Documentary film
A documentary film is a nonfictional motion picture intended to document some aspect of reality for the purposes of instruction, education, or maintaining a historical record. "Documentary" has been described as a "filmmaking practice, a cinematic tradition, mode of audience reception", continually evolving and is without clear boundaries. Documentary films were called'actuality' films and were only a minute or less in length. Over time documentaries have evolved to be longer in length and to include more categories, such as educational and even'docufiction'. Documentaries are educational and used in schools to teach various principles. Social media platforms such as YouTube, have allowed documentary films to improve the ways the films are distributed and able to educate and broaden the reach of people who receive the information. Polish writer and filmmaker Bolesław Matuszewski was among those who identified the mode of documentary film, he wrote two of the earliest texts on cinema Une nouvelle source de l'histoire and La photographie animée.
Both were published in 1898 in French and among the early written works to consider the historical and documentary value of the film. Matuszewski is among the first filmmakers to propose the creation of a Film Archive to collect and keep safe visual materials. In popular myth, the word documentary was coined by Scottish documentary filmmaker John Grierson in his review of Robert Flaherty's film Moana, published in the New York Sun on 8 February 1926, written by "The Moviegoer". Grierson's principles of documentary were that cinema's potential for observing life could be exploited in a new art form. In this regard, Grierson's definition of documentary as "creative treatment of actuality" has gained some acceptance, with this position at variance with Soviet film-maker Dziga Vertov's provocation to present "life as it is" and "life caught unawares"; the American film critic Pare Lorentz defines a documentary film as "a factual film, dramatic." Others further state that a documentary stands out from the other types of non-fiction films for providing an opinion, a specific message, along with the facts it presents.
Documentary practice is the complex process of creating documentary projects. It refers to what people do with media devices, content and production strategies in order to address the creative and conceptual problems and choices that arise as they make documentaries. Documentary filmmaking can be used as a form of advocacy, or personal expression. Early film was dominated by the novelty of showing an event, they were single-shot moments captured on film: a train entering a station, a boat docking, or factory workers leaving work. These short films were called "actuality" films. Many of the first films, such as those made by Auguste and Louis Lumière, were a minute or less in length, due to technological limitations. Films showing many people were made for commercial reasons: the people being filmed were eager to see, for payment, the film showing them. One notable film clocked in at over an hour and The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight. Using pioneering film-looping technology, Enoch J. Rector presented the entirety of a famous 1897 prize-fight on cinema screens across the United States.
In May 1896, Bolesław Matuszewski recorded on film few surigical operations in Warsaw and Saint Petersburg hospitals. In 1898, French surgeon Eugène-Louis Doyen invited Bolesław Matuszewski and Clément Maurice and proposed them to recorded his surigical operations, they started in Paris a series of surgical films sometime before July 1898. Until 1906, the year of his last film, Doyen recorded more than 60 operations. Doyen said that his first films taught him how to correct professional errors he had been unaware of. For scientific purposes, after 1906, Doyen combined 15 of his films into three compilations, two of which survive, the six-film series Extirpation des tumeurs encapsulées, the four-film Les Opérations sur la cavité crânienne; these and five other of Doyen's films survive. Between July 1898 and 1901, the Romanian professor Gheorghe Marinescu made several science films in his neurology clinic in Bucharest: Walking Troubles of Organic Hemiplegy, The Walking Troubles of Organic Paraplegies, A Case of Hysteric Hemiplegy Healed Through Hypnosis, The Walking Troubles of Progressive Locomotion Ataxy, Illnesses of the Muscles.
