https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2025/nov/29/tom-stoppard-p...

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/29/theater/tom-stoppard-dead... (https://archive.ph/XDP9p)

Wrote a paper on "Shakespeare in Love" (and the original Shakespeare) for lit in highschool.

My paper wasn't any good. Really in retrospect or at the time.

How he had reinvented it, reinvigorated it. (TIL about banished Rama and Sita from the Bhagavad Gita.) But then I realized it would just be easier to be a critic.

Anyways, truly when I lucked into big time screenwriting gigs it was in part because of the time I had spent writing a paper about Tom Stoppard's work.

I also remember watching "Finding Forrester" a lot. Punch the keys!

I'll never forget the first time I heard his name. As a kid, I had seen the Spielberg film Empire of the Sun starring a young Christian Bale and considered it one of my favorites. When I was an adult eagerly showing it to friends, one of them who was a theater major loudly exclaimed during the opening credits, "Tom Stoppard wrote the screenplay?!" I knew most of the names in the opening credits but had no idea who Tom Stoppard was until that moment.

When he passed away a couple days ago, I was surprised to discover he was originally from a Moravian town I've been to since one of my ancestors grew up 10 miles farther down the road. The twists and turns his family took escaping from there to the other side of the world and back no doubt enhanced his keen insight into people.

GUIL: Hm?

ROS: Yes?

GUIL: What?

ROS: I thought you...

GUIL: No.

ROS: Ah.

I wish National Theatre would re-release the Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead productions with Cumberbatch and Radcliffe in memoriam, either on NTatHome or in theatres...

The real inspector hound is a great short play for kids. Breaking the 4th wall.

Arcadia was the best play ever.