1.
Steve Tesich
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Stojan Steve Tesich was a Serbian American screenwriter, playwright and novelist. He won the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1979 for the movie Breaking Away. Steve Tesich was born as Stojan Tešić in Užice, in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia on September 29,1942 and his family settled in East Chicago, Indiana. Tesich graduated from Indiana University in 1965 with a BA in Russian and he went on to do graduate work at Columbia University, receiving an MA in Russian Literature in 1967. He also wrote his first plays while at Columbia University, after graduation, he worked as a Department of Welfare caseworker in Brooklyn, New York in 1968. He had been a rider in 1962 for the Phi Kappa Psi team in the Little 500 bicycle race. His teammate was Dave Blase, who rode 139 of 200 laps and was the rider crossing the finish line for his team. Dave Blase was the model for the character in Tesichs award-winning screenplay Breaking Away in 1979. His play Division Street opened on Broadway in 1980 starring John Lithgow, the 1980 production of Division Street played at the Ambassador Theatre in New York City. The production opened on October 8,1980 and closed after 21 performances and his novel Karoo was published posthumously in 1998. Arthur Miller described the novel, Fascinating—a real satiric invention full of wise outrage. ”The novel was a New York Times Notable Book for 1998, the movie Breaking Away won the 1980 Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture-Musical/Comedy. The screenplay to the movie was published in book form as Breaking Away,1979. As a movie tie-in, a novelization of the screenplay was published in 1979 by Warner Books in New York written by Joseph Howard based on the screenplay by Steve Tesich. In 1973, Tesich won the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright for the play Baba Goya, in 2005, the Serbian Ministry for diaspora established the annual Stojan—Steve Tešić Award, to be awarded to the writers of Serbian origin that write in other languages. L. Doctorow, German-language version entitled Abspann and a French-language version Karoo same as original, New York, Performing Arts Journal Publications,1981. Contents, Division Street -- Baba Goya -- Lake of the Woods -- Passing Game, Steve Tesich at the Internet Movie Database The American Place Theatre Presents Touching Bottom by Steve Tesich. Srpska-mreza. com A Few Moments with Steve Tesich by Dejan Stojanović
2.
Costa-Gavras
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Costa-Gavras is a Greek-French film director and producer, who lives and works in France. He is known for films with political themes, most famously the fast-paced thriller Z. Most of his movies have made in French, however, six were made in English, Missing, Hanna K. Betrayed, Music Box, Mad City. He produces most of his films himself, through his production company K. G. Productions, Costa-Gavras was born in Loutra Iraias, Arcadia. His family spent the Second World War in a village in the Peloponnese and his father had been a member of the Pro-Soviet branch of the Greek Resistance, and was imprisoned during the Greek Civil War. In 1956, he left his university studies to film at the French national film school. After film school, he apprenticed under Yves Allégret, and became an assistant director for Jean Giono, after several further positions as first assistant director, he directed his first feature film, Compartiment Tueurs, in 1965. His 1967 film Shock Troops was entered into the 5th Moscow International Film Festival, the film is a fictionalized account of the events surrounding the assassination of Greek politician Grigoris Lambrakis in 1963. It had additional resonance because, at the time of its release, Z won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film. Costa-Gavras and co-writer Jorge Semprún won an Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America for Best Film Screenplay, LAveu follows the path of Artur London, a Czechoslovakian communist minister falsely arrested and tried for treason and espionage in the Slánský show trial in 1952. State of Siege takes place in Uruguay under a government in the early 1970s. Hormans father, played by Jack Lemmon, and wife, played by Sissy Spacek, search in vain to determine his fate. Nathaniel Davis, US ambassador to Chile from 1971–1973, a version of character had been portrayed in the movie, filed a US$150 million libel suit. 1372, against the studio and the director, which was eventually dismissed, the film won an Oscar for Best Screenplay Adaptation and the Palme dOr at the Cannes Film Festival. Betrayed, roughly based upon the terrorist activities of American neo-Nazi and white supremacist Robert Mathews, in Music Box, a respected Hungarian immigrant is accused of having commanded an Anti-Semitic death squad during World War II. His daughter, a Chicago defense attorney played by Jessica Lange, the film is inspired by the arrest and trial of Ukrainian immigrant John Demjanjuk and screenwriter Joe Eszterhas realization that his father had been a member of the Hungarian Arrow Cross Party. The film won the Golden Bear at the 40th Berlin International Film Festival, La Petite Apocalypse was entered into the 43rd Berlin International Film Festival. Amen. was based in part on the highly controversial 1963 play, ein christliches Trauerspiel, by Rolf Hochhuth
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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
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Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, CBE was a German-born British and American Booker prize-winning novelist, short story writer and two-time Academy Award-winning screenwriter. She is perhaps best known for her collaboration with Merchant Ivory Productions, made up of director James Ivory. After moving to India in 1951, she married Cyrus S. H. Jhabvala, the couple lived in New Delhi, and had three daughters. Ruth Prawer Jhabvala began then to elaborate her experiences in India and wrote novels, Jhabvala wrote a dozen novels,23 screenplays, and eight collections of short stories and was made a CBE in 1998 and granted a joint fellowship by BAFTA in 2002 with Ivory and Merchant. She is the person to have won both a Booker Prize and an Oscar. Ruth Prawer was born in Cologne, Germany to Jewish parents Marcus, Marcus was a lawyer who moved to Germany from Poland to escape conscription and Eleanoras father was cantor of Colognes largest synagogue. Her father was accused of communist links, arrested and released, the family was among the last group of refugees to flee the Nazi regime in 1939, emigrating to Britain. Her elder brother, Siegbert Salomon, an expert on Heinrich Heine and horror films, was fellow of The Queens College and Taylor Professor of German Language and Literature at the University of Oxford. During World War II, Prawer lived in Hendon in London, experienced the Blitz and she became a British citizen in 1948. The following year, her father committed suicide after discovering that 40 members of his family had died during the Holocaust, Prawer attended Hendon County School and then Queen Mary College, where she received an MA in English literature in 1951. Jhabvala lived in India for 24 years from 1951 and her first novel, To Whom She Will, was published in 1955. It was followed by Esmond in India, The Householder and Get Ready for the Battle, the Householder, with a screenplay by Jhabvala, was filmed in 1963 by Merchant and Ivory. During her years in India she wrote scripts for the Merchant-Ivory duo for The Guru and she collaborated with Ivory for the screenplays for Bombay Talkie and ABC After-school Specials, William - The Life and Times of William Shakespeare. In 1975, she won the Booker Prize for her novel Heat and that year, she moved to New York where she wrote The Place of Peace. Jhabvala remained ill at ease with India and all that it brought into her life and her early works in India dwell on the themes of romantic love and arranged marriages and are portraits of the social mores, idealism and chaos of the early decades of independent India. Jhabvala moved to New York in 1975 and lived there until her death in 2013, many of these works feature India as a setting where her characters go to in search of spiritual enlightenment only to emerge defrauded and exposed to the materialistic pursuits of the East. The New York Times Review of Books chose her Out of India as one of the best reads for that year. In 2005 she published My Nine Lives, Chapters of a Possible Past with illustrations by her husband, salman Rushdie described her as a rootless intellectual when he anthologised her in the Vintage Book of Indian Writing while John Updike described her an initiated outsider
4.