All these short films have been preserved. The professor called his works "studies with the help of the cinematograph," and published the results, along with several consecutive frames, in issues of "La Semaine Médicale" magazine from Paris, between 1899 and 1902. In 1924, Auguste Lumiere recognized the merits of Marinescu's science films: "I've seen your scientific reports about the usage of the cinematograph in studies of nervous illnesses, when I was still receiving "La Semaine Médicale," but back I had other concerns, which left me no spare time to begin biological studies. I must say I am thankful to you that you reminded them to me. Not many scientists have followed your way." Travelogue films were popular in the early part of the 20th century. They were referred to by distributors as "scenics." Scenics were among the most popu
70 mm film
70 mm film is a wide high-resolution film gauge for motion picture photography, with negative area nearly 3.5 times larger than the standard 35 mm motion picture film format. As used in cameras, the film is 65 mm wide. For projection, the original 65 mm film is printed on 70 mm film; the additional 5 mm are for four magnetic strips holding six tracks of stereophonic sound. Although 70 mm prints use digital sound encoding, the vast majority of existing and surviving 70 mm prints predate this technology; each frame is five perforations tall, with an aspect ratio of 2.2:1. With regards to exhibition, 70 mm film was always considered a specialty format reserved for epics and spectacle films shot on 65mm and blockbuster films that were released both in 35 mm and as 70 mm blow-ups. While few venues were equipped to screen this special format, at the height of its popularity most major markets and cites had a theater that could screen it; some venues continue to screen 70 mm to this day or have had 70 mm projectors permanently or temporarily installed for more recent 70 mm releases.
Films formatted with a width of 70 mm have existed since the early days of the motion picture industry. The first 70 mm format film was most footage of the Henley Regatta, projected in 1896 and 1897, but may have been filmed as early as 1894, it required a specially built projector built by Herman Casler in Canastota, New York and had a ratio similar to full frame, with an aperture of 2.75 inches by 2 inches. There were several film formats of various sizes from 50 to 68 mm which were developed from 1884 onwards, including Cinéorama, started in 1900 by Raoul Grimoin-Sanson. In 1914 the Italian Filoteo Alberini invented a panoramic film system utilising a 70 mm wide film called Panoramica. In 1928, William Fox of the Fox Film Corporation, in personal partnership with Theodore Case as the Fox-Case Corporation, began working on a wide film format using 70 mm film which they named Grandeur. Cameras were ordered by Fox-Case from Mitchell Camera Corp, with the first 70mm production cameras, designated as the Mitchell Model FC camera, delivered to Fox-Case in May 1929.
This was one of a number of wide-film processes developed by some of the major film studios at about that time. However, due to the financial strains of the Great Depression, along with strong resistance from movie theater owners, who were in the process of equipping their theaters for sound, none of these systems became commercially successful. Fox dropped Grandeur in 1930. Producer Mike Todd had been one of the founders of Cinerama, a wide-screen movie process, launched in 1952. Cinerama employed three 35 mm film projectors running in synchronism to project a wide image onto a curved screen. Although the results were impressive, the system was expensive and had some serious shortcomings due to the need to match up three separate projected images. Todd left the company to develop a system of his own which, he hoped, would be as impressive as Cinerama, yet be simpler and cheaper and avoid the problems associated with three-strip projection. In collaboration with the American Optical company, Todd developed a system, to be called "Todd-AO".
This uses a single 70 mm wide film and was introduced with the film Oklahoma! in October 1955. The 70 mm film is perforated at the same pitch as standard 35 mm film. With a five-perforation pull-down, the Todd-AO system provides a frame dimension of 1.912 inch by 0.816 inch giving an aspect ratio of 2.3:1. The original version of Todd-AO used a frame rate of 30 per second, 25% faster than the 24 frames per second, the standard; the Todd-AO format was intended to use a curved Cinerama-type screen but this failed to survive beyond the first few films. However, in the 1960s and 70s, such films as The Sound of Music and Patton were shown in some Cinerama cinemas, which allowed for curved screens. Todd-AO adopted a similar multi-channel magnetic sound system to the one developed for Cinemascope two years earlier, recorded on "stripes" of magnetic oxide deposited on the film; however Todd-AO has six channels instead of the four of Cinemascope and due to the wider stripes and faster film speed provides superior audio quality.
