SAM SHEPARD

'Sam Shepard' (born November 5, 1943) is an American artist who has worked as an award-winning playwright, writer and actor. His many written works are known for being frank and often absurd, as well as for having an authentic sense of the style and sensibility of the gritty modern American west. He is an actor of the stage and motion pictures; a director of stage and film; author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs; and a musician.

Contents

Biography

Early life

Career

Shepard as a director

Personal life

Awards and honors

Bibliography

Collections

Filmography

Actor

Screenwriter

Director

References

External links

Biography

Early life

Shepard was born 'Samuel Shepard Rogers VII' in Fort Sheridan, Illinois and worked on a ranch as a teenager. His father, Samuel Shepard Rogers VI, was a teacher, farmer and served in the Air Force as a bomber pilot during World War II;^[1] his mother, Jane Elaine (nee Schook) was a teacher and a native of Chicago.^[2] After high school Shepard briefly attended college, but dropped out to join a traveling theater group. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam-era by claiming to be a heroin addict. The year 1963 found him working as a busboy in Greenwich Village. During this time Shepard was using illicit drugs. He was also a drummer for the eccentric late 1960s rock band Holy Modal Rounders.

Career

Shepard became very much involved in New York's off-off-Broadway theater scene, beginning at the age of nineteen. Although his plays were staged at several off-off-Broadway venues, he was most closely connected with Theatre Genesis, housed at St. Mark's Church in the East Village. He acted occasionally in those days, but his interests were almost strictly confined to writing, up until the late 1970s. Most of his writing was for the stage, but he had early screen-writing credits for ''Me and My Brother'' (1968) and ''Zabriskie Pointe'', directed by Antonioni (1970). His early science-fiction play, ''The Unseen Hand'', influenced Richard O'Brien's ''Rocky Horror Show''. After three years of living in England, in 1976 Shepard relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area and was named playwright in residence at the Magic Theatre where many of his works received their premier productions. Notable work includes ''Buried Child'', ''Curse of the Starving Class'' in 1978, ''True West'' in 1980 and ''A Lie of the Mind'' in 1985. He also continued with his collaboration with Bob Dylan that started with the surrealist film ''Renaldo and Clara'' on an epic, 11 minute song entitled "Brownsville Girl", included on the 1986 ''Knocked Out Loaded'' album and later compilations.
Shepard began his acting career in earnest when he was cast as the handsome but doomed land baron in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), opposite Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. This led to other important films and roles, most notably his portrayal of Chuck Yeager in ''The Right Stuff'', earning him an Oscar nomination in 1984. By 1986, one of his plays, ''Fool for Love'', was being made into a film directed by Robert Altman; his play ''A Lie of the Mind'' was on Broadway with an all-star cast including Harvey Keitel and Geraldine Page; he was living with Jessica Lange; and he was working steadily as a film actor -- all of which put him on the cover of Newsweek magazine. Earlier in his life, during the rebellion of the 1960s, Shepard had vowed famously, "I never want to be on the cover of Newsweek." Things had changed.
Throughout the years, Shepard has done a considerable amount of teaching on playwriting and other aspects of theatre. His classes and seminars have occurred at various theatre workshops, festivals, and universities. During the 1970s he served a stint as a Regents Professor at the University of California, Davis.
In 1986, Shepard was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 2000, Shepard decided to repay a debt of gratitude to the Magic Theatre by staging his play ''The Late Henry Moss'' as a benefit in San Francisco. The cast included Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, and Cheech Marin. The limited, three-month run was sold out.
In 2007, Shepard was featured playing banjo on Patti Smith's cover of Nirvana's song, Smells Like Teen Spirit, on her album Twelve.
Although many artists have had an influence on Shepard's work, one of the most significant has been actor-director Joseph Chaikin, a veteran of the Living Theatre and founder of a group called the Open Theatre. The two have often worked together on various projects, and Shepard acknowledges that Chaikin has been a valuable mentor.

Shepard as a director

At the beginning of his playwriting career, Shepard did not direct his own plays. His earliest plays were directed by a number of different directors but most frequently by Ralph Cook, the founder of Theatre Genesis. Later, in San Francisco, Shepard formed a successful playwright-director relationship with Robert Woodruff, who directed the premiere of ''Buried Child'' (1978), among other plays. During the 1970s, though, Shepard decided that his vision of his plays required that he should direct them himself. He has since directed many of his own plays, but with a few rare exceptions, he has not directed plays by other playwrights. He has also directed two films but apparently does not see film direction as a major interest.

Personal life

When Shepard first arrived in New York, he roomed with Charlie Mingus, Jr., a friend of his from high school and son of the famous jazz musician. Then he lived with actress Joyce Aaron. He later married actress O-Lan Jones (born O-Lan Johnson, alias O-Lan Johnson Dark, alias O-Lan Barna) from 1969 to 1984, with whom he has one son, Jesse Mojo Shepard (born 1970). After the end of his relationship with the singer and musician Patti Smith, Shepard met Oscar-winning actress Jessica Lange on the set of a movie they both starred in, ''Frances''. He moved in with her in 1983, and they have been together ever since. They have two children, Hannah Jane (born 1985) and Samuel Walker Shepard (born 1987). In 2005 Jesse Shepard wrote a book of short stories which was published in San Francisco, and his father appeared together with him at a reading to introduce the book.
Although he played a famous pilot in The Right Stuff and went through an airplane crash in Voyager (1992), Shepard is known for his aversion to flying. According to one account, he vowed never to fly again after a very rocky trip on an airliner coming back from Mexico in the '60's. However, he allowed the real Chuck Yeager to take him up in a jet plane in 1984, when he was preparing for his role as Yeager in The Right Stuff.