Philip Kaufman
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Philip Kaufman is an American film director and screenwriter who has directed fifteen films over a career spanning more than five decades. He has been described as a maverick and an iconoclast, notable for his versatility and he is considered an auteur, whose films have always expressed his personal vision. His choice of topics has been eclectic and sometimes controversial, having adapted novels with diverse themes and stories, Kaufmans works have included genres such as realism, horror, fantasy, erotic, Westerns, underworld crime, and inner city gangs. Examples are Milan Kunderas The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Michael Crichtons Rising Sun, a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and his film The Wanderers has achieved cult status. But his greatest success was Tom Wolfes true-life The Right Stuff, other critics note that Kaufmans films are strong on mood and atmosphere, with powerful cinematography and a lyrical, poetic style to portray different historic periods. His later films have a somewhat European style, but the stories always stress individualism and integrity, Kaufman was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1936, the only son of Elizabeth, a housewife, and Nathan Kaufman, a produce businessman. He was the grandson of German-Jewish immigrants, one of his grammar and high school friends was William Friedkin, who also became a director. He developed a love of movies and during his youth he would often go to double features. He attended the University of Chicago where he received a degree in history and he returned to Chicago for a postgraduate degree, hoping to become a professor of history. In 1958 Kaufman married Rose Fisher, a year after they met as undergraduates and they later had a son, Peter. Before graduating Kaufman became involved in the movement and in 1960 moved to San Francisco. He took various jobs there, including worker, and befriended a number of influential people. He and his wife decided to travel and live in Europe for a while where he would teach. After spending time working on a kibbutz in Israel, he taught English, during his travels he also met author Anaïs Nin, whose relationship with her lover, Henry Miller, later became the inspiration and subject for Kaufmans film Henry and June. Goldstein Kaufman returned to Chicago, ready to make his first feature film and he went around town looking for funding for his directorial debut, Goldstein, co-written and co-directed with Benjamin Manaster. Kaufman initially conceived of the story in a novel. It was inspired by a story from Martin Bubers Tales of the Hasidim, the film won the Prix de la Nouvelle Critique at the 1964 Cannes Film Festival, with French director Jean Renoir calling it the best American film he had seen in 20 years. François Truffaut, another leading French director, was visiting Chicago when the film premiered, Kaufman recalled that Truffaut leaped to his feet in the middle of the screening and began applauding
5.
Alan Bennett
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Alan Bennett is a British playwright, screenwriter, actor and author. He was born in Leeds and attended Oxford University where he studied history and he stayed to teach and research medieval history at the university for several years. His collaboration as writer and performer with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe at the 1960 Edinburgh Festival brought him instant fame. He gave up academia, and turned to writing full-time, his first stage play Forty Years On being produced in 1968, Bennett was born in Armley in Leeds. The youngest son of a butcher, Walter, and his wife Lilian Mary, Bennett attended Christ Church, Upper Armley, Church of England School. He learned Russian at the Joint Services School for Linguists during his service before applying for a scholarship at Oxford University. He was accepted by Exeter College, Oxford, from which he graduated with a degree in history. While at Oxford he performed comedy with a number of successful actors in the Oxford Revue. He was to remain at the university for several years, where he researched and taught Medieval History, in August 1960 Bennett, along with Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Peter Cook, achieved instant fame by appearing at the Edinburgh Festival in the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe. After the festival, the show continued in London and New York and he also appeared in My Father Knew Lloyd George. His highly regarded television comedy sketch series On the Margin was unfortunately erased, however, in 2014 it was announced that copies of the entire series had been found. Bennetts first stage play Forty Years On, directed by Patrick Garland, was produced in 1968, many television, stage and radio plays followed, with screenplays, short stories, novellas, a large body of non-fictional prose, and broadcasting and many appearances as an actor. Bennetts distinctive, expressive voice and the humour and evident humanity of his writing have made his readings of his work very popular. Bennetts readings of the Winnie the Pooh stories are widely enjoyed. Many of Bennetts characters are unfortunate and downtrodden, life has brought them to an impasse or else passed them by. In many cases they have met with disappointment in the realm of sex and intimate relationships, largely through tentativeness and a failure to connect with others. Despite a long history both the National Theatre and the BBC - Bennett never writes on commission, declaring I dont work on commission. If people dont want it then its too bad, Bennett is both unsparing and compassionate in laying bare his characters frailties
6.
Woody Allen
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Heywood Woody Allen is an American actor, writer, director, comedian, playwright, and musician whose career spans more than six decades. He worked as a writer in the 1950s, writing jokes and scripts for television. In the early 1960s, Allen began performing as a stand-up comedian, as a comedian, he developed the persona of an insecure, intellectual, fretful nebbish, which he maintains is quite different from his real-life personality. In 2004, Comedy Central ranked Allen in fourth place on a list of the 100 greatest stand-up comedians and he is often identified as part of the New Hollywood wave of filmmakers of the mid-1960s to late 1970s. Allen often stars in his films, typically in the persona he developed as a standup, some of the best-known of his over 40 films are Annie Hall, Manhattan, and Hannah and Her Sisters. In 2007 he said Stardust Memories, The Purple Rose of Cairo, critic Roger Ebert described Allen as a treasure of the cinema. Allen won four Academy Awards, three for Best Original Screenplay and one for Best Director and he also won nine British Academy of Film and Television Arts Awards. His screenplay for Annie Hall was named the funniest screenplay by the Writers Guild of America in its list of the 101 Funniest Screenplays, in 2011, PBS televised the film biography Woody Allen, A Documentary on the American Masters TV series. Allen was born Allan Stewart Konigsberg in Brooklyn, New York and he and his sister, Letty, were raised in Midwood, Brooklyn. He is the son of Nettie, a bookkeeper at her familys delicatessen, and Martin Konigsberg and his family was Jewish, his grandparents immigrated from Russia and Austria, and spoke Yiddish, Hebrew, and German. His parents were born and raised on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. His childhood was not particularly happy, his parents did not get along, Allen spoke German quite a bit in his early years. He would later joke that when he was young he was sent to inter-faith summer camps. While attending Hebrew school for eight years, he went to Public School 99 and to Midwood High School, at that time, he lived in an apartment at 968 East 14th Street. Unlike his comic persona, he was interested in baseball than school. He impressed students with his talent at card and magic tricks. To raise money, he wrote jokes for agent David O. Alber, at the age of 17, he legally changed his name to Heywood Allen and later began to call himself Woody Allen. According to Allen, his first published joke read, Woody Allen says he ate at a restaurant that had O. P. S and he was then earning more than both parents combined
7.