Five of these six channels are fed to five speakers spaced behind the screen, the sixth is fed to surround speakers around the walls of the auditorium. Panavision developed their own 65/70mm system, technically compatible and identical to Todd-AO. Monikered as Super Panavision 70, it used spherical lenses and the same 2.2:1 aspect ratio at 24 frames per second. Panavision had another 65mm system, which sprang from the MGM Camera 65 system they helped develop for MGM, used to film Raintree County and Ben-Hur. Both Ultra Panavision 70 and MGM Camera 65 employed an anamorphic lens with a 1.25x squeeze on a 65mm negative. When projected on a 70mm print, a 1.25x anamorphic projection lens was used to decompress the image to an aspect ratio of 2.76:1, one of the widest used in commercial cinema. Due to the high cost of 70 mm film and the expensive projection system and screen required to u
Spike Jonze
Adam Spiegel, known professionally as Spike Jonze, is an American filmmaker and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials and television. Jonze began his career as a teenager photographing BMX riders and skateboarders for Freestylin' Magazine and Transworld Skateboarding, co-founded the youth culture magazine Dirt. Moving into filmmaking, he began shooting street skateboarding films, including the influential Video Days. Jonze co-founded the skateboard company Girl Skateboards in 1993 with riders Rick Howard and Mike Carroll. Jonze's filmmaking style made him an in-demand director of music videos for much of the 1990s, resulting in collaborations with Sonic Youth, Beastie Boys, Fatboy Slim, Daft Punk, Weezer, Björk, Kanye West and Arcade Fire. Jonze began his feature film directing career with Being John Adaptation. Both written by Charlie Kaufman, he was a executive producer of MTV's Jackass reality franchise. Jonze began directing films based on his own screenplays, including Where the Wild Things Are and Her.
He has worked as an actor sporadically throughout his career, co-starring in David O. Russell's war comedy Three Kings and appeared in supporting roles in Bennett Miller's Moneyball and Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street, in addition to a recurring role in comedy series The Increasingly Poor Decisions of Todd Margaret and cameo appearances in his own films. Jonze co-founded Directors Label, with filmmakers Chris Cunningham and Michel Gondry, the Palm Pictures company, he is the creative director of Vice Media, Inc. and its multinational television channel Viceland. Jonze was born Adam Spiegel on October 22, 1969 in Rockville, the son of Arthur H. Spiegel III and Sandra L. Granzow, his father was of German Jewish ancestry, is the great-great-grandson of Joseph Spiegel, founder of the Spiegel catalog and grandson of Arthur Spiegel. Arthur H. Spiegel III was the founder of a healthcare consulting firm. Jonze's parents divorced when he was his father remarried. Jonze was raised by his mother in Bethesda, where she worked in public relations, along with his brother Sam "Squeak E. Clean" Spiegel, now a producer and DJ, his sister Julia.
While studying at Walt Whitman High School, Jonze spent much of his time at a Bethesda community store, where owner Mike Henderson gave him the nickname "Spike Jonze" in reference to Spike Jones. A keen BMX rider, Jonze began working at the Rockville BMX store in Rockville, Maryland, at the age of 16. A common destination for touring professional BMX teams, Jonze began photographing BMX demos at Rockville and formed a friendship with Freestylin' Magazine editors Mark Lewman and Andy Jenkins. Impressed with Jonze's photography work, the pair offered him a job as a photographer for the magazine, he subsequently moved to California to pursue career opportunities in photography. Jonze fronted an international BMX club, alongside Lewman and Jenkins; the three created the youth culture magazines Homeboy and Dirt, the latter of, spun off from the female-centered Sassy and was aimed towards young boys. While shooting for various BMX publications in California, Jonze was introduced to a number of professional skateboarders who would share ramps with BMX pros.
Jonze formed a close friendship with Mark Gonzales, co-owner of the newly formed Blind Skateboards at the time, began shooting photos with the young Blind team including Jason Lee, Guy Mariano and Rudy Johnson in the late 1980s. Jonze became a regular contributor to Transworld Skateboarding, was subsequently given a job at World Industries by Steve Rocco, who enlisted him to photograph advertisements and shoot promotional videos for his brands under the World Industries umbrella. Jonze filmed and produced his first skateboarding video, Rubbish Heap, for World Industries in 1989, his following video project was Video Days, a promotional video for Blind Skateboards, released in 1991 and is considered to be influential in the community. The video's subject, presented a copy of Video Days to Kim Gordon during a chance encounter following a Sonic Youth show in early 1992. Impressed with Jonze's videography skills, Gordon tracked down the young filmmaker and approached him to direct a music video featuring skateboarders.
