Allison Anders

Allison Anders (born November 16, 1954) is an American independent film director. She is most well known for her films, Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca and Grace of My Heart.^[1][2] Anders has frequently collaborated with fellow UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television graduate Kurt Voss. She has also often worked as a TV television director. Anders' films have been shown at the Cannes International Film Festival and at the Sundance Film Festival.^[3] She has been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant as well as a Peabody Award.

Early life

Anders was born in Ashland, Kentucky to mother Alberta "Rachel" Anders (née Steed) and father Robert "Bob" Anders.^[4][5] She has four sisters, one of whom, Luanne Anders,^[6] starred in her first film, Border Radio. One of her sisters is Dominique Steed née Du Bois, the daughter of Louis Ernesto Gomez-Moncalleno Du Bois.

Her paternal side has ancestry that traces back to the Southern Hatfield family and, more distantly, to George Washington's spy, Caleb Brewster, while her maternal side includes another George Washington spy, Abraham Woodhull.^[5]

When Anders was 4 years old, her father abandoned the family. Anders' mother and father were divorced when she was 5 years old.^[7] After her mother moved her and her sisters to Los Angeles, Anders suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 15 and was hospitalized. When she came out of the psychiatric ward, she was placed into foster care but ran away. She hitchhiked across the country, at one point ending up in jail. After turning 17 years old, Anders dropped out of her Los Angeles high school and moved back to Kentucky. She later moved to London with the man who fathered her first child.^[8]

In her early 20s, Anders moved back to Los Angeles with her daughter and attended junior college, Los Angeles Valley College,^[9] while working odd jobs. Due to constant relocation as a child, Anders had not had a steady education. She said that growing up most of her time was spent watching TV and going to movie theaters. Influenced and inspired by the films of Wim Wenders as well as other filmmakers, Anders applied to UCLA Film School.^[10] During her time at UCLA, Anders produced her first super-8 16-millimeter sound movie. Wenders attended the screening.^[8] In 1986, Anders got her B.A. in Motion Picture-Television from University of California Los Angeles.^[3]

Career

Film

In 1986, Anders won the Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards for a script called Lost Highway that she wrote about her father.^[11] She said that after writing the script she shared it with her father, and was able to have a relationship with him again.^[9]

Anders' first film, the punk music-heavy Border Radio, was co-written and co-directed with Kurt Voss and Dean Lent and was made while they were at UCLA. It was nominated for Best Feature of 1988 by the Independent Feature Project for Best First Feature.^[12] The film told the story of three musicians who stole money owed to them from a job who then fled to Mexico. The indie drama features the Los Angeles punk-rock scene of the 1980s.^[12] Despite the $2,000 contribution from Vic Tayback and loans from Voss' parents to fund the film, there was not enough money to make the movie so the filmmakers used local locations and cast performers they knew. However, this is actually in accordance to their original plan. For the starring role, they cast Anders' sister, Luanna Anders, and musician Chris D., as the leading man, as well as Anders' daughter, Devon Anders, who played Luanna's daughter in the film. Violating UCLA policy, the filmmakers cut the film at night in the school's editing bays, where Anders' two young daughters would sleep on the floor.^[12] In 2007, Border Radio was given a special release on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection^[12] and was lauded for being groundbreaking independent cinema.^[13]

Anders second feature was the 1992 film Gas Food Lodging, for which she won a New York Film Critics Circle Award and National Society of Film Critics for Best New Director, a nomination for Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay, a nomination for Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director, and for which actress Fairuza Balk won an Independent Spirit Award. The film also won the Deauville Film Festival Critics Award and film was also nominated for the Golden Bear at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival.^[14] Gas Food Lodging features the stories of three vibrant, restless women in a dusty Western town, is a coming of age story about a truck stop waitress and her two daughters.^[15] The film was originally a project based on the novel Don't Look and It Won't Hurt by Richard Peck, but Anders re-wrote the original story from the female perspective, making Gas Food Lodging a loose adaptation.^[9]

Her next film was Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life), about girl gangs in the poor Hispanic Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Anders lived. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, and saw wide release in 1994. The film features features a female perspective on what it is like to grow up in the inner city, where almost every girl has at least one child by age 21, and most homeboys of the same age are either dead or in prison. Mi Vida Loca peers into the lives of several of the young Echo Park women.