David Mamet
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David Alan Mamet is an American playwright, essayist, screenwriter, and film director. As a playwright, Mamet has won a Pulitzer Prize and received Tony nominations for Glengarry Glen Ross, Mamet first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, and American Buffalo. His play Race opened on Broadway on December 6,2009, Mamets 2017 play The Penitent previewed off-Broadway on February 8,2017. Feature films that Mamet both wrote and directed include Redbelt, The Spanish Prisoner, House of Games, Spartan, Heist, State and Main, The Winslow Boy, and Oleanna. This was accompanied by Homicide, Things Change, and most recently the 2013 HBO film Phil Spector, starring Al Pacino as Spector with Helen Mirren and Jeffrey Tambor. His drama Glengarry Glen Ross, in 1992, was adapted by Mamet into a version which also received an Academy Award nomination. Mamet was also the producer and frequent writer for the TV show The Unit. As a screenplay writer, Mamet received Oscar nominations for The Verdict, Mamet was born in 1947 in Chicago to Jewish parents, Lenore June, a teacher, and Bernard Morris Mamet, an attorney. One of his first jobs was as a busboy at Chicagos The Second City and he was educated at the progressive Francis W. Parker School and at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vermont. At the Chicago Public Library Foundation 20th anniversary fundraiser in 2006, though, I got what little educational foundation I got in the third-floor reading room, under the tutelage of a Coca-Cola sign. Mamet is a member of the Atlantic Theater Company, he first gained acclaim for a trio of off-Broadway plays in 1976, The Duck Variations, Sexual Perversity in Chicago. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for Glengarry Glen Ross and his play Race, which opened on Broadway on December 6,2009 and featured James Spader, David Alan Grier, Kerry Washington, and Richard Thomas in the cast, received mixed reviews. His play The Anarchist, starring Patti LuPone and Debra Winger, in her Broadway debut and his 2017 play The Penitent previewed off-Broadway on February 8,2017. In 2002, Mamet was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame, Mamet later received the PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for Grand Master of American Theater in 2010. His latest feature-length film, a thriller titled Blackbird, is slated for release in 2015, Mamets first produced screenplay was the 1981 production of The Postman Always Rings Twice, based upon James M. Cains novel. He received an Academy Award nomination one year later for his first script, The Verdict and he also wrote the screenplay for The Untouchables. In 1987, Mamet made his directing debut with House of Games, starring his then-wife, Lindsay Crouse. He uses friends as actors, especially in one scene in the movie
8.
Harold Ramis
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Harold Allen Ramis was an American actor, director, writer, and comedian. His best-known film acting roles were as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters and Ghostbusters II and Russell Ziskey in Stripes, as a director, his films include the comedies Caddyshack, National Lampoons Vacation, Groundhog Day, and Analyze This. Ramis was the head writer of the television series SCTV, on which he also performed, as well as a co-writer of Groundhog Day. His final film that he wrote, produced, directed and acted in was the critical and commercial failure Year One, Ramis films influenced subsequent generations of comedians and comedy writers. Filmmakers including Jay Roach, Jake Kasdan, Adam Sandler, and Peter and he won the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay for Groundhog Day. Ramis was born on November 21,1944, in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Ruth and Nathan Ramis, in his adult life, he did not practice any religion. Afterward, Ramis worked in an institution in St. Louis for seven months. He later said of his time working there that it. prepared me well for when I went out to Hollywood to work with actors, people laugh when I say that, but it was actually very good training. And not just with actors, it was training for just living in the world. Its knowing how to deal with people who might be reacting in a way connected to anxiety or grief or fear or rage. As a director, you’re dealing with that constantly with actors, but if I were a businessman, I’d probably be applying those same principles to that line of work. He avoided the Vietnam War military draft by taking methamphetamine to fail his draft physical, following his work in St. Louis, Ramis returned to Chicago, where by 1968, he was a substitute teacher at schools serving the inner-city Robert Taylor Homes. He also became associated with the guerrilla television collective TVTV, headed by his college friend Michael Shamberg, and wrote freelance for the Chicago Daily News. Michael Shamberg, right out of college, had started freelancing for newspapers and got on as a stringer for a local paper, and I thought, Well, if Michael can do that, I can do that. I wrote a piece and submitted it to the Chicago Daily News, the Arts & Leisure section. Additionally, Ramis had begun studying and performing with Chicagos Second City improvisational comedy troupe, Ramis newspaper writing led to his becoming joke editor at Playboy magazine. Just cold and said I had written several pieces freelance and did they have any openings, and they happened to have their entry-level job, party jokes editor, open. He liked my stuff and he gave me a stack of jokes that readers had sent in, I had been in Second City in the workshops already and Michael Shamberg and I had written comedy shows in college
9.
Quentin Tarantino
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Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American director, writer, and actor. His career began in the late 1980s, when he wrote and directed My Best Friends Birthday and its popularity was boosted by his second film, Pulp Fiction, a black comedy crime film that was a major success both among critics and audiences. Judged the greatest film from 1983–2008 by Entertainment Weekly, many critics, for his next effort, Tarantino paid homage to the blaxploitation films of the 1970s with Jackie Brown, an adaptation of the novel Rum Punch. Tarantino directed Death Proof as part of a feature with friend Robert Rodriguez. His long-postponed Inglourious Basterds, which tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germanys political leadership, was released in 2009 to positive reviews, after that came 2012s critically acclaimed Django Unchained, a Western film set in the antebellum era of the Deep South. It became the film of his career so far, making over $425 million at the box office. Tarantinos films have garnered critical and commercial success. He has received industry awards, including two Academy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two BAFTA Awards and the Palme dOr, and has been nominated for an Emmy and a Grammy. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time in 2005, Filmmaker and historian Peter Bogdanovich has called him the single most influential director of his generation. In December 2015, Tarantino received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the film industry, Tarantino was born on March 27,1963 in Knoxville, Tennessee, the son of Connie McHugh and Tony Tarantino. His father is of Italian descent, and his mother has English and Irish ancestry, Quentin was named after Quint Asper, Burt Reynolds character in the CBS series Gunsmoke. Quentins mother met his father during a trip to Los Angeles and she married him soon after, to gain independence from her parents, but the marriage did not last. Connie Tarantino left Los Angeles, and moved to Knoxville, where her parents lived, in 1966, Tarantinos mother, after finishing her nursing studies, moved back to Los Angeles with her then three-year-old son. They lived in the South Bay, in the part of the city. Tarantinos mother married musician Curtis Zastoupil soon after coming to Los Angeles, and the moved to Torrance. Zastoupil encouraged his love of movies, and accompanied him to film screenings. Tarantinos mother allowed him to see movies with adult content, such as Carnal Knowledge, after his mother divorced Zastoupil in 1973, and received a misdiagnosis of Hodgkins lymphoma, Tarantino was sent to live with his grandparents in Tennessee. He remained there for six months to a year, before returning to California
10.