The video, co-directed by Jonze and Tamra Davis, was for their 1992 single "100%", which featured skateboarding footage of Blind Skateboards rider Jason Lee, who would become a successful actor. In 1993, Jonze co-directed the "trippy" music video for The Breeders song "Cannonball" with Gordon. Along with Rick Howard and Mike Carroll, Jonze co-founded the skateboard company Girl Skateboards in 1993; the following year, he directed the video for the Weezer song "Buddy Holly", which featured the band performing the song interspersed with clips from the sitcom Happy Days. The video became immensely popular and was shown on MTV. A 2013 Rolling Stone readers' poll ranked it as the tenth best music video of the 1990s. In 1994, Jonze directed the videos for the Beastie Boys' songs "Sure Shot" and, more famously, "Sabotage"; the latter parodies 1970s cop shows and is presented as the opening credits for a fictional show called Sabotage, featuring the band members appearing as its protagonists. As with "Buddy Holly", the video attracted great popularity a
Tom Arnold (actor)
Thomas Duane Arnold is an American actor and comedian. He is best known for starring alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger in True Lies, earning a nomination for the MTV Movie Award for Best Comedic Performance. Arnold has appeared in many more indie and Hollywood films, Nine Months, The Stupids, McHale's Navy, Animal Factory, Cradle 2 the Grave, Mr. 3000, Happy Endings, The Great Buck Howard, Madea's Witness Protection. He was the host of The Best Damn Sports Show Period for four years. Born Thomas Duane Arnold in Ottumwa, the son of Linda Kay and Jack Arnold, he has six siblings. His mother abandoned the family when he was a child, he and his siblings were raised by their father, he was sexually abused from age 4–7 by a male babysitter. During his youth, he worked at a meatpacking plant. Arnold attended Ottumwa High School, Indian Hills Community College, the University of Iowa, where he studied business administration and writing, he began doing stand-up comedy when he was 23. In the early 1980s, Arnold had a prop-based comedy routine called "Tom Arnold and the Goldfish Review."
Roseanne Barr brought him in as a writer for Roseanne. He married her in 1990. Arnold wrote himself into the show as the character "Arnie Thomas"; the couple's marriage attracted media and tabloid attention due to their sometimes outrageous behavior. In 1992, Arnold starred in The Jackie Thomas Show. Airing after Roseanne on ABC, the show lasted only 18 episodes. In 1993, Arnold and Barr bought a house together in Arnold's hometown of Eldon and opened a restaurant,'Roseanne and Tom's Big Food Diner' nearby. Both appeared in the 1993 movie The Woman. Arnold and Barr divorced in 1994, their restaurant closed in 1995. After Arnold's divorce from Barr, he narrated and starred in several Craftmatic Adjustable Bed commercials that aired throughout 1995; the last commercial that he filmed culminated in Arnold laying in a bed that caught on fire and melted a strand of his underarm hair during the taping. Arnold commented on Twitter in 2014: "Me and Mike used to laugh about how had a pepsi commercial of my own".
In Nov. 2000, Arnold played the role of Al Raymond in the Baywatch Hawaii Season 2 episode. In a late-1990s interview on radio's Howard Stern Show, Arnold admitted that his share of his and Barr's estate amounted to "over $20,000,000", including a percentage of the Roseanne ABC-TV series, but would not elaborate, citing a confidentiality clause. In 1994, Arnold appeared as the sidekick to Arnold Schwarzenegger's character in the James Cameron feature film True Lies. From 2001 through 2005, he was one of the hosts of The Best Damn Sports Show Period. From 2003 to 2005, Arnold became the voice of Arby's "Oven Mitt" commercials; the fast food chain's public profile and profits suffered in the early 2000s from accusations ranging from improperly packaged dairy products and corporate corruption. Due to budget restrictions, they hired Tom Arnold rather than their first choice, Tom Brokaw or Morgan Freeman. Arnold had his first romantic leading man part in the 2005 movie Happy Endings; that same year, Arnold starred in The Kid & I.
