Rod Lurie (; born May 15, 1962) is an Israeli-American director, screenwriter, and former film critic. Early life and career The son of internationally syndicated cartoonist Ranan Lurie, he was born in Israel but moved to the United States at a young age, growing up in Greenwich, Connecticut, and Honolulu, Hawaii. Graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point in 1984, he served in the U.S. Army as an air defense artillery officer, then became an entertainment reporter and film critic, including stints at News12 in Norwalk, Connecticut, the New York Daily News, Premiere, Movieline, Entertainment Weekly, Los Angeles, and talk radio shows at KMPC and KABC, where his tactical on-air bets with Martin Landau, Mel Gibson and James Cameron that they would win the Oscar resulted in them having to pay up at the Academy Awards ceremony by publicly thanking him in their acceptance speeches. As an investigative reporter in the entertainment industry, his discovery of unethical and illegal practices at tabloid newspapers gained him national exposure on programs such as 60 Minutes, Entertainment Tonight, Larry King Live, Nightline, and Geraldo. His irreverent style, however (he once described Danny DeVito as a "testicle with arms"), often raised controversy and got him banned from screenings. In 1995, his book Once Upon a Time in Hollywood: Moviemaking, Con Games, and Murder in Glitter City, was published. Film and TV career Lurie's first foray into filmmaking, as writer and director, was the low-budget political thriller Deterrence (1999), with Kevin Pollak as the first Jewish President of the United States. His second was The Contender (2000), starring Gary Oldman. It was written for Joan Allen and co-stars Jeff Bridges and Christian Slater. It was a critical success (76 percent positive on Rotten Tomatoes) and garnered Academy Award nominations for both Allen and Bridges. His next directing effort, The Last Castle (2001) with Robert Redford and James Gandolfini, was a commercial failure; as was Line of Fire, his 2003–04 TV series about the FBI's office in Richmond, Virginia, which starred David Paymer as a mob boss. Lurie then wrote and directed Nothing But the Truth, which is based on the stories of Valerie Plame and Judith Miller, which stars Kate Beckinsale, Matt Dillon, Angela Bassett, Alan Alda and David Schwimmer. Lurie insisted his film is not intended to be an accurate depiction of the Plame Affair, but merely a vehicle to explore