Stuart Gordon

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For other people named Stuart Gordon, see Stuart Gordon (disambiguation).
Stuart Gordon

Stuart Gordon during the 2007 Writers Guild of America strike
Born (1947-08-11) August 11, 1947
Occupation Film director, writer and producer.

Stuart Gordon (born August 11, 1947 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American director, writer and producer of films and plays. Most of Gordon's film work is in the horror genre, though he has also ventured into science fiction. Like his friend and fellow filmmaker Brian Yuzna, Gordon is a fan of H. P. Lovecraft and has adapted several Lovecraft stories for the screen. They include Re-Animator, From Beyond, Castle Freak (from The Outsider), and Dagon, as well as the Masters of Horror episode "Dreams in the Witch-House". With Brian Yuzna and writer Ed Naha he co-created "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" for Disney Studios and executive produced the sequel "Honey, I Blew Up the Kid."

Biography

Gordon attended the University of Wisconsin and soon after formed Screw Theater. In March 1967 Gordon produced The Game Show at the UW Memorial Union. The play intended to be an attack on apathy locked the audience in the theater and seemingly humiliated, beat and raped them (audience plants were used.) Every performance ended with the audience rioting and stopping the show. He then formed Screw Theater in the summer of 1968 and produced and directed four shows, the final one, in the fall of 1968, a political version of Peter Pan that got him and his future wife arrested for obscenity. The story made national headlines until the charges were dropped in November 1968. As Gordon described it in a 2001 interview:

I had been protesting against the war in Viet Nam, and got tear-gassed by the Chicago police, and it suddenly struck me that you could take Peter Pan and turn it into a political cartoon about the whole situation. So, Peter Pan became the leader of the hippies and yippies, Captain Hook became Mayor Daley, and the pirates became the Chicago police. We left all of the James Barrie dialogue intact, so when they all went off to Neverland they sprinkled pixie dust on themselves and think lovely thoughts, and up they go. That was an acid trip, which was visualized by a psychedelic light show that was projected onto the bodies of seven naked young ladies...[1]

After the University of Wisconsin demanded future theatrical productions by Screw Theater be overseen by a University Professor, Gordon cut his University ties to form Broom Street Theater. Its first production, the new translation of the risque Lysistrata, premiered in May 1969.

Gordon is married to Carolyn Purdy-Gordon, whom he frequently casts in his movies. Together in 1970, they founded the Chicago Organic Theater Company, for which Gordon also served as artistic director. With the company, he produced and directed thirty-seven plays, among them Warp!, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Bleacher Bums, E-R, Bloody Bess-A Tale of Piracy and Revenge and a two part adaptation of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Warp! was later adapted into a comic book by First Comics. He is also the father of three daughters- Suzanna, Jillian, and Margaret.[2] In 2009, he directed the one-man theatrical show, "Nevermore...An Evening with Edgar Allan Poe" which reunited him with Re-Animator alumni Jeffrey Combs[3] and writer Dennis Paoli. Recently nominated for a Saturn award, the show enjoyed much success at its premiere in Los Angeles and is now in the process of touring the country. In 2011 Gordon produced, directed and co-wrote "Re-Animator: The Musical." It played to sold out houses, rave reviews and standing ovations for six months at the Steve Allen Theater. This year (2012) it played to great acclaim at the New York Musical Theater Festival (NYMF) and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

He directed two installments of the anthology series Masters of Horror for Showtime: H. P. Lovecraft's Dreams in the Witch-House (2005), based on a story by H. P. Lovecraft, and The Black Cat (2007), based on a story by Edgar Allan Poe. He later directed "Eater", an episode of Fear Itself, for NBC in 2008.

Filmography

Stuart Gordon at the premiere of Stuck, Toronto Film Festival 2007

As director

As writer

As producer

References

  1. ↑
  2. ↑ "FROM BEYOND RE-ANIMATOR: A Talk with Stuart Gordon". 
  3. ↑ "Jeffrey Combs' Nevermore Extended into December". 
  4. ↑ "Nevermore head to Baltimore". 

External links

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Films directed by Stuart Gordon
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