From 2008 to 2011, he hosted. He hosted CMT's The Biggest Redneck Wedding Ever in 2008, in which he served as the wedding planner, created a wedding that exceeded the dreams of a couple who wanted to be married in a mud bog, performed the actual ceremony. CMT made three series of "My Big Redneck Vacation" presented by Arnold and featuring the Clampet Family from Shreveport Louisiana. Arnold's role as a child molester in Gardens of the Night sparked revelations that he had been a victim of sexual abuse in his childhood, he decided to take on the role to shed more light on the issue. In January 2017, Tom Arnold was revealed as a celebrity contestant on the Australian edition of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!. He was the first evictee from the jungle, after 17 days, stated he was paid between $US600,000 and $US700,000 for his participation in the program. In June 2017, Arnold filed a lawsuit against companies Network Ten and'A List Entertainment' for defrauding him for being on I'm a Celebrity...
Get Me Out of Here!. Arnold claims that he was promised a payment of a comedy tour in Australia. However, he was missing Network Ten backed out of the comedy tour. Long Time was written by American singer/songwriter Debbie Harry after observing Arnold at a Hollywood party. Asked why she was inspired to write their hit song about Arnold, Harry said: "I watched him interact with all these people that are his great friends, the first thing I wrote for the song was'I can make you think everybody wants to be your friend' on Google docs and the rest of it followed suit to that line." In 2018, Arnold's Viceland show. Arnold commented during a CNN interview on his former friendship with the current President, "Yeah, the Donald and I used to be good friends. We met at a cosmo dive bar in Manhattan, close to Trump Tower, and it's weird looking back at our friendship and collab on the Apprentice, because all the time I talked to him, I could tell he had a screw loose, like this terrible bed I used to sleep on when I was doing standup in the eighties and there was a spring
Andy Dick
Andrew Roane Dick is an American comedian, actor and television and film producer. Best known as a comic, he is known for his eccentric behavior, drug addiction, sexual misconduct allegations and arrests, his first regular television role was on the influential Ben Stiller Show. In the mid-1990s, he had a long-running stint on NBC's NewsRadio and was a supporting character on Less than Perfect, he had his own program, The Andy Dick Show on MTV. He is noted for his outlandish behavior from a number of Comedy Central Roasts and other appearances. Dick was born on December 1965, in Charleston, South Carolina, as Andrew Thomlinson, he was adopted at birth by Allen and Sue Dick, named Andrew Roane Dick. He was brought up Presbyterian, his father was in the Navy. As a child, he spent time living with his family in Connecticut, New York, Yugoslavia before moving to Chicago in 1979, he attended Lassiter High School, being temporarily housed at George Walton Comprehensive High School in Cobb County, Georgia.
Dick appeared in numerous theater productions during his high school years and was elected homecoming king his senior year in 1983. While in high school, he tended to use his surname as a joke. Dick graduated from Joliet West High School in 1984, is a friend of actor Anthony Rapp, whom he had known since childhood. After high school, Dick joined Chicago's Second City, attended Columbia College Chicago, took improv comedy classes at iO Theater. Dick started his TV comedy career as a cast member on the sketch comedy program The Ben Stiller Show, which aired on the Fox Network from September 1992 to January 1993. Prior to this, Dick starred in an advertisement for the original Sonic the Hedgehog game in 1991. In 1993, on the third night of David Letterman's new CBS show, Dick appeared as "Donnie the CBS Page Who Likes to Suck Up", during which he gave a watch to Letterman; the host handed him a pencil, prompting Dick to cry and walk backstage to much applause. In 1994, Dick played the part of Pepé the stylist in the episode "Maggie the Model" on The Nanny.