Coen brothers
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Joel David Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen, collectively referred to as the Coen brothers, are American filmmakers. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody and their best-reviewed works include Fargo, The Big Lebowski, No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, True Grit, and Inside Llewyn Davis. The brothers write, direct, and produce their films jointly, although until The Ladykillers, Joel received sole credit for directing and they often alternate top billing for their screenplays while sharing film credits for editor under the alias Roderick Jaynes. The duo also won the Palme dOr for Barton Fink, and were nominated for Fargo, the Coen brothers have written a number of films that neither of the two directed. Ethan is also a writer of stories, theater. Their films No Country for Old Men, A Serious Man, Joel and Ethan Coen were born and raised in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, a suburb of Minneapolis. Their mother, Rena, was an art historian at St. Cloud State University, when they were children, Joel saved money from mowing lawns to buy a Vivitar Super 8 camera. Together, the brothers remade movies they saw on television, with a kid, Mark Zimering. Their first attempt was a romp entitled Henry Kissinger, Man on the Go, cornel Wildes The Naked Prey became their Zeimers in Zambia, which also featured Ethan as a native with a spear. Joel Coen has said, in regards to whether our background influences our film making, theres no doubt that our Jewish heritage affects how we see things. Joel and Ethan graduated from St. Louis Park High School in 1973 and 1976 and they both also graduated from Bard College at Simons Rock in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Joel then spent four years in the film program at New York University. Ethan went on to Princeton University and earned a degree in philosophy in 1979. His senior thesis was a 41-page essay, Two Views of Wittgensteins Later Philosophy, Joel has been married to actress Frances McDormand since 1984. They adopted a son from Paraguay, named Pedro McDormand Coen and she also did a voice-over in Barton Fink. Ethan married film editor Tricia Cooke in 1990 and they have two children, daughter Dusty and son Buster Jacob, who goes to Vassar College. Both couples live in New York, after graduating from New York University, Joel worked as a production assistant on a variety of industrial films and music videos. He developed a talent for film editing and met Sam Raimi while assisting Enda Ruth Paul in editing Raimis first feature film, in 1984, the brothers wrote and directed Blood Simple, their first commercial film together
11.
Curtis Hanson
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Curtis Lee Hanson was an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. Hanson won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay in 1998, Hanson was born in Reno, Nevada, and grew up in Los Angeles. He was the son of Beverly June, an estate agent, and Wilbur Hale Bill Hanson. Hanson dropped out of school, finding work as a freelance photographer. Hanson began screenwriting in 1970, when he co-wrote The Dunwich Horror, Hanson wrote and directed his next feature Sweet Kill in 1973, then in 1978 wrote and produced The Silent Partner, starring Elliott Gould and Christopher Plummer. From the early 1980s into 1990s, Hanson directed a string of comedies and he did thrillers, too, many of them deal with people who lose their sense of control or security when facing danger or under threat of death. Some, like the executive in Bad Influence and the police officers in L. A. Confidential, unexpectedly walk into violence. The film was nominated for 9 Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director, hansons later works included In Her Shoes, Wonder Boys,8 Mile, and Lucky You. Hanson said that he was influenced by the directors Alfred Hitchcock. In an interview with the New York Times in 2000, Hanson stated that Rays film In a Lonely Place was among many that he watched in preparation for the filming of L. A. Confidential, in 8 Mile, Kim Basingers character watches Elia Kazans Pinky on television. In 2011, Hanson made Too Big to Fail, based on the 2009 Andrew Ross Sorkin book of the name about the beginnings of the financial crisis of 2007–2010. His last film was Chasing Mavericks in 2012, but he was unable to finish the film due to ill health, michael Apted replaced him as director during the final days of shooting. Hanson later retired from work and was reported to have frontotemporal dementia. He died of natural causes at his Hollywood Hills home at the age of 71, Curtis Hanson at the Internet Movie Database Curtis Hanson on Facebook Frontotemporal Degeneration association
12.
Alan Ball (screenwriter)
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Alan Erwin Ball is an American writer, director, and producer for television, film, and theatre. Ball was born in Marietta, Georgia, to Frank and Mary Ball, an aircraft inspector and his older sister, Mary Ann, was killed in a car accident when Ball was 13, he was in the passenger seat at the time. He attended high school in Marietta, and went on to attend the University of Georgia and Florida State University, after college, he began work as a playwright at the General Nonsense Theater Company in Sarasota, Florida. Ball broke into television as a writer and story editor on the situation comedies Grace Under Fire, Ball has written two films, American Beauty and Towelhead, the latter of which he also produced and directed. He is also the creator, writer and executive producer of the HBO drama series Six Feet Under and he was showrunner for True Blood for its first five seasons. In 2010 Ball began work on an adaptation of the crime noir novel The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death by Charlie Huston. In December 2010, after months of pre-production, HBO cancelled production on All Signs of Death. He is also one of the producers of the Cinemax series Banshee. In January 2015, it was announced that Balls period musical drama Virtuoso had had a pilot ordered by HBO, the pilot will be executively produced by Elton John. Confirmed actors to be starring in the show include Peter Macdissi, Iva Babic, Francois Civil, Lindsay Farris, Nico Mirallegro, Ball has discussed his Buddhist faith in numerous interviews, noting how it has influenced his film making. In an interview with Amazon. com, Ball commented on the scene in American Beauty with the plastic bag, stating. And I didnt have a camera, like Ricky does. Theres a Buddhist notion of the miraculous within the mundane, and I think we live in a culture that encourages us not to look for that. Ball has also discussed how his Buddhism has shaped themes in Six Feet Under, Ball is gay and has been called a strong voice for LGBT community. In 2008 he made Out magazines annual list of the 100 most impressive gay men and women and he lives in Los Angeles with his partner, Peter Macdissi, who has starred in several of Balls works. Alan Ball at TV. com Alan Ball at the Internet Movie Database Alan Ball at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Alan Ball interview video at the Archive of American Television
13.
Charlie Kaufman
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Charles Stuart Charlie Kaufman is an American screenwriter, producer, director, and lyricist. He wrote the films Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and he made his directorial debut with Synecdoche, New York, which was also well-received, film critic Roger Ebert named it the best movie of the decade in 2009. He also won two BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplays and one BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, three of Kaufmans scripts appear in the Writers Guild of Americas list of the 101 greatest movie screenplays ever written. Kaufman was born in New York City to a Jewish family on November 19,1958 and he grew up in Massapequa, New York before moving to West Hartford, Connecticut where he graduated high school. While attending high school, Kaufman was part of the drama club, performing in numerous productions before landing the lead role in a production of Play It Again. After high school graduation, Kaufman attended Boston University before transferring to New York University where he studied film, while attending New York University, Kaufman met Paul Proch, with whom he would write many unproduced scripts and plays. Between 1983 and 1984, Kaufman and Proch wrote comedic articles and his work included parodies of Kurt Vonnegut and the X-Men. Kaufman and Proch tried to get their screenplays produced, sending them to people in film industry. The only response the two ever received for their work was a letter from Alan Arkin in regards to their screenplay titled Purely Coincidental. In hope of finding talent agents the two began to write scripts for television series such as Married. In 1991, Kaufman moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles in search of job prospects. Kaufman got his start in television by writing two episodes for Chris Elliotts Get a Life during the 1991–1992 season, during the 1993–1994 season, Kaufman worked on Foxs sketch comedy show The Edge. Kaufman wrote some pilot scripts while working as a television writer and he later worked as a writer for Ned and Stacey and The Dana Carvey Show. He first came to notice as the writer of Being John Malkovich, directed by Spike Jonze, earning an Academy Award nomination for his effort. He wrote the script on spec in 1994, sending it to companies and studios. Kaufman and Jonze reunited yet again as the director screenwriter respectively for Adaptation, Adaptation featured a fictionalized version of Kaufman and his fictional brother, Donald, who is credited as writer of the film along with Kaufman. The idea came to Kaufman while attempting to adapt Susan Orleans novel The Orchid Thief into film, struggling with writers block, Kaufman turned the script into an exaggerated account of his struggles with adapting the screenplay. The film focuses on Barriss claim to have been a CIA hit man and it was George Clooneys directorial debut
14.
