Jay Cocks

John C. "Jay" Cocks Jr. (born January 12, 1944) is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is a graduate of Kenyon College. He was a critic for ''Time'', ''Newsweek'', and ''Rolling Stone'', among other magazines, before shifting to screenplay writing. Cocks married actress Verna Bloom in 1972. Bloom, with Cocks, had a son, Sam. Bloom died in 2019. They had a son, Sam, born in 1981.

As a screenwriter, he is notable for his collaborations with director Martin Scorsese, particularly ''The Age of Innocence'' and ''Gangs of New York'' — a screenplay he started working on in 1976 — as well as Kathryn Bigelow's ''Strange Days''. He did an uncredited rewrite of James Cameron's screenplay for ''Titanic'' and was, with Scorsese, the co-screenwriter of ''Silence''. Cocks and Scorsese approached author Philip K. Dick in 1969 for an adaptation of his 1968 novel ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'' Though the duo never optioned the book, it was later developed into the movie ''Blade Runner'' by screenwriter Hampton Fancher and director Ridley Scott.

Under the pseudonym "Joseph P. Gillis", Cocks and filmmaker Brian De Palma wrote a spec script for the crime drama television series ''Columbo'' in 1973; their teleplay, titled "Shooting Script", was never filmed. De Palma and Cocks did however contribute to the writing of the narrative crawl that opens the 1977 film ''Star Wars''. Provided by Wikipedia