Alvin Sargent, an Oscar-winning screenwriter whose career ran a frankly ludicrous gamut of genres, with some remarkable degrees of success, has died. Sargent—who won Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay for 1977's Julia, and for 1980's much celebrated portrait of all-consuming, family-destroying grief, Ordinary People—was 92.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, Sargent was born in Philadelphia, and originally broke into the writing world via TV, where he penned scrips for shows like Route 66 and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1966 he co-wrote the Shirley MacLaine comedy Gambit (not that Gambit), working with prolific comedy writer Jack Davies to plan out the film’s heist-based and farcical plot. With a foot in the cinematic door, he worked prolifically in film for the next several decades, bouncing from dramas like Gregory Peck’s I Walk The Line (1970), to Peter Bogdanovich’s con artist caper Paper Moon (1973), to the Bill Murray goofiness of What About Bob? and the full-on, high-flying superhero action of movies like Spider-Mans 2, 3, and The Amazing. (Yes, that Spider-Man.)