Ray Morton is an author, screenwriter, and film historian.
He has written seven books including KING KONG: THE HISTORY OF A MOVIE ICON and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND: THE MAKING OF STEVEN SPIELBERG’S CLASSIC FILM and contributed to many others. He has written teleplays, worked as a story and screenplay consultant, and was a columnist for Script Magazine and Scriptmag.com.
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Ray was a guest on this podcast hosted by film critic Adam Long, discussing producer George Lucas' innovative 1979 sequel to his 1973 classic American Graffiti.
Ray is a contributor to this first installment of this two-part oral history of Planet of the Apes film series.
"Along with the James Bond series, Apes actually pioneered the concept of the cinematic franchise as it is now understood...like all of the best science fiction film and television, the series spoke to the issues and anxieties of the day...in an entertaining, action-adventure format that audiences could and did eagerly embrace."
Ray is one of the primary on-camera contributors to this exciting 6-part television series from Nacelle that chronicles the making of the first six Star Wars movies. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
The commentary track Ray recorded for Shout Factory's 2021 Collector's Edition blu-ray of King Kong (1976) has been included (along with many of that disc's other special features) on this brand new 2022 4K restoration of the film from Studio Canal.
Ray has conributed a chapter on the 1976 version of King Kong to this new collection of essays on the work of the great Franco-British director John Guillermin, edited by John's widow Mary Guillermin.
“Yeah, I know what to do with the monkey”
With those words, John Guillermin undertook what became the highest profile——as well as one of the most challenging—films of his career: the 1976 remake of King Kong. That Guillermin would helm the redo may have been inevitable, since Kong `76’s producer Dino De Laurentiis was initially inspired to update the 1933 RKO-Radio Pictures classic by the success of Guillermin’s The Towering Inferno.
Ray is a contributor to this epic new oral history of Superman by Edward Gross
"Superman...connects directly with one of the most basic of human desires: to know that there is more to us than what appears to be on the surface -- that beneath our seemingly ordinay exteriors lies something great and powerful and wonderful. No other superhero character addresses this dream more exactly or directly."
For twenty years, Ray wrote the “Meet The Reader” column for Scriptmag.com, in which he reflected on the art, craft, and business of screenwriting.
Here's one of his classic columns: "Where the Script Takes You"