John Collee
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John Gerald Collee is a Scottish screenwriter whose film scripts include Master and Commander, Happy Feet, Creation, and Walking with Dinosaurs. He is also a journalist and a novelist, Collee practised medicine and wrote several novels before he became a full-time screenwriter. He is married to Deborah Snow, with whom he has three children, Collee was born in 1955 to Isobel and J. Gerald, the latter who was a professor of bacteriology at the University of Edinburgh. Collee grew up in Edinburgh, Scotland and in India and he studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and began practising medicine in Cambridge, Bath, and Bristol. In his third year of practice, he wrote the medical thriller Kingsleys Touch, Collee subsequently worked in emergency medicine and worked as a doctor in countries like Gabon, Madagascar, and Sri Lanka. He then wrote a novel titled A Paper Mask, which was published in 1987. Rights to the novel were acquired for an adaptation, and Collee wrote the screenplay for director Christopher Morahan. With income from screenwriting, Collee wrote his third novel The Rig, around the same time The Rig was published, Collee became a weekly columnist for The Observer and wrote about travel, science and medicine. He kept the job for six years, when he began writing a book about Soviet medicine called The Kingdom of the Blind, he visited Moscow and Snow. The book was unpublished, but when Collee went to the Solomon Islands for a year to work as a doctor, Snow went with him, and they had their first child, Lauren, on the islands. He worked in London for a time before moving to Sydney, Australia in 1996 to meet Australian directors like Peter Weir. For Weir, Collee wrote the screenplay for Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World, John Collee is one of four co-founders of the Australian production company Hopscotch Features. He is also a member of the Australian branch of climate activist group 350. org. Screenwriter Executive producer Son of a Gun The Water Diviner The Guests List of Scottish novelists Collee, official website John Collee at the Internet Movie Database
15.
Peter Weir
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Peter Lindsay Weir, AM is an Australian film director. The climax of Weirs early career was the $6 million multi-national production The Year of Living Dangerously, for his work on these five films, Weir personally accrued six Academy Award nominations as either a director, writer or producer. Since 2003, Weirs productivity has declined, having directed only one subsequent feature. Weir was born in Sydney, the son of Peggy and Lindsay Weir, Weir attended The Scots College and Vaucluse Boys High School before studying arts and law at the University of Sydney. His interest in film was sparked by his meeting with students, including Phillip Noyce. After leaving university in the mid-1960s he joined Sydney television station ATN-7, during this period, using station facilities, he made his first two experimental short films, Count Vims Last Exercise and The Life and Flight of Reverend Buckshotte. He also directed one section of the three-part, three-director feature film Three To Go, homesdale and Weirs two aforementioned CFU shorts have been released on DVD. It was a success in cinemas but proved very popular on the then-thriving drive-in circuit. It also helped launch the career of internationally renowned Australian cinematographer Russell Boyd and it was widely acclaimed by critics, many of whom praised it as a welcome antidote to the so-called ocker film genre, typified by The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Alvin Purple. Weirs next film, The Last Wave was a thriller about a man who begins to experience terrifying visions of an impending natural disaster. The Last Wave was a pensive, ambivalent work that expanded on themes from Picnic and it co-starred the Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, whose performance won the Golden Ibex at the Tehran International Festival in 1977, but it was only a moderate commercial success at the time. Between The Last Wave and his feature, Weir wrote. It starred Australian actors Judy Morris and Ivar Kants and was filmed in just three weeks, inspired by a real-life experience told to him by friends, it is a black comedy about a woman whose life is disrupted by a subtly menacing plumber. Weir scored a major Australian hit and further international praise with his next film, scripted by the Australian playwright David Williamson, it is regarded as classic Australian cinema. Gallipoli was instrumental in making Mel Gibson into a star, although his co-star Mark Lee. The film also won Linda Hunt an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The film was produced by Jim McElroy, who with his brother Hal McElroy had also produced Weirs first three films, The Cars That Ate Paris, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave. These dramatic parts provided Harrison Ford with important opportunities to break the typecasting of his roles in the Star Wars
16.
Paul Haggis
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Paul Edward Haggis is a Canadian director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known as screenwriter and producer for consecutive Best Picture Oscar winners, Million Dollar Baby and Crash, Paul Edward Haggis was born in London, Ontario, the son of Mary Yvonne and Ted Haggis. He was raised as a Catholic, but considered himself an atheist in early adulthood, the Gallery Theatre in London was owned by his parents, and Haggis gained experience in the field through work at the theatre. Haggis attended St. Thomas More Elementary School, and after being inspired by Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard, after viewing Michelangelo Antonionis 1966 film Blowup, he traveled to England with the intent of becoming a fashion photographer. Haggis later returned to Canada to pursue studies in cinematography at Fanshawe College, in 1975, Haggis moved to Los Angeles, California, to begin a career in writing in the entertainment industry. Haggis began to work as a writer for television programs, including The Love Boat, One Day at a Time, Diffrent Strokes, with The Facts of Life, Haggis also gained his first credit as producer. During the 1980s and 1990s, Haggis wrote for series including The Tracey Ullman Show, FM, Due South, L. A. Law. He helped to create the television series Walker, Texas Ranger, Family Law, Haggis served as executive producer of the series Michael Hayes and Family Law. Haggis had read two stories written by Jerry Boyd, a trainer who wrote under the name of F. X. Haggis later acquired the rights to the stories, and developed them into the screenplay for Million Dollar Baby, clint Eastwood portrayed the lead character in the film. Eastwood also directed the film, and used the written by Haggis. Million Dollar Baby received four Academy Awards including the Academy Award for Best Picture, after Million Dollar Baby, Haggis worked on the 2004 film Crash. Haggis came up with the story for the film on his own, and then wrote and directed the film, Crash was his first experience as director of a major feature film. Critical reception of Crash was positive, and Roger Ebert called it the best film of 2005, Crash received Academy Award nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, in addition to four other Academy Award nominations. Haggis received two Academy Awards for the film, Best Picture, and Best Writing for his work on the screenplay, with Million Dollar Baby and then Crash, Haggis became the first individual to have written Best Picture Oscar-winners in two consecutive years. Haggis lives in Santa Monica, California and he has three daughters from his first marriage to Diana Gettas and one son from his second marriage to Deborah Rennard. Haggis founded the non-profit organization Artists for Peace and Justice to assist impoverished youth in Haiti, in an interview with Dan Rather Haggis mentions that he is an atheist. After maintaining active membership in the Church of Scientology for 35 years, Haggis wrote to Thomas Davis, the Churchs spokesman, and requested that he denounce these statements, when Davis remained silent, Haggis responded that Silence is consent, Tommy
17.
