Jay Cocks (born John C. Cocks, Jr.; January 12, 1944) is an American film critic and motion picture screenwriter. He is a graduate of Kenyon College. He was a critic for Time, Newsweek, and Rolling Stone, among other magazines, before shifting to screenplay writing. He is married to actress Verna Bloom.As a screenwriter, he worked on Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence and Gangs of New York — a screenplay he started working on in 1976 — as well as Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days.