- Born
- Died
- Ronald Shusett was born to David and Fanny Shusett in June 1935. His younger brother Gary (1941 - 2013) founded the Sherwood Oaks Film School. When Ronald was three the family moved from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles where he grew up. He attended UCLA for two years and in the mid-1960s began producing stage plays. Over the next few years he wrote several stories for publication, including the ideas for screenplays and in 1974 he met Dan O' Bannon, with whom he would write 'Alien' and 'Total Recall', subsequently contributing to other films largely in the horror genre.- IMDb mini biography by: don @ minifie-1
- SpouseLinda Shusett(October 1, 1976 - August 29, 2024) (his death)
- He first optioned the short story, We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, in 1974. This short story was the basis for the movie Total Recall (1990).
- The story "Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick was originally adapted as a sequel to Total Recall (1990) by writers Ronald Shusett and Gary Goldman (later joined by Robert Goethals). The setting was changed to Mars with the Precogs being people mutated by the Martian atmosphere, as established in the first film. The main character was also changed to Douglas Quaid, the man played by Arnold Schwarzenegger. The project eventually fell apart but the writers, who still owned the rights to the original story, rewrote the script, removing the elements from Total Recall (1990). This script was eventually tossed out when novelist Jon Cohen was hired in 1997 to start the project over from scratch. The only original element from the early script which made it to the final Minority Report (2002) film is the sequence in the car factory, an idea that Spielberg loved.
- The February 17, 1989 draft of the screenplay for Échec et mort (1990) credits Steven Pressfield & Ronald Shusett & Steven Seagal as writers. Pressfield & Shusett are not credited in the final film and Seagal only received an acting credit.
- Brother of Gary Shusett.
- My loves are science fiction in every form, as well as the dark Jim Thompson/James M. Cain type of film noir. Most of my career I see alternating between suspense and SF. There will probably be very little I'll do outside of those genres, since I seem to gravitate so strongly toward them.
- I've never written a screenplay by myself. And with good reason. There's one aspect of screenwriting I'm weak at -- character development. I always had a natural gift for the storytelling as well as the film's big moments -- whether it be suspense, action and high-powered imaginative scenes. But when it came to fleshing out the people, the more realistic, mundane aspects of a script that are critical to have you care about the people, I was always mediocre.
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