Peter Morgan
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Peter Julian Robin Morgan CBE is a British film writer and playwright. Morgan is best known for writing the films and plays The Queen, Frost/Nixon, The Damned United. He is the creator of Netflixs drama series The Crown, in 2008, Morgan was ranked number 28 in The Telegraphs list of The 100 most powerful people in British culture. In February 2017, he was awarded a British Film Institute Fellowship, Morgan was born in Wimbledon, London. His mother, Inga, was a Catholic Pole who fled the Soviets and his father died when Morgan was nine years old. Morgan attended boarding school at Downside School, Somerset, and gained a degree in Fine Art from the University of Leeds, Morgan wrote television scripts during the 1990s, including an episode of Rik Mayall Presents. and the Comedy Premiere The Chest. He wrote the screenplay to the romantic comedy Martha, Meet Frank, Daniel, in 2003, Morgan broke through with The Deal, a television drama about the power-sharing deal between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown that was struck in the Granita restaurant in London in 1994. In 2006, Morgan received his Academy Award-nomination for The Deals follow-up, The Queen, that showed how the death of Princess Diana impacted Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Royal Family. His work on the film eventually awarded him a Golden Globe from the Hollywood Foreign Press,2006 also saw the release of The Last King of Scotland, the screenplay of which Morgan adapted with Jeremy Brock. In 2007 they jointly won a BAFTA Film Award for their work on the film, also in 2006, Morgans first play, Frost/Nixon, was staged at the Donmar Warehouse theatre in London. Starring Michael Sheen as David Frost and Frank Langella as Richard Nixon and these ended with his tacit admission of guilt regarding his role in the Watergate scandal. The play was directed by Michael Grandage and opened to enthusiastic reviews, in May 2007, the 50th San Francisco International Film Festival honoured Morgan with the years Kanbar Award for Excellence in Screenwriting. In July 2009, filming began on The Special Relationship, the film of Morgans Blair trilogy. The film focuses on Blairs relationship with US president Bill Clinton between 1997 and 2000, Morgan was originally scheduled to direct the film but pulled out a month before filming began. He was replaced by Richard Loncraine, Morgan was nominated for two Primetime Emmy Awards for his work on the film. In 2008 Morgan adapted John le Carrés Tinker, Tailor, Soldier and he has since finished the script for Hereafter, a supernatural thriller in the vein of The Sixth Sense. DreamWorks bought the screenplay on spec in March 2008, the development was later transferred to Warner Bros. and filming began in October 2009 under the direction of Clint Eastwood. In 2008 the film Frost/Nixon, with Sheen and Langella playing the parts they had on stage, opened in the UK, Morgan was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for his work on the film
18.
Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
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Donnersmarck was born in 1973 in Cologne, West Germany, into the aristocratic Roman Catholic Henckel von Donnersmarck family, and grew up in New York City, Brussels, Frankfurt, and West Berlin. He is fluent in English, German, French, Russian and he holds a Master of Arts degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at New College, Oxford, and a diploma in Film Directing from the University of Television and Film of Munich. Henckel von Donnersmarck is married to Christiane Asschenfeldt, former International Executive Director of Creative Commons and they have three children and currently live in Los Angeles. In 1977, while living as a child in New York and he expected to see Doctor Dolittle but was exposed instead to the German melodrama Varieté. He cites this experience as the start of his interest in film and his first short film, Dobermann, broke the school record for the number of awards won by a student production. It became an international sensation, and Donnersmarck travelled the festival circuit for over a year. His next film, The Tourist, which Donnersmarck re-wrote, directed and completed in under 11 months, was a thriller starring Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. The film was nominated for three Golden Globes, Best Musical or Comedy, Depp for Actor Musical or Comedy and Jolie for Actress Musical or Comedy and it also won three Teen Choice Awards nominations of which it won two. The film grossed US$278.3 million at the box office. In 2007, Donnersmarck was one of 115 new members to be invited to join AMPAS, in a 2010 interview with The Guardian, director Howard Davies named Donnersmarck as the artist he most admired. René Pollesch wrote a play, LAffaire Martin, which poked fun at von Donnersmarck. According to Pollesch, the directors attended a performance and came backstage to say they liked it. After meeting him at the Davos World Economic Forum, Jay Nordlinger, writing for the National Review, described Donnersmarck as one of the most impressive people on the planet. Other honourees included Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Erasmus of Rotterdam, Saint Thomas More, John Locke, Christopher Wren, Adam Smith, Lawrence of Arabia, Oscar Wilde, tolkien and living university alumni Rupert Murdoch, Bill Clinton and Stephen Hawking. For the cover of the 2011 Prospectus, Oxford University named 100 streets in Oxfords historical centre after these graduates, upper Oxpens Road was renamed in the prospectus for Florian Henckel von Donnersmark. The Lives of Others and Contemporary German Film, A Companion, Das Drehbuch - ein Drama für die Leinwand. Drehbuchanalyse am Beispiel von Florian Henckel von Donnersmarcks Das Leben der anderen, henkel von Donnersmarck, Bankiers, Industrielle, Oscar-Preisträger. A list of publications, including many articles Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck at the Internet Movie Database Biography, in German Films Quarterly photographs of Donnersmarck on official site Interview Archived 10 February 2007 at the Wayback Machine
19.
Simon Blackwell
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Simon John Blackwell is a comedy writer and producer. He is best known for his work on The Thick of It, In The Loop and Veep, Blackwell started writing TV comedy in 1999 on shows such as Have I Got News For You, The Kumars at No. 42, Alastair McGowans Big Impression and The Armstrong and Miller Show and he first worked with Armando Iannucci in 2003 on the topical Channel 4 show Gash. He went on to write on all four series of Iannuccis political sitcom The Thick of It and co-wrote its spin-off film In The Loop, other work with Iannucci includes 2004, The Stupid Version and Time Trumpet. Blackwell wrote for Chris Morriss 2010 black comedy film Four Lions, alongside Jesse Armstrong and he had previously collaborated with them on the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show and BBC Ones The Old Guys. In 2016, Blackwell created the sitcom Back starring David Mitchell and it will premiere on Channel 4 in 2017. Simon Blackwell on Twitter Simon Blackwell at the Internet Movie Database
20.
