Now that I’ve finished my Clarence Thomas book—it’ll be out in September, pre-order it now—I’m catching up on my reading. Adina Hoffman’s Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures wasn’t first on my list, but once I picked it up, I couldn’t put it down. Hecht was a screenwriter, the force, or one of the forces, behind films like Scarface, Notorious, Twentieth Century, and many other films. “He invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood movies today,” said Godard. As Hoffman explains: Screwball comedy’s airborne patter; the brooding tones of the gangster saga; the newspaper farce and its hard-boiled banter—these were among Hecht’s signature modes, and whether or not he fathered these forms, he certainly played a major role in their upbringing. Hecht […]