Broadway World has broken the sad and startling news that “playwright, actor, author, screenwriter, and director Sam Shepard has passed away. Shepard, who had been ill with ALS for some time, died peacefully on July 27 at his home in Kentucky.” He was seventy-three.
“One of the most important and influential early writers in the Off Broadway movement, Mr. Shepard captured and chronicled the darker sides of American family life in plays like Buried Child, which won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1979, and Curse of the Starving Class, and A Lie of the Mind,” writes Sopan Deb for the New York Times. “He was widely regarded as one of the most original voices of his generation, winning praise from critics for his searing portraits of spouses, siblings and lovers struggling with issues of identity, failure and the fleeting nature of the American dream. He was nominated for two other Pulitzers, for True West and Fool for Love, which both received Broadway productions.”
“Shepard was already an established name in the theater when he began appearing in movies,” writes Kate Erbland, “and he first major credited role was as The Farmer in Terrence Malick’s 1978 opus Days of Heaven. While always remaining steadfast in his affection for the stage, he went on to star in such films as Resurrection, Country, Baby Boom, and Steel Magnolias.” Also for IndieWire, Michael Nordine gathers tweeted tributes from Ava DuVernay, Jeff Daniels, and many more.
“His name and image earned widespread recognition via film, including his Oscar-nominated turn as U.S. Air Force test pilot Chuck Yeager in 1983’s The Right Stuff, director Philip Kaufman’s acclaimed adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s book about the Mercury 7 astronaut program,” writes Andrew Husband for Uproxx.
“Shepard wrote the screenplays for Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, Wim Wenders’s Paris, Texas, and Robert Altman’s Fool For Love, a film version of his play of the same title,” writes Elbert Wyche for Screen. “As a writer-director, he filmed Far North and Silent Tongue in 1988 and 1992, respectively.
For Deadline, Jeremy Gerard writes that “Shepard, like Bob Dylan, a Midwest transplant to New York’s creatively roiling, devoutly anti-Establishment downtown scene of the 1960s, came of age in the anarchic, off-off-Broadway theaters—Theatre Genesis, Caffé Cino, Judson Poets’ Theatre and La Mama Experimental Theatre Club. His early plays grafted the energy and often the music of rock ‘n’ roll onto the free-wheeling open verse of protest and youth worship. His affair and collaboration with poet and rocker Patti Smith resulted in Cowboy Mouth, whose hero was described in semi-mythic terms (‘a rock-and-roll Jesus with a cowboy mouth’).”
Speaking of Dylan, though, Duane Byrge and Hilary Lewis note in the Hollywood Reporter that Shepard “made his screen acting debut in Bob Dylan's movie Renaldo and Clara. . . . Shepard also played drums in a band he formed called The Holy Modal Rounders, who were featured in Easy Rider, and he accompanied Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue tour.”
Gordon Cox for Variety: “Born Samuel Shepard Rogers III, in Fort Sheridan, Ill., he worked on a ranch as a teen and discovered Samuel Beckett—as well as jazz and abstract expressionism—at Mt. San Antonio College before he dropped out to join a touring theater repertory troupe. Later in life, he had a nearly 30 year relationship with Jessica Lange, whom he met when he collaborated with her on 1982 movie Frances. They separated in 2009. Shepard is survived by his children, Jesse, Hannah, and Walker Shepard, and his sisters, Sandy and Roxanne Rogers.”
For news and items of interest throughout the day, every day, follow @CriterionDaily.
from The Criterion Current http://ift.tt/2vgjuHX
Nessun commento:
Posta un commento