He starred as Zachary Smart, the son of Maxwell Smart and Agent 99 in the Get Smart Fox television remake. In 2001, Dick starred along with Kieran Culkin on the short lived NBC summer television series Go Fish. Dick has been a series regular on several sitcoms for their entire duration, including NewsRadio on NBC, portraying Matthew Brock, on the ABC sitcom Less than Perfect as Owen Kronsky. In 2001, his colleagues and producers, including himself, developed a show on MTV called The Andy Dick Show; the series ended in 2003 after three seasons. In 2004, he starred in a satirical reality television show on MTV, called The Assistant; the show spoofed themes and scenes from The Apprentice, The Bachelor, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Survivor, among others. Dick had had a guest shot on Star Trek: Voyager as the Emergency Medical Hologram Mark II in "Message in a Bottle", he competed in the eighth season of Celebrity Poker Showdown. He finished in last place, behind Robin Tunney, Christopher Meloni, Macy Gray, Joy Behar.
On May 16, 2007, Dick was roasted on The Howard Stern Show by Artie Lange, Lisa Lampanelli, Reverend Bob Levy, Sal Governale, Colin Quinn, Benjy Bronk, Dave Attell, Greg Fitzsimmons, Yucko the Clown. In 2008, Dick appeared on episode No. 3 of The Real World: Hollywood to tell cast members that they would be taking improv classes. Dick has made appearances on Comedy Central's The Gong Show hosted by Dave Attell, he came out on VH1's Sober House 1. Dick was a contestant on Season 16 of Dancing With the Stars in 2013, he was partnered with former troupe member, Sharna Burgess, placed seventh in the competition. Dick was on ABC's Celebrity Wife Swap on July 14, 2013. One of his earliest film roles was a fictional version of himself the film adaptation of video game Double Dragon. In 1993, Dick played himself in the mockumentary The Making of... And God Spoke, he starred alongside MTV comedian Pauly Shore in the 1994 war comedy film In the Army Now. In 1997, Dick had a supporting role alongside Luke Wilson and Jack Black in Bongwater, as Luke Wilson's gay friend who gives him a place to stay after his house burns to the ground.
In 1999, Dick played a warm-hearted yet cowardly scientist that helped Dr. Claw in the movie Inspector Gadget. In 2000, he made a cameo role in the motion picture Dude, Where's My Car?. That same year, he appeared in the teenage comedy film Road Trip, playing a motel clerk. In 2001, Dick made a cameo in Ben Stiller's comedy Zoolander as Olga the Masseuse. In 2002, he was featured in the band Ash's music video "Envy" as a taxi cab driver. In 2003, he appeared in Will Ferrell's Old School as a gay sex education teacher, as a villainous Santa in the movie The Hebrew Hammer. In 2005, Dick was featured in the documentary The Aristocrats. In 2006, he appeared in the film Employee of the Month as Lon, the optician, nearsighted, he provided the voice Mombo in 2007's Happily N'Ever After and the voice of Boingo in Hoodwinked!. His feature film directing debut was the 2006 film Danny Roane: First Time Director. In late December 2008, Dick announced on his official website that he had finished writing a script for a film starring his alter-ego Daphne Aguilera titled, Daphne Aguilera: Get Into It.
In 1998, he lent his voice to the villain Nuka in the Disney direct-to-video animated film The Lion King II: Simba's Pride and provid
Stephen Colbert
Stephen Tyrone Colbert is an American comedian, producer, political commentator and television host. He is best known for hosting the satirical Comedy Central program The Colbert Report from 2005 to 2014 and the CBS talk program The Late Show with Stephen Colbert beginning in September 2015. Colbert studied to be a dramatic actor, but became interested in improvisational theatre while attending Northwestern University, where he met Second City director Del Close. Colbert first performed professionally as an understudy for Steve Carell at Second City Chicago, where his troupe mates included Paul Dinello and Amy Sedaris, comedians with whom he developed the sketch comedy series, Exit 57, he wrote and performed on the short-lived Dana Carvey Show before collaborating with Sedaris and Dinello again on the cult television series Strangers with Candy. He gained attention for his role on the latter as closeted gay history teacher Chuck Noblet. Colbert's work as a correspondent on Comedy Central's news-parody series The Daily Show gained him wide recognition.
