Chayefsky is like a small, affable tornado…. His characters are famous for their loquacity and it's easy to see where they get it.

Chayefsky began earning the respect of critics during the Fifties. At first, he wrote as a naturalist, mapping the folkways of lower middle class New Yorkers, cupping his ear to catch the unique flavor of their speech in Marty and in his play The Middle of the Night (1956). He later wrote slightly more avantgarde theater pieces, cultivating a mystical strain in The Tenth Man (1959) and in the biblical drama Gideon (1961)….

In his latest, finest incarnation, Chayefsky has been reborn as a surreal satirist…. Social satire has never been a rarer commodity in American films than today, and Chayefsky's Swiftian ferocity exhilarates audiences.

As a satirist, Chayefsky is no less fascinated by language than he was as a naturalist. He has given his movie creatures a...