to build this empire, Besson knew he needed an inside man -- an old Hollywood pro who could be, as he put it, his "pet American." He found the perfect partner in Kamen, a wisecracking New York-based screenwriter whose well-honed ability to construct an action movie not only rests on his credited scripts -- he co-wrote "Lethal Weapon 3" -- but also on the time he put in from 1988 through 1992 serving as an uncredited in-house script fixer at Warners, rewriting such films as "The Fugitive," "Under Siege" and "The Devil's Advocate" before they went into production. (Kamen jokingly calls himself "the script assassin.")
