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).
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.
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.
Has directed 2 actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Sam Shepard, and Geoffrey Rush.
Attended high school with director William Friedkin.

[on Fred Ward] He's the first cult actor of 2000.
I shot a lot of close-ups on this movie 'cause there's like a dual mystery, she's searching through her haunted past to find some truth and she's also following an external mystery where she comes to think she might be the killer.
[on Ashley Judd's character driving a jet black Mustang in Twisted (2004)] That's a direct homage to Bullitt (1968). And we looked a lot at Steve McQueen. In a way we wanted to have a woman character with the kind of energy that Steve McQueen had. Even though Steve McQueen was a huge star in his day, my feeling is that he was underrated. Now that Steve McQueen's gone, we miss him. I don't know of anybody who has that kind of kinetic energy that he brought to bear in movies like that.[2004]
That's a little homage in a way to that and also to create that sort of creepy atmosphere that Hitchcock did. Vertigo (1958) was one of his great movies that was shot right here in The City [San Francisco] and it's about a woman and the psychological twists and so forth.[2004]
It just seemed to me to be a great story, set back in its time but something that seemed to have relevance for our time. Now that the film is coming out, it looks like we're back in another time where repression of expression is all the rage.