Wes Craven
Volker Flenske: (While torturing David) I don't know why you're doing this to yourself!

Screenwriters:
-Quentin Tarantino
-Oliver Stone
-John Hughes
-Kevin Smith
-James Cameron
Writers:
-Stephen King
-Hunter S Thompson
-Anthony Burgess

With 836 writing credits currently listed on IMDbWilliam Shakespeare!
And I,like one lost in a thorny wood,
That rends the thorns and is rent with the thorns,
Seeking a way and straying from the way;
Not knowing how to find the open air,
But toiling desperately to find it out,
Torment myself to catch the English crown:
And from that torment I will free myself,
Or hew my way out with a bloody axe.
Why, I can smile, and murder whiles I smile,
And cry 'Content' to that which grieves my heart,
And wet my cheeks with artificial tears,
And frame my face to all occasions.
I'll drown more sailors than the mermaid shall;
I'll slay more gazers than the basilisk;
I'll play the orator as well as Nestor,
Deceive more slily than Ulysses could,
And, like a Sinon, take another Troy.
I can add colours to the chameleon,
Change shapes with Proteus for advantages,
And set the murderous Machiavel to school.
Can I do this, and cannot get a crown?
Tut, were it farther off, I'll pluck it down.
Henry VI, Part 3 Act III sc ii
I've lived upon the edge of chance for 20 years or more
Del Rio's Song

Screenwriters:
Alvin Sargent
Robert Towne (mostly because of CHINATOWN, a masterwork by any standard)
Leigh Brackett
Billy Wilder
Joseph L. Mankiewicz
William Goldman
Paddy Chayefsky
Novelists/Non-fiction writers:
Norman Mailer
Walt Whitman
Hunter S. Thompson
Gore Vidal
Jack Kerouac
John Steinbeck
Thomas Pynchon
Raymond Chandler
Stephen King
"and you can't come because you DON'T SPEAK FRENCH!"

In terms of understanding writing structure? Mikhail Bakhtin.
In terms of just an author I feel I can emulate in my own small way? Spalding Gray.
Writer I most admire overall? Dostoevsky.
Writer I'm most daunted by? Pynchon.
Favorite novel? 'The Magic Mountain' (Thomas Mann).
"God rot all 'good men'."

John Barth
Great but Forgotten movies:
http://greatbutforgotten.blogspot.com