This screenwriter and director won acclaim for his first two produced screenplays, "Where the River Runs Black" (1986) and "River's Edge" (1987). The latter, arguably, was the first grimly honest portrait of what would soon come to be called "Generation X". Unlike, say, "Reality Bites" (1994), the adolescent protagonists who populated "River's Edge" were not cuddly in their surliness. Opening with an obese dead-eyed youth seated next to his freshly murdered girlfriend, the film presented a chilling collection of sullen and hopeless characters including Dennis Hopper's crazed ex-hippie burnout