Ray Cantrell

Ray Cantrell is a screenwriter best known for writing the story for the movie The Zodiac Killer.

Writing had always been Ray Cantrell's passion, even at an early age. He grew up in New Orleans and many times he had contributed articles to The Newspaper there. In later years, after getting married, he went to California to get into the movie business.

That's when he changed his name from Ray Canatella to Ray Cantrell. Ray became an actor and was in seven movies, playing in co-starring roles. Then he had an opportunity to write a movie script AbOUT the Zodiac Killer from the San Francisco area which he sold to a movie company that produced it. When he was first given the assignment, he didn't know how to put his story into a shooting script form which is needed to produce a movie, so he had his friend who knew script writing, put the story into a shooting script for him. As Ray Cantrell wrote the story down on paper, he would then hand the page that was finished to his friend, who would then type it out into proper shooting script form. The two men worked day and night to get it completed, because the producer was in a hurry to start the movie. After one week, they had the shooting script finished. Most of everything that was put in the original script was factual, because Ray Cantrell wrote the story from newspaper clippings taken from the San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper that covered the Zodiac's brutal killings.

With the money he made from the script, Mr. Cantrell went back to college to learn the fine points of creative writing which included movie scripts and comedy writing. Ray Cantrell was fortunate to be able to study under the very talented professor F.A. Rockwell who wrote many books on writing. As a Matter of fact, Ms. Rockwell mentioned Ray Cantrell in one of her books titled "HOW TO WRITE PLOTS THAT SELL". (F.A. Rockwell - 1975, page 17)

Once Ray had the knowledge of how to write movies in shooting script form, he wrote a few more movies (low budget) and many segments for TV shows such as the BARETTA series which starred Robert Blake.

Later. Mr. Cantrell had a producer ask him if he would write a "G" rated western. Ray said yes because he owned the Time-Life Old West series, which was 26 hard cover leather bound volumes. Those books gave him a pretty good knowledge of western life. Plus the fact that having studied comedy writing he felt he could write a different type of western. His plan was to make it light hearted and funny about gold nuggets found in the Arizona territory by an old man in the 1850's. In the story there are good guys, bad guys and young women who were able to beat up some of the bad guys that tried to attack them. He called it "GRANDPA'S NUGGETS". However, after months of writing the script, the producer who originally wanted it, told Mr. Cantrell that he was sorry, but Western Movies weren't selling at the time (Although the following year when westerns were selling again, he had left Hollywood and lost touch with his producer). So Ray had a movie script he couldn't sell because none of the production companies he was associated with at the time, were filming westerns.

After it sat on his shelf for a while, he decided to enter the movie script in a contest. The script was up against thousands of entries, yet his western "GRANDPA'S NUGGETS", made it to the semi-finals which meant it was that good. Ray Cantrell loved writing about the old west because he read many true stories about the early westerners. So he decided to turn "Grandpa's Nuggets" into A Wonderful "Comedy-Adventure Western" book that is a pleasant escape from the mundane and can be enjoyed by everyone, young and old alike because in this western story, there are shoot outs, but no one gets killed, not even the rabbit the SHERIFF tried to electrocute.

Mr. Cantrell will be writing many more western books now that "Grandpa's Nuggets" is finished, because he has outlines for three other comedy westerns. He also has outlines for a [...] mystery novel, which has a lot of comedy scenes in it to break the tension, a horror story and a book about women who have taken over the world governments in the future, around the thirty-first century. The first British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher gave him the idea. In the book,when the first female U.S. president is elected, there would be a trend for almost all nations of the world, with a few acceptations, to start electing women to run their country, because they would know how to handle all state of affairs without going to war.

If you go to Google on the internet and type in Ray Cantrell, it will take you to the "Internet Movie Database" web site where you will see part of his Bio related to his movies. Ray had many write-ups in the Hollywood Reporter, newspapers and books, including the book "SCREEN WRITERS Q & A" {by Esther Lutrell-2007, page 114). After he moved back to the New Orleans area, because of his mother's health, he lost everything he owned in HURRICANE KATRINA. Fortunately he was able to save some of his write-ups and a few of his movie scripts IDeaS, which he hopes to turn all of them into books. However, Mr. Cantrell he will also continue writing screenplays for the movie industry.

Thank you for reading about Ray Cantrell Canatella.