Armando Iannucci
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Armando Giovanni Iannucci, OBE is a Scottish satirist, writer, television director, and radio producer. Born in Glasgow, Iannucci studied at Oxford University and left work on a PhD about John Milton to pursue a career in comedy. Starting on BBC Scotland and BBC Radio 4, his work with Chris Morris on the radio series On the Hour was transferred to television as The Day Today. A character from series, Alan Partridge, went on to feature in a number of Iannuccis television and radio programmes including Knowing Me, Knowing You. In the meantime, Iannucci also fronted the satirical Armistice review shows and in 2001 created his most personal work, The Armando Iannucci Shows, for Channel 4. Moving back to the BBC in 2005, Iannucci created the political sitcom The Thick of It as well as the spoof documentary Time Trumpet in 2006. Winning funding from the UK Film Council, he directed an acclaimed feature film, In the Loop. As a result of works, he has been described by The Daily Telegraph as the hardman of political satire. Iannucci created the HBO political satire Veep, and was its showrunner for four seasons from 2012 to 2015, other works during this period include an operetta libretto, Skin Deep, and his radio series Charm Offensive. In March 2012, it was announced that he is working on his first novel, Tongue International and his father, also called Armando, is from Naples, while his mother was born in Glasgow to an Italian family. His father, who came to Scotland in 1950, ran a pizza factory, Iannucci has two brothers and a sister. He was educated at St Peters Primary School, St. Aloysius College, Glasgow, the University of Glasgow, and University College, Oxford, in his teens, he thought seriously about becoming a Roman Catholic priest. He abandoned graduate work on 17th-century religious language, with reference to Miltons Paradise Lost. Iannucci first received fame as the producer for On the Hour on Radio 4. Baynham was closely involved with both Morriss and Lee & Herrings work – simultaneously at one point, between 1995 and 1999, Iannucci produced and hosted The Saturday Night Armistice. In 2000, he created two pilot episodes for Channel 4, which became The Armando Iannucci Shows and this was an eight-part series for Channel 4 broadcast in 2001, written with Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil. The series consisted of Iannucci pondering pseudo-philosophical and jocular ideas and fantasies in between surreal sketches, Iannucci has been quoted as saying it is the comedy series he is most proud of making. He told The Metro in April 2007 The Armando Iannucci Show on Channel 4 came out around 9/11, people had other things on their minds
21.
Aaron Sorkin
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Aaron Benjamin Sorkin is an American screenwriter, producer, and playwright. Sorkins trademark rapid-fire dialogue and extended monologues are complemented, in television, Sorkin was born in Manhattan, New York City, to a Jewish family, and was raised in the New York suburb of Scarsdale. His mother was a schoolteacher and his father a lawyer who had fought in WWII. Bill, both his sister and brother went on to become lawyers. His paternal grandfather was one of the founders of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, Sorkin took an early interest in acting. Before he reached his teenage years, his parents were taking him to the theatre to see such as Whos Afraid of Virginia Woolf. Sorkin attended Scarsdale High School where he involved in the drama. In eighth grade he played General Bullmoose in the musical Lil Abner, in Scarsdale Highs senior class production of Once Upon a Mattress, Sorkin played Sir Harry. He served as president in his junior and senior year at Scarsdale High School. In 1979, Sorkin attended Syracuse University, in his freshman year he failed a class that was a core requirement. It was a setback because he wanted to be an actor. Determined to do better, he returned in his sophomore year and you have the capacity to be so much better than you are, he started saying to me in September of my senior year. He was still saying it in May, on the last day of classes, he said it again, and I said, How. and he answered, Dare to fail. Ive been coming through on his ever since. One weekend, while housesitting at a place he found an IBM Selectric typewriter, started typing, and felt a phenomenal confidence. He continued writing and eventually put together his first play, Removing All Doubt, which he sent to his old Syracuse theatre teacher, Arthur Storch, in 1984, Removing All Doubt was staged for drama students at his alma mater, Syracuse University. After that, he wrote Hidden in This Picture which debuted off-off-Broadway at Steve Olsens West Bank Cafe Downstairs Theatre Bar in New York City in 1988, the contents of his first two plays got him a theatrical agent. Producer John A. McQuiggan saw the production of Hidden in This Picture, Sorkin got the inspiration to write his next play, a courtroom drama called A Few Good Men, from a phone conversation with his sister Deborah
22.
Asghar Farhadi
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Asghar Farhadi is an Iranian film director and screenwriter. Among other awards, he has received a Golden Globe Award as well as two Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film for his movies A Separation and The Salesman in 2012 and 2017, respectively. He was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the world by Time magazine in 2012, Farhadi was born in Khomeyni Shahr, a city located in the Isfahan province near the city of Isfahan. He is a graduate of theatre, with a BA in Dramatic Arts and MA in Stage Direction from University of Tehran and Tarbiat Modares University, respectively. Farhadi made short 8mm and 16mm films in the Isfahan branch of the Iranian Young Cinema Society and he also directed such TV series as A Tale of a City and co-wrote the screenplay for Ebrahim Hatamikia’s Low Heights. Dancing in the Dust was his film debut, which he followed with A Beautiful City. His third film, Fireworks Wednesday, won the Gold Hugo at the 2006 Chicago International Film Festival and his fourth film, About Elly, won him the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 59th International Berlin Film Festival and also Best Picture at the Tribeca Film Festival. The latter film is about a group of Iranians who take a trip to the Iranian beaches of Caspian Sea that turns tragic, Film theorist and critic David Bordwell has called About Elly a masterpiece. His film A Separation premiered on 9 February 2011 at the 29th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran and it won Farhadi four awards including Best Director. On 15 February 2011, it played in competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. In June 2011, A Separation won the Sydney Film Prize in competition with Cannes Festivals winner The Tree of Life, on 19 December 2011, Farhadi was announced as being on the jury for the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, held in February 2012. On 15 January 2012, A Separation won the Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language Film, on 26 February 2012, A Separation became the first Iranian movie to win an Oscar for the best foreign language film at the 84th edition of the Academy Awards. This marked Farhadi as the first Iranian to have won an Academy Award in any of the competitive categories and he was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2012 along with 175 other individuals. A Separation also won the César Award for Best Foreign Film and his 2013 film The Past, starring Bérénice Bejo and Tahar Rahim, competed for the Palme dOr at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Bejo won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance in the film and his 2016 film The Salesman, starring Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti, competed for the Palme dOr at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. The Salesman won two Awards, Best Actor for Shahab Hosseini and Best Screenplay for Farhadi, on 26 February 2017, he won his second Oscar for Best Foreign Film for The Salesman at the 89th Academy Awards. The Salesman had already won the award for the Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival and he then has announced two prominent Iranian Americans, Anousheh Ansari and Firouz Naderi to representing him in the ceremony. Anousheh Ansari is famed for being the first female space tourist and first Iranian in space, a few hours before the ceremony, he addressed a group of protesters in London via a video link from Iran
23.
