Screenwriters still get overlooked

I was delighted to read that the “Overlooked and Underrated” film festival at the Egyptian Theatre included “The Friends of Eddie Coyle.” [“Unappreciated, Ignored and Slighted No More,” Dec. 31] As Chris D., the festival programmer, said, “There is a lot of great dialogue in the movie.” Too bad Susan King (yet another L.A. Times staffer who seems to act as an unpaid press agent for the Directors Guild of America) saw fit to mention only the movie’s director, Peter Yates, who, of course, had nothing to do with the dialogue. The dialogue came from novelist George Higgins and screenwriter Paul Monash. I guess a 50-year writing career for film and TV still doesn’t get you mentioned in the newspaper.

CHRISTOPHER PELHAM

Santa Monica