Zachary Sklar

Zachary Sklar is a screenwriter, journalist, author and editor. He is best known as co-author, with Oliver Stone, of the Academy Award-nominated screenplay for the film JFK. He recently completed a second feature screenplay, Mediocracy, for Stone's Ixtlan Productions, and is currently working on three others. Sklar has served as a creative adviser for screenwriting labs at Sundance (Utah), Sundance International (Mexico, Brazil and Spain), and Equinoxe (France). Author of a novel, The Lettuce Fields, Sklar also co-wrote (with Marvin Barrett) a book of media criticism, The Eye of the Storm: The DuPont-Columbia Survey of Broadcast Journalism. As a freelance journalist, he has written for many publications, including The New York Times, Geo, Scenario, and The Nation. Sklar has edited numerous non-fiction books, including the number-one-bestselling On the Trail of the Assassins by Jim Garrison, from which the film JFK was adapted; Profits of War by former Israeli intelligence operative Ari Ben-Menashe; Deadly Deceits by former CIA case officer Ralph McGehee; Footnote on an Historic Case: In Re Alger Hiss by William A. Reuben; and Brilliant Bylines: Notable Newspaperwomen in America by Barbara Belford. Sklar taught at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism for a decade and served as Executive Editor of The Nation, the oldest weekly in the country, and as Editor of Juris Doctor, a monthly legal magazine. In addition to his Oscar nomination, Sklar also received best screenplay award nominations for JFK from the Writers Guild of America, the Golden Globes, the Mystery Writers of America, and the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.