Michael Haneke
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Michael Haneke is an Austrian film director and screenwriter best known for films such as Funny Games, Caché, The White Ribbon and Amour. His work often examines social issues, and depicts the feelings of estrangement experienced by individuals in modern society, Haneke has worked in television‚ theatre and cinema. Besides working as a filmmaker, Haneke also teaches film direction at the Film Academy Vienna. At the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, his film The White Ribbon won the Palme dOr, in 2012, his film Amour premiered and competed at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. The film received five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay and it won in the category of Best Foreign Language Film. Haneke has made films in French, German and in English, in 2013 Haneke won the Prince of Asturias Award for the arts. Haneke was born in Munich, Germany, the son of the German actor and director Fritz Haneke and his stepfather, the composer Alexander Steinbrecher, had later married the mother of actor Christoph Waltz. After graduating, he became a critic and from 1967 to 1970 he worked as editor. He made his debut as a director in 1974. Hanekes feature film debut was 1989s The Seventh Continent, which served to trace out the violent, three years later, the controversial Bennys Video put Hanekes name on the map. Haneke achieved great success in 2001 with the critically successful French film The Piano Teacher and it won the prestigious Grand Prize at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival and also won its stars, Benoît Magimel and Isabelle Huppert, the Best Actor and Actress awards. He has worked with Juliette Binoche, after she expressed interest in working with him, Haneke frequently worked with real-life couple Ulrich Mühe and Susanne Lothar – thrice each. His film, The White Ribbon, premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, in 2012, his film Amour also won the Palme dOr. Haneke says that films should offer more space for imagination and self-reflection. Films that have too much detail and moral clarity, Haneke says, are used for consumption by their viewers. It is often difficult for people to ascertain Hanekes philosophy and the messages he wishes to illustrate in his works. His 2012 film Amour won the Best Foreign Language Oscar and was nominated for the Best Picture Oscar at the 85th Academy Awards, in 2013 he was the subject of the documentary film Michael H – Profession, Director. Haneke has directed a number of productions in German, which include works by Strindberg, Goethe
24.
Wes Anderson
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Wesley Wales Wes Anderson is an American film director, film producer, screenwriter, and actor. His films are known for their visual and narrative style. He received his first Academy Award nomination for Best Director and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for The Grand Budapest Hotel in 2014 and he also received the BAFTA Award for Best Original Screenplay in 2015. His films are produced under his American Empirical Pictures banner, Anderson is regarded by many as a modern-day example of the auteur. Wesley Wales Anderson was born on May 1,1969, in Houston, Texas, the son of Texas Ann, a realtor and archaeologist, and Melver Leonard Anderson and he is the second of three boys, his parents divorced when he was eight. His elder brother, Mel, is a physician, and his brother, Eric Chase Anderson, is a writer and artist whose paintings. Anderson is of Swedish and Norwegian ancestry and he graduated from St. Johns School in Houston in 1987, which he later used as a prominent location throughout Rushmore. As a child, Anderson made silent films on his fathers Super 8 camera, starring his brothers and friends, Anderson attended college while working part-time as a cinema projectionist. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in philosophy in 1990, Andersons first film was Bottle Rocket, based on a short film that he made with Luke and Owen Wilson. It was a crime caper about a group of young Texans aspiring to achieve major heists and it was well reviewed but performed poorly at the box office. Andersons next film was Rushmore, a comedy about a high school students crush on an elementary school teacher starring Bill Murray. Murray has since appeared in every Anderson film to date, in 2000, filmmaker Martin Scorsese praised Bottle Rocket and Rushmore. The Royal Tenenbaums was Andersons next comedy-drama film, about a successful artistic New York City family and it represented his greatest success until Moonrise Kingdom in 2012, earning more than $50 million in domestic box office receipts. The Royal Tenenbaums was nominated for an Academy Award and ranked by an Empire poll as the 159th greatest film ever made, Andersons next feature was The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou about a Jacques Cousteau-esque documentary filmmaker played by Bill Murray. It serves as a example of Andersons style, but its critical reception was less favorable than his previous films. They offered Anderson their soundtrack services for his The Darjeeling Limited, the Darjeeling Limited was about three emotionally distant brothers traveling together on a train in India. It reflected the dramatic tone of The Royal Tenenbaums but faced criticisms similar to The Life Aquatic. Anderson has acknowledged that he went to India to film the 2007 movie, the film starred Anderson staples Jason Schwartzman and Owen Wilson in addition to Adrien Brody, and the script was co-written by Anderson, Schwartzman, and Roman Coppola
25.
Martin McDonagh
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Martin McDonagh is a playwright, screenwriter and film director, born and brought up in London to Irish parents. He has been described as one of the most important living playwrights in Ireland, McDonagh was born in Camberwell, London to Irish parents. His mother and his father moved back to Galway, leaving McDonagh. Separated into two trilogies, McDonaghs first six plays are located in and around County Galway, where he spent his holidays as a child. The first is set in Leenane, a village on the west coast of Ireland. McDonaghs first non-Irish play The Pillowman is set in a totalitarian state and premiered at the Royal National Theatre in 2003. A Behanding in Spokane is McDonaghs first play that is set in the United States, lead actor Christopher Walken was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as a killer looking for the hand he lost in his youth. McDonagh also penned two prize-winning radio plays, one of which is The Tale of the Wolf and the Woodcutter, in February 2010, an announcement revealed that McDonagh was working on a new stage musical with composer Tom Waits and director Robert Wilson. The play was received on its opening night in Galway in 1996 and was then produced Off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theater Company in 1998. The play transferred to Broadway in April 1998 and received a Tony Award for Best Play nomination, a Skull in Connemara A Connemara man is employed to exhume skeletons in an overcrowded graveyard and he encounters the wife whom he was once accused of killing. The play premiered in 1997 at Town Hall Theatre, Galway, the play was presented at the Royal Court Theatre, and made its US premiere at the A Contemporary Theatre in Seattle, Washington in July to August 2000. The play ran Off-Broadway in January to May 2001 at the Gramercy Theatre, the Lonesome West Two brothers bicker in the aftermath of the supposedly accidental fatal shooting of their father. The play ran on Broadway in 1999 and received a Tony Award nomination for Best Play in 1999, the Cripple of Inishmaan A dark comedy in which a crippled teenager schemes to attain a role in Man of Aran. The play opened in 1997 at the Royal National Theatre in London and it opened in April 1998 Off-Broadway at the Joseph Papp Public Theater, with Ruaidhri Conroy in the title role on both occasions. Also in 1998, Frederick Koehler played the role in the Geffen Playhouse production in Los Angeles. In December 2008, The Cripple of Inishmaan was produced Off-Broadway by the Atlantic Theater Company, in conjunction with The Druid Theatre Company of Galway, Ireland. The Lieutenant of Inishmore A dark comedy in which the leader of an INLA splinter group discovers that his best friend. The play was produced Off-Broadway in February 2006 by the Atlantic Theater Company and it transferred to Broadway in May 2006 and received a 2006 Tony Award nomination for Best Play