Awards and honors

His play ''Buried Child'' received a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979.
For his portrayal of test pilot Chuck Yeager in the film ''The Right Stuff'', Shepard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1983.
In 1986, Shepard was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy in 1992.
In 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. Of his more than forty-five plays, eleven of them have won Obie Awards. He was nominated for two Tony Awards for ''Buried Child'' in 1996, and for ''True West'' in 2000.

Bibliography

★ 1964 ''Cowboys''

★ 1964 ''The Rock Garden''

★ 1965 ''Chicago''

★ 1965 ''Icarus's Mother''

★ 1965 ''4-H Club''

★ 1966 ''Red Cross''

★ 1967 ''La Turista''

★ 1967 ''Cowboys #2''

★ 1967 ''Forensic & the Navigators''

★ 1969 ''The Unseen Hand''

★ 1969 ''Oh! Calcutta!'' (contributed sketches)

★ 1970 ''The Holy Ghostly''

★ 1970 ''Operation Sidewinder''

★ 1971 ''Mad Dog Blues''

★ 1971 ''Back Bog Beast Bait''

★ 1971 ''Cowboy Mouth'' (co-written with Patti Smith)

★ 1972 ''The Tooth of Crime''

★ 1975 ''Action''

★ 1976 ''Suicide in B Flat''

★ 1977 ''Inacoma''

★ 1977 ''Buried Child''

★ 1978 ''Curse of the Starving Class''

★ 1978 ''Tongues'' (co-written with Joseph Chaikin)

★ 1980 ''True West''

★ 1981 ''Savage/Love'' (co-written with Joseph Chaikin)

★ 1983 ''Fool for Love''

★ 1985 ''A Lie of the Mind''

★ 1991 ''States of Shock''

★ 1993 ''Simpatico''

★ 1995 ''Buried Child Revised''

★ 1998 ''Eyes for Consuela''

★ 2000 ''The Late Henry Moss''

★ 2004 ''The God of Hell''

★ 2007 ''Kicking a Dead Horse''

Collections

★ ''Seven Plays'', Dial Press, 1984, 368 pages, ISBN 0-553-34611-3

★ ''Fool For Love and Other Plays'', Bantam, 1984, 320 pages, ISBN 0-553-34590-7

★ ''The Unseen Hand: and Other Plays'', Vintage, 1996, 400 pages, ISBN 0-679-76789-4

★ ''Cruising Paradise'', Vintage, 1997, 255 pages, ISBN 0-679-74217-4

★ ''Great Dream Of Heaven'' Vintage, 2003, 160 pages, ISBN 0-375-70452-3

★ ''Rolling Thunder Logbook'', Da Capo, 2004 reissue, 176 pages, ISBN 0-306-81371-8

★ ''Motel Chronicles'', City Lights, 1983, ISBN 0-87286-143-0

Filmography

Actor

★ 1965 ''Rusakai''

★ 1970 ''Brand X''

★ 1978 ''Renaldo and Clara'' - Rodeo

★ 1978 ''Days of Heaven'' - The Farmer

★ 1980 ''Resurrection'' - Cal Carpenter

★ 1982 ''Frances'' - Harry York

★ 1983 ''The Right Stuff'' - Chuck Yeager

★ 1984 ''Paris, Texas''

★ 1986 ''Crimes of the Heart'' - Doc Porter

★ 1987 ''Baby Boom'' - Dr. Jeff Cooper

★ 1989 ''Steel Magnolias'' - Spud Jones

★ 1991 ''The Voyager'' - Walter Faber

★ 1992 ''Thunderheart'' - Frank Coutelle

★ 1993 ''The Pelican Brief'' - Professor Thomas Callahan

★ 1999 ''Snow Falling on Cedars'' - Arthur Chambers

★ 1999 ''Purgatory'' - Sheriff Forrest/Wild Bill Hickock

★ 2000 ''Hamlet'' - The Ghost

★ 2001 ''Black Hawk Down'' - Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison

★ 2001 ''Kurosawa'' - Narrator

★ 2001 ''Shot in the Heart'' - Frank Gilmore

★ 2001 ''Swordfish'' - Senator James Reisman

★ 2001 ''The Pledge'' - Eric Pollack

★ 2004 ''The Notebook'' - Frank Calhoun

★ 2005 ''Don't Come Knocking'' - Howard

★ 2005 ''Bandidas''

★ 2005 ''Stealth'' - Capt. George Cummings

★ 2006 ''The Return''

★ 2006 ''The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford'' (post-production)

★ 2006 ''Charlotte's Web'' (Narrator)

★ 2007 ''The Accidental Husband'' - Wilder

★ 2007 ''Ruffian'' - Frank Whiteley

Screenwriter

★ 1970 ''Zabriskie Point'', dir: Michelangelo Antonioni

★ 1984 ''Paris, Texas'', dir: Wim Wenders

★ 1985 ''Fool for Love'', dir: Robert Altman

★ 2005 ''Don't Come Knocking'', dir: Wim Wenders

Director

★ 1988 ''Far North'' (also screenplay)

★ 1994 ''Silent Tongue'' (also screenplay)

References

1. http://www.filmreference.com/film/84/Sam-Shepard.html
2. http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/sshepard.htm

External links

★

★

★ The Sam Shepard Web Site

★ "Brownsville Girl," by Bob Dylan and Sam Shepard

★