In 2005, he left The Daily Show to host The Colbert Report. Following The Daily Show's news-parody concept, The Colbert Report was a parody of personality-driven political opinion shows including The O'Reilly Factor, in which he portrayed a caricatured version of conservative political pundits; the series became one of Comedy Central's highest-rated series, earning Colbert an invitation to perform as featured entertainer at the White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in 2006. After ending The Colbert Report, he was hired in 2015 to succeed retiring David Letterman as host of the Late Show on CBS, he hosted the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards in September 2017. Colbert has won nine Primetime Emmy Awards, two Grammy Awards, two Peabody Awards. Colbert was named one of Time's 100 Most Influential People in 2006 and 2012. Colbert's book, I Am America, listed #1 on The New York Times Best Seller list in 2007. Colbert was born in Washington, D. C. the youngest of 11 children in a Catholic family. He spent his early years in Maryland.
He grew up on South Carolina. Colbert and his siblings, in descending order by age, are James III, Mary, Margo, Jay, Paul and Stephen, his father, James William Colbert Jr. was an immunologist and medical school dean at Yale University, Saint Louis University, at the Medical University of South Carolina, where he served as vice president for academic affairs. Stephen's mother, Lorna Elizabeth Colbert, was a homemaker. In interviews, Colbert has described his parents as devout people who strongly valued intellectualism and taught their children that it was possible to question the church and still be Catholic; as a child, he observed that Southerners were depicted as being less intelligent than other characters on scripted television. While Colbert sometimes comedically claims his surname is French, he is of 15/16ths Irish ancestry. Many of his ancestors emigrated from Ireland to North America in the 19th century before and during the Great Famine, his surname was pronounced KOHL-bərt in English.
He offered his children the option to pronounce the name. Stephen started using /koʊlˈbɛər/ in life when he transferred to Northwestern University, taking advantage of the opportunity to reinvent himself in a new place where no one knew him. Stephen's brother Edward, an intellectual property attorney, retained /ˈkoʊlbərt/. Ed responded "/ˈkoʊlbərt/", to which Stephen jokingly replied, "See you in Hell". On September 11, 1974, when Colbert was ten years old, his father and two closest brothers and Paul, died in the crash of Eastern Air Lines Flight 212 while it was attempting to land in Charlotte, North Carolina, they were en route to enroll the two boys at Canterbury School in Connecticut. Lorna Colbert relocated the family downtown to the more urban environment of East Bay Street in Charleston. Colbert found the transition difficult and did not make friends in his new neighborhood. Colbert described himself during this time as detached, lacking a sense of importance regarding the things with which other children concerned themselves.
He developed a love of science fiction and fantasy novels the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, of which he remains an avid fan. During his adolescence, he developed an intense interest in fantasy role-playing games Dungeons & Dragons, a pastime which he characterized as an early experience in acting and improvisation. Colbert attended Charleston's Episcopal Porter-Gaud School, where he participated in several school plays and contributed to the school newspaper but was not motivated academically. During his adolescence, he fronted A Shot in the Dark, a Rolling Stones cover band; when he was younger, he had hoped to study marine biology, but surgery intended to repair a perforated eardrum caused him inner ear damage. The damage was severe enough; the damage left him deaf in his right ear. For a while, he was uncertain whether he would attend college, but he applied and was accepted to Hampden–Sydney College in Virginia, where a friend had als
John Leguizamo
John Alberto Leguizamo is an American actor, stand-up comedian and playwright. He came to prominence with a co-starring role in the action comedy Super Mario Bros. as Luigi and a supporting role in the crime drama Carlito's Way. Other roles include Sid the Sloth in the animated Ice Age films and the narrator of the sitcom The Brothers García; as of 2009, he has appeared in over 75 films, produced over 10 films, starred on Broadway in several productions, made over 12 television appearances, has produced or starred in many other television shows. Leguizamo was born in Bogotá, the son of Alberto and Luz Leguizamo, his father was once an aspiring film director and studied at Cinecittà, but dropped out due to lack of finances. According to Leguizamo, his paternal grandfather was of Italian and Puerto Rican descent, his maternal grandmother was Lebanese, he has described himself as being of Amerindian and Mestizo heritage. On June 10, 2011, Leguizamo's father declared in an interview with New York Hispanic newspaper El Diario that he is Colombian and not Puerto Rican, that Leguizamo is therefore not half Puerto Rican as he has always stated.
