The backstory on David Benioff, the 37-year-old New York novelist turned Hollywood screenwriter (and vice versa), reads a little like a zero-to-hero potboiler. It begins with a post-college novel that received 34 rejection letters. After stints as a D.J. in Wyoming, a high school English teacher in Brooklyn, and a bouncer in San Francisco, Benioff sold his literary thriller, The 25th Hour, in 2000 for the staggering advance of $7,500. Then the magic of motion pictures transformed his career: Benioff adapted his novel for Spike Lee's critically acclaimed film, which starred Edward Norton and Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and moved to Santa Monica. In quick order he became one of Hollywood's most sought-after screenwriters, penning such mega-movies—for nearly $2 million each—as Troy and the upcoming installment of the X-Men franchise, Wolverine. Benioff also adapted The Kite Runner from Khaled Hosseini's best seller, a sprawling drama set largely in an Afghanistan suffering through a decades-long identity crisis with the fall of the Shah, the Soviet invasion, and the rise of the Taliban. The movie, which opens November 2, shows off Benioff's dizzying range as a storyteller and is sure to receive much-deserved Oscar consideration.

It's a surprise then, upon meeting him at a Tribeca café one recent afternoon, to learn that he hasn't been out on the town in nearly four months. Over a cup of black coffee, he says, "But tonight we have a date, which is exciting." The "we" refers to Benioff and his wife, the actress Amanda Peet. The two New York natives have been in town for the summer with their four-month-old baby, Frances, catching up with family while Benioff puts the finishing touches on another novel, his first in seven years. (This one's about the barbaric Nazi siege of Leningrad during World War II.) "I've been writing screenplays for so long that the first 20 pages just took forever—it was torture," he says. "It's exercising very different writing muscles." But when does a freshly minted father find the time and quiet to write? Wearing tattered jeans and a week's worth of stubble, and ordering a third cup of coffee, Benioff is clearly a night person. "I don't get started until, like, two in the morning these days, which is late even for me," he says, explaining when he's been grinding out the novel's last plot points. "A good thing would be going every day from midnight until four." Working the graveyard shift means that Benioff also handles night duty with Frances. "I don't know anyone else who wrote their novel taking care of a newborn baby," his wife tells me later from Los Angeles. "He was amazing."

So does Benioff have the urge to get a good night's sleep, drop the laptop, and pick up the director's camera? "I actually directed a short film based on one of my stories," Benioff says, the title story of his collection When the Nines Roll Over. "I've had enough directors tell me, 'Ultimately you're going to write a screenplay that you won't want to give up,' and I'm sure that's true." When I ask Peet about the film, she replies sardonically, "The thing you should know about that is I'm not in it." Asked if they'll ever work together, she says, "I try to collaborate with him and he says, 'Honey, please back away from the computer, I'm playing fantasy baseball.' " (Benioff, a lifelong Yankees fan and former wrestler and rugby player at Dartmouth, confirms that he's having a very good season. Among the friends he's trouncing is Ben Silverman, the recently appointed chairman of NBC television, who was best man at his wedding.) "And I thought sleeping with David Benioff was going to help my career," Peet adds, laughing.