John Briley

Richard John Briley (June 25, 1925 As well as film scripts, he wrote for television and theatre, and published several novels. He left MGM in 1964. and the film was critically panned. Several scripts for Attenborough's Gandhi project had been rejected, and Robert Bolt was scheduled to rewrite his own earlier draft when he suffered a stroke.

Later life In 1985, Briley began developing a musical about Martin Luther King Jr., A different version opened in London in 1990. Briley attempted to obtain an injunction, claiming he had paid the King family $200,000 in personality rights. In 1998, he was a founding partner of "the Film Makers Company", a venture intended to encourage film production in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and was planning to relocate to there. He was given a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Big Bear Lake International Film Festival in 2000. He died on December 14, 2019, aged 94.

Unproduced scripts Unproduced scripts on which Briley worked include: adaptations of Henderson the Rain King, and his own novel How Sleep the Brave; Robert Hunter (Warriors of the Rainbow) – to have been directed by Renny Harlin, Tina Modotti (A Fragile Life), Beryl Markham (West with the Night), and Pope John Paul II; The Cross and the Crescent, and a miniseries about the Italian Renaissance. Briley's adaptation of Arthur Miller's play The Crucible was dropped when Miller's son Robert secured production rights; Arthur Miller himself wrote the screenplay for the 1996 film.

Works

Film Title Year Notes The Populist Molokai: The Story of Father Damien 1999 about Father Damien and the Kalaupapa Leper Colony; also associate producer. The Warriors of the Rainbow Sandino The Medusa Touch 1999 television History Channel documentary The First Stone Mary Sidney – a 20th Century Reappraisal 1985 book chapter In a festschrift for Willem Schrickx The Last Dance So Who Needs Men! The Traitors Richard Rhodes reviewed the novel in the New York Times as, "Bitter reality... it all might have happened... the terrible thing is that it ever had to." The Chicago Sun-Times called it, "A magnificent blockbuster of a book. If you can find the time to read only one book this year, let The Traitors be that book." David Schoenbrun of CBS said, "It captures the tragedy and comedy, in the classic sense, of that absurd aberration of American history." Shirley K. Sullivan of KTIB Radio called it, "Unsettling, haunting... a proper shocker," and the Saturday Review of Literature urged, "Read it for his explosive accounts of jungle warfare and his moral passion." Described by Peter S. Prescott as "a sermon masquerading as a novel". UK edition (1971) titled How Sleep the Brave The Airbase 1964 theatre "a short-lived, intimate revue which satirised American values and attitudes"; Briley also acted in it. Televised on BBC2 as See America First on November 28, 1964. Hits and Misses Edward Alleyn and Henslowe's Will 1958 journal article in Shakespeare QuarterlyOf Stake and Stage 1955 book chapter in Shakespeare Survey