In 1996, Anders' film, Grace of My Heart, was released. Martin Scorsese executive produced. It tells the story of a songwriter, played by Illeana Douglas, who begins her career in a Brill Building-type songwriting experience. Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach had their first collaboration on the film, and were nominated for a Grammy Award. The film is both a musical and as well as a drama,^[10] featuring an original musical soundtrack.^[16]

In the late 1980s, Anders had become friends with members of the pop group Duran Duran, and frequently inserted small references to the band in her films (character names, posters on walls, and so on). In 1999, after bassist John Taylor had left Duran Duran and was beginning to launch an acting career, she co-wrote and co-directed the film Sugar Town with Kurt Voss about the Los Angeles film and music industry. The film starred several musical friends of hers, including Taylor, X singer John Doe, Spandau Ballet bassist Martin Kemp, and singer/actor Michael Des Barres. Sugar Town followed the interconnected lives of a handful of power brokers, wanna-bes and has-beens. Gwen (played by Jade Gordon), a self-centered would-be rock star who will do anything to further her career, is working as an assistant to production designer Liz Ally Sheedy, but when Gwen discovers Liz has a date with famous producer Burt Larry Klein, any loyalty she has to her boss immediately goes out the window.^[17] The film was nominated for two Independent Spirit Awards, one for Best Film and one for best Newcomer for Jade Gordon. The film won the Fantasporto award for Best Screenplay for Anders and Voss.

Her 2001 harrowing autobiographical film, Things Behind the Sun,^[18] deals with the long-term aftermath of rape.^[7] It was released on the Showtime cable TV network. The film won an Emmy Award nomination for actor Don Cheadle as Best Supporting Actor, three Independent Spirit Award Nominations: Don Cheadle for Best Supporting Actor, Kim Dickens for Best Actress, and Best Film. She and co-writer Kurt Voss received a nomination for the Edgar Award. The film was awarded the SHINE Award as well as the Peabody Award. Things Behind the Sun was inspired by an experience Anders had in 1967 where she was raped by group of boys.^[19] Anders actually shot some of the film in the same location in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where the gang rape occurred.^[7]

Anders' 2012 film, Strutters, completed the third in the loosely categorized trilogy of films that she started with her debut film, Border Radio and Sugar Town. The film was co-directed with long-time collaborator, Kurt Voss, and featured musicians like Ariel Pink. J Mascis worked on the score.^[20] The film was funded by a Kickstarter campaign.^[21]

In 2013, Anders released the Lifetime produced TV movie, Ring of Fire, a June Carter Cash biopic that featured the musician Jewel. The film was inspired by John Carter Cash's book, Anchored in Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash. ^[22]

Television

Anders began directing shows for broadcast and cable television in 1999, including several episodes in the second and third seasons of Sex and the City, as well as episodes of Grosse Pointe, Cold Case, The L Word, Men In Trees, The Mentalist, and What About Brian?

In 2011, she directed an episode of the John Wells production, Southland, which involved a car chase scene.^[23] Anders directed an episode of TURN: Washington's Spies, which was especially interesting to her because she has connections on both her paternal as well as maternal sides to the characters who were spies for George Washington.^[5]

Other work

In 2013, Anders interviewed 94-year-old actress and Hollywood legend, Marge Champion, who appeared at a 2013 Hollywood film festival screening of the 1968 cult film, The Swimmer, which starred Burt Lancaster. The interview was a featured supplementary behind-the-scenes on the 2014 Blu-ray/DVD release of the film by Grindhouse Releasing/Box Office Spectaculars Blu-ray/DVD restoration of the film.^[24]

Started in 2003, Anders is the co-founder with her musician daughter, Tiffany Anders, of the Don't Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival, in Los Angeles.^[25]

In 2006, she appeared in the road-trip documentary Wanderlust. Anders has also contributed to the web series Trailers from Hell.

