Wesley Strick

This former New York-based journalist for rock-music oriented magazines such as Circus, Creem and Rolling Stone wrote his first screenplay, "Final Analysis" in 1984. Finally filmed in 1991, the psychological thriller concerns a psychiatrist who has a romance with a patient's sister. Wesley Strick is noted for the psychological dimensions of his characters like the disillusioned former idealistic lawyer and his enthusiastic protege in the courtroom drama, "True Believer" (1989), the small town doctor who is deathly afraid of spiders in the comic thriller, "Arachnophobia" (1990) and most importantly his reworking of the 1962 thriller, "Cape Fear" (1991) in which the perfect American family of the original becomes a dysfunctional group, with Nick Nolte, now a philandering lawyer who did not properly defend his client; Jessica Lange, an unforgiving and still angry wife; and Juliette Lewis, a 15-year old on the cusp of womanhood, psychologically seduced by psycho parolee Robert De Niro in one of the most disturbing and discussed film scenes of 1991. He co-wrote (with Jim Hart) the screenplay for the Jack Nicholson starrer "Wolf" (1994) and made his feature directorial debut with the psychological thriller "The Tie That Binds" (1995). He subsequently contributed to the scripts for "The Saint" (1997) and "Return to Paradise" (1998) before receiving solo credit on the thriller "The Glass House" (2001).