Luciano Vincenzoni

One of the notable peaks of Italian screenwriter Luciano Vincenzoni's career came during a golden era of his country's film industry: the 1960s. He won Best Screenplay honors from the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists for the sprawling '64 comedy-drama "Seduced and Abandoned" and then again in '66 for the episode comedy "The Birds, the Bees and the Italians." But it was his parallel collaborations with the maestro of spaghetti westerns, Sergio Leone, that cemented his reputation abroad. Thanks to the success of "For a Few Dollars More" ('65) and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" ('66), Vincenzoni was off to the races in pretty much any genre he wanted, working on a variety of domestic and international productions. One of his strangest later collaborations was the '92 comedy "Once Upon a Crime. ." in '92; directed by Eugene Levy, it featured John Candy, Cybill Shepherd, James Belushi, and Richard Lewis. Although the movie didn't do well with the critics, it found an appreciative audience through TV airings and a DVD release.