In 2013, Anders bid on and won a rock and roll record collection that was owned by the actress Greta Garbo. She created a website called "Greta's Records" to curate and share the 50 records.^[26]

In development / past projects

• Quanah Parker project at AMC Networks with writer Terry Graham^[27][28]

Long-term associations

Anders counts filmmaker Wim Wenders a mentor. She started as a fan, sending him letters and music. Wenders eventually responded. Anders said that she created a faux grant that she "won" so that she and at least one other friend could study under Wenders on location on his film Paris, Texas. They have been friends for over 30 years.^[29]

Teaching

In 2003, Anders became a Distinguished Professor at the University of California Santa Barbara where she teaches in the Film And Media Studies Department one quarter every year. She has taught coursed on topics ranging from autobiographic writing, rock and roll films, to music supervision.^[3]

Awards

• 1986: Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting – Lost Highway
• 1986: Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards – Lost Highway^[11][30]
• 1988: Independent Spirit Awards for Best First Feature – Border Radio^[12]
• 1992: New York Film Critics Circle for Best New Director – Gas Food Lodging
• 1992: National Society of Film Critics for Best New Director – Gas Food Lodging
• 1992: Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay nomination – Gas Food Lodging
• 1992: Independent Spirit Awards for Best Director nomination – Gas Food Lodging
• 1995: MacArthur Fellows Program^[31]
• 2001: Independent Spirit Award for Best Film nomination – Things Behind the Sun
• 2002: Spirit of Silver Lake Award from the Silver Lake Film Festival
• 2002: Peabody Award for distinguished achievement and meritorious service – Things Behind the Sun
• 2013: Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing of a Drama nomination – Ring of Fire^[32]

Personal life

Anders has three children. She has two daughters, Tiffany Anders, a musician and music supervisor, and Devon Anders. Her son, Ruben Goodbear Anders, was fostered (and eventually adopted) by the family for three years after the death of his mother, Nica Rogers,^[33] who appeared in Mi Vida Loca.^[7][34][35] Tiffany was named after the film, Breakfast at Tiffany's.^[9]

Anders was in a long-term relationship with Kurt Voss.^[9] During the 1980s she was in a relationship with Duran Duran bass player, John Taylor.^[36]

Filmography

Film

Television

• 1999: Sex in the City – Director, 4 episodes: "The Caste System," "La Donleur Exquise," "Drama Queen," "The Big Time"
• 2000: Grosse Pointe – Director, 2 episodes: "Boys on the Side," "Star Wars"
• 2004: Cold Case – Director, 1 episode: "Volunteers"
• 2006: The L Word – Director, 1 episode: "Last Dance"
• 2006: Men in Trees – Director, 1 episode: "Power Shift"
• 2006: What About Brian – Director, 2 episodes: "What About First Steps," "What About the True Confessions?"
• 2011: SouthLAnd – Director, 2 episodes: "Sideways," "Fallout"
• 2013: The Mentalist – Director, 1 episode: "The Red Barn"
• 2014: Orange Is the New Black – Director, 1 episode: "You Also Have a Pizza"
• 2014: Gang Related – Director, 1 episode: "Invierno Cayó"
• 2014: The Divide – Director, 1 episode: "Facts Are the Enemy"
• 2014-2015: Murder in the First – Director, 4 episodes: "Pants on Fire," "Blue on Blue," "The McCormack Mulligan," "Nothing But the Truth"
• 2015: TURN: Washington's Spies – Director, 1 episode "False Flag"
• 2015: Proof – Director, 1 episode: "Memento Vivere"

Works and publications

• Anders, Allison. "On Claudia Weill's film 'Girlfriends.'" Sight & Sound. Vol. 25 (10). London: British Film Institute