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Victor Miller | |
|---|---|
| Born | Victor Brooke Miller (1940-05-14)May 14, 1940 (age 85) New Orleans, Louisiana |
| Occupations | Actor, film writer |
| Years active | 1968–present |
| Spouse | |
| Website | victormiller |
Victor Brooke Miller (born May 14, 1940) is an Americanwriter forfilm andtelevision. He is best known for his screenplay of the originalFriday the 13th film, the popularity of which spawned a longseries of sequels. Miller was not involved with any of the sequels, though he remains credited for creating the characters ofJason Voorhees, his motherPamela Voorhees, and the heroineAlice Hardy.
He has also written for several daytime television series, for which he has won threeDaytime Emmy Awards. His television work includesGuiding Light,One Life to Live,Another World, andAll My Children. Much of his tenure of several shows has been working underhead writerMegan McTavish.
Miller was born inNew Orleans, Louisiana, the son of John Dabney and Barbara Leovy Miller. He attendedMilton Academy inMilton, Massachusetts, andYale inNew Haven, Connecticut, where he says he took every creative writing course offered.[1] Beginning in 1962, he worked in TV programming for a year withStuart Erwin, Lee Rich, Irwin Segelstein, and Phil Capice atBenton & Bowles Advertising inNew York City. He co-founded of theAmerican Shakespeare Theatre's Center for Theatre Techniques in Education and attendedHerbert Berghof's playwriting class in New York City.
Friday the 13th is Miller's most successful film, grossing $59,754,601 worldwide on a very low budget of $550,000. The original is the only one of the series that had Miller's involvement; it grew into along series of sequels and became the highest grossing horror franchise in the United States, earning a worldwide total of $465,239,523.
Miller says he hasn't seen any of the otherFriday the 13th films because he does not approve ofJason Voorhees being the killer rather than Jason'smother as she was in the original.[2] Miller has been involved in a protracted lawsuit to gain the rights to the firstFriday the 13th film. The issue turned on whether Miller's was a "work for hire", resolved on September 30, 2021, when the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided otherwise; consequently, Miller had the right to terminate rights to his work.[3] For Copyright Act purposes, as a screenwriter, Victor Miller was an independent contractor of the film production company (Manny, Inc.) in 1979, when Miller wrote the screenplay (the film was released in 1980). The court concluded that copyright law, not labor law, controlled the "work for hire" determination, and thus affirmed the district court's grant of summary judgment to Miller.[4]
He adapted two novels into films:A Stranger Is Watching byMary Higgins Clark was adapted into the1982 film of the same name and the 1967 young adult novelThe Black Pearl byScott O'Dell into the1977 film of the same name. His horror filmRock Paper Dead was released in 2018[5] and he has co-written the script for the horror thrillerEden Falls.[6]
Miller is the third of four children. He married Elizabeth (Tina) Couzens Thurston in 1962.[1][7]
He was the author of several books titled, Telly SalavasKojak in a numbered series. The books were published in New York byPocket Books between 1974 through 1975. Several reprints were published by Star Books in the U.K. without the series number, but with same title. The series:
Other books:
