Tom Wolfe

Born in 1931 in Richmond, (Virginia), Thomas Kennezly Wolfe Jr. dreamed of being a writer from a very young age. He studied English Literature in Washington, and later, in 1957, received his Ph.D. in Philosophy. He first worked for the Massachusetts newspaper ‘La Union’, and from 1962 as a reporter for Esquire, The New York Herald Tribune and the Washington Post. In the latter, he revolutionized the way of telling news, with the support of Clay Felker, the director, through articles in which he recounted what happened scene by scene, with supposedly authentic dialogues. He wrote four novels, an enormous number of short stories, poetry, and works theatrical.

One of his features led to  William Roberts ‘s The Last American Hero ,  with  Jeff Bridges  as race car driver Junior Johnson, renamed Junior Jackson on screen. One of his great novels, “What you have to have”, gave rise to  Chosen for Glory , an excellent film by  Philip Kaufman  about the aeronautical pilots who became the first astronauts. Brian de Palma did not have the same fortune  , with  The Bonfire of the Vanities , another of his most important titles, with an dispensable adaptation, in which  Tom Hanks embodies an executive who begins to accumulate misfortunes. In addition, he worked as a film co-writer, co-writing the script for  Heroes by Chance , an inspired parody of the western that went unnoticed on the billboards.