Ray Morton is a writer, film historian, and script consultant.
He has written seven books including KING KONG: THE HISTORY OF A MOVIE ICON and CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND: THE MAKING OF STEVEN SPIELBERG’S CLASSIC FILM. Morton has also written for numerous publications, was a columnist for Script Magazine and Scriptmag.com, and works as a screenplay consultant.
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Ray is one of the primary on-camera contributors to this exciting 6-part television series from Nacelle that chronicles the making of the first six Star Wars movies. Currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
The commentary track Ray recorded for Shout Factory's 2021 Collector's Edition blu-ray of King Kong (1976) has been included (along with many of that disc's other special features) on this brand new 2022 4K restoration of the film from Studio Canal.
Ray is a contributor to this epic new oral history of Superman by Edward Gross
"Superman...connects directly with one of the most basic of human desires: to know that there is more to us than what appears to be on the surface -- that beneath our seemingly ordinay exteriors lies something great and powerful and wonderful. No other superhero character addresses this dream more exactly or directly."
Ray is a contributor to this excellent new oral history of the John Wick franchise by Ed Gross and Mark A. Altman.
"One of my favorite scenes...is the one in which Wick smashes his basement floor with a sledgehammer and literally digs up his past...It's the moment when the ordinary character we've been following ...becomes a mythic character."
Ray has conributed a chapter on the 1976 version of King Kong to this new collection of essays on the work of the great Franco-British director John Guillermin, edited by John's widow Mary Guillermin.
“Yeah, I know what to do with the monkey”
With those words, John Guillermin undertook what became the highest profile——as well as one of the most challenging—films of his career: the 1976 remake of King Kong. That Guillermin would helm the redo may have been inevitable, since Kong `76’s producer Dino De Laurentiis was initially inspired to update the 1933 RKO-Radio Pictures classic by the success of Guillermin’s The Towering Inferno.
Ray is one of the primary contributors to this excellent new oral history of the Star Wars saga from Edward Gross and Mark A. Altman
"George Lucas’s idea to make an A-budget movie in an extremely marginal and fairly disreputable genre was...definitely quirky, both creatively and commercially risky, and...unexpected, especially coming from the writer/director of a recent, mainstream hit. That Lucas was able to persuade Alan Ladd, Jr., to bankroll the development of such a project was...equally astonishing."
Ray was a guest on the Movie Geeks United podcast, discussing the 1976 version of King Kong.
“The 1976 King Kong was film that did what everyone thinks the original 1933 film did but acutally didn't -- add the Beauty and the Beast element to the Kong legend...”
For twenty years, Ray wrote the “Meet The Reader” column for Scriptmag.com, in which he reflected on the art, craft, and business of screenwriting.
Here's one of his classic columns: "Where the Script Takes You"