In 1993, a screenwriter staked his burgeoning career on a movie about chess. His name was Steven Zaillian, and he might be the most important man in Hollywood you’ve never heard of: In the two decades since, he’s written (or cowritten) adapted screenplays for Schindler’s List and Clear and Present Danger and A Civil Action and Gangs of New York and Moneyball and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. His track record is not perfect (his adaptation of All the King’s Men, which he also directed, is considered a Heaven’s Gate-level Hollywood failure), but he is one of the few screenwriters capable of freeing a film from the shackles of literary tyranny — a reasonable case could be made that at least two of Zaillian’s screenplays defy the cliché and are actually better than the book (exactly which two is an argument for another day).