Lem Dobbs

Lem Dobbs first collaborated with Steven Soderbergh on Kafka, starring Jeremy Irons and Sir Alec Guinness. A second collaboration resulted in the critically acclaimed The Limey, starring Terence Stamp and Peter Fonda. More recently, Dobbs co-wrote heist movie The Score, directed by Frank Oz, which teamed acting heavyweights Robert De Niro, Marlon Brando and Edward Norton.

The son of prominent American artist R.B. Kitaj, Dobbs was born and raised in England. A year spent in Hollywood, where his father was visiting professor at UCLA, fueled his lifelong passion for movies. Dobbs was able to meet such filmmaking legends as John Ford, Billy Wilder, George Cukor and Jean Renoir.

While a student at the American School in London, Dobbs worked part-time in the famed Cinema Bookshop. He returned to Los Angeles at the age of 18 to write screenplays, including the legendary unproduced script Edward Ford. Another script, The Marvel of the Haunted Castle, led to his tenure at 20th Century Fox as the youngest writer ever put under long-term contract by a studio.

Dobbs’ other films include John Badham’s The Hard Way, starring Michael J. Fox and James Woods, and the landmark science-fiction thriller Dark City, directed by Alex Proyas and declared the best film of 1998 by Roger Ebert. The film also won the prestigious Saturn Award for best sci-fi film, the Bram Stoker Award from the Horror Writers Association of America and the Australian Film Critics Circle Award for best screenplay. Both The Limey and Dark City were honored as official selections of the Cannes Film Festival.

As a film historian, Dobbs has contributed articles to such journals as the British Film Institute’s Sight & Sound and provided DVD commentaries for the films Double Indemnity, The Sand Pebbles and Von Ryan’s Express.

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