Screenplays

Kennedy’s literary successes opened the door to the world of movie-making. A long-time cinema enthusiast and movie reviewer, he co-scripted “The Cotton Club” (1986) with Francis Ford Coppola.  He also wrote the screenplay for “Ironweed” (1987), directed by Hector Babenco and starring Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep, (both actors were nominated for Academy Awards).  As he told Emma Brockes in The Guardian in 2012, he has been informed as a writer as much by cinema as by reading: “The perception of action:  I’ve been going to movies all my life, since the early 1930s. This had to have an effect.  It got into my blood.”

THE COTTON CLUB (1986) and IRONWEED (1987)