Carlton Cuse On John Krasinski In Amazon's 'Jack Ryan'
It was 1982 when Carlton Cuse moved to Los Angeles with the idea of becoming a screenwriter. “I thought, I’ll give it a shot; if it doesn’t work out, I’ll go to law school.”
Television wasn’t in his plans. “The gloss of the film business was much higher then,” he says. “Of course, now TV has become the home for really great dramatic storytelling. I recently had the president of a studio tell me that they can’t find any good writers for movies. They’re all working in TV.”
Cuse’s “graduate school for screenwriting” came from working with Jeffrey Boam, who wrote Lethal Weapon 2 and 3 and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. At night, he drafted his own scripts, all of which went nowhere. “I had read about Larry Kasdan’s seven unproduced scripts before he an incredible run that included Body Heat, Grand Canyon, The Big Chill, The Empire Strikes Back and Raiders of the Lost Ark,” says Cuse. “That inspired me to keep going, to put in the hours to achieve some level of craftsmanship.”
A writing break came via a friend, who offered him two scripts for the TV series Crime Story, created by Michael Mann (Miami Vice, Heat). It was the beginning of a career that, 32 years later, includes co-creating Lost—widely considered among the greatest television shows ever.
His own favorite series is : “I’m in awe of