Leguizamo had always declared that he was Puerto Rican on his father's side, one of the reasons he was selected as the Puerto Rican Day Parade Global Ambassador of the Arts. In response to his father's allegations, Leguizamo reiterated that his grandfather was of Puerto Rican descent. A National Puerto Rican Day Parade spokesman stated, he marched in the parade on June 12, 2011. When Leguizamo was four years old, his family immigrated to New York City, where they lived in various neighborhoods in Queens, including Jackson Heights, he credited growing up as one of the first Latino children in the neighborhood as formative in his acting ability: "It was tough. There were lots of fights. I would walk through a park and be attacked, I had to defend myself all the time, but this helped me to become funny so that I wouldn't get hit." Leguizamo attended the Joseph Pulitzer Middle School and the Murry Bergtraum High School. As a student at Murry Bergtraum, he tested it on his classmates, he was voted "Most Talkative" by his classmates.
After graduating from high school, he began his theater career as an undergraduate at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, from which he dropped out in favor of a career in stand-up comedy. Post-NYU, Leguizamo enrolled at HB Studio, where he took theater classes. Leguizamo started out as a stand-up comic doing the New York nightclub circuit in 1984, he made his television debut in 1986 with a small part in Miami Vice. His other early roles include: a friend of Madonna's boyfriend in her "Borderline" video. In 1992, he starred in Whispers in the Dark as John Castillo. In 1993 Leguizamo was offered the lead part as Luigi in the film Super Mario Bros. based on the Mario video game franchise. Despite being considered a critical and financial failure universally, the film started his acting career in Hollywood and became one of his memorable roles, it provided a boost to his career, allowing him to appear in better comedic roles in the following years. That same year, he had a prominent role in Brian De Palma's Carlito's Way as Carlito Brigante's nemesis, "Benny Blanco from the Bronx," which boosted his career in serious roles.
Leguizamo starred in Romeo + Juliet as Tybalt Capulet, as Violator in Spawn, Cholo in Land of the Dead, Pestario'Pest' Vargas in The Pest, the latter being one of his few roles as a lead actor in a studio film. In 1995, he starred as drag queen Chi-Chi Rodriguez in To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar for which he received a Golden Globe Nomination for Best Supporting Actor, starred in the 1996 action film Executive Decision as Captain Rat. In 2002, he starred in the movie Empire. To promote the 2001 movie Moulin Rouge!, he appeared on a celebrity edition of the US version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with Kelly Ripa, Kevin Sorbo, Alfre Woodard, Martin Short and Chevy Chase. Appearing as the first celebrity to sit in the hot seat, he tried for $125,000, but got the answer wrong. In 2002, on the syndicated version, a question about the movie featured his character and Meredith Vieira mentioned that Leguizamo had played Lautrec and had been on the show. In 2002, he voiced Sid the Sloth for the film Ice Age, reprising the role for the sequels Ice Age: The Meltdown, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, Ice Age: Continental Drift and Ice Age: Collision Course.
The game versions of the films used his voice. In 2003, he voice-acted Globox from Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc. Leguizamo portrayed Paul in the Brad Anderson thriller film Vanishing on 7th Street. In 2007, he played Michael Beltran in the movie The Babysitters. In 2008, he co-starred in the movie The Happening and directed by M. Night Shyamalan. In 2014 Leguizamo starred alongside Jon Favreau in Chef as the line cook Martin, a role he prepared for by working as an actual line cook at The Lion in the West Village. In 2014, he played a drug dealer in the Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart movie American Ultra, he starred in John Wick as Aurelio in 2014. In October 2013, Leguizamo started filming for The Crash, starring alongside Frank Grillo, AnnaSophia Robb, Dianna Agron, Ed Westwick, Minnie Driver, Mary McCormack, Christopher McDonald and Maggie Q; the film is directed by Aram Rappaport and produced by Hil
