Bill Lancaster

[Warmed Over]

He's best known for writing 2 of my favorite movies: The Thing & Bad News Bears. He also gets major props for marrying Ernie Kovacs' daughter, Kippie. He was the son of Burt, as you can see from the Wikipedia entry below and a lot of Bad News Bears is said to be based on his own personal experience(I'm assuming he was a stat guy or ball boy having been stricken with polio.). Burt managed Little League teams when his kids were young, and I have an image of him, Matthau-like, pouring whiskey into a Mickey's. We'll give him a pass for Bad News Bears Go to Japan(or whatever it was called).

William 'Bill' Henry Lancaster (December 17, 1947 â?? January 4, 1997) was an American screenwriter. He was the son of Burt Lancaster and Norma Anderson. He was born in Los Angeles, California, developing polio at an early age, leaving one of his legs shorter than the other. He died at the age of 49 due to cardiac arrest.
Lancaster's best known work is his adapted screenplay for John Carpenter's The Thing. He also penned the original screenplays for The Bad News Bears films.
He features prominently in the documentary The Thing: Terror Takes Shape, found on the collector's edition DVD of The Thing. The documentary is dedicated to him because of his death shortly after it was filmed.

[Noelle Page]

What's known about his relationship with dad?

[Warmed Over]

I wasn't able to find much of anything on their relationship, other than this: "Burt's son, the late Bill Lancaster, was a screenwriter. He wrote The Bad News Bears (1976) which is loosely based on his own childhood experience of being coached by his father. Bill was disabled by polio as a child and according to his friend, Joel Douglas, the character played by Tatum O'Neal in the film is based on him. The role of the coach, played by Walter Matthau was based on his father, Burt Lancaster, known for his temperament. "

I did find out he had several affairs during his marriage to Bill's mom(surprise) and left her in 1969 for a woman he started dating in 1964. The quote above is from movietome.com. Oh yeah, and one of Bill's brothers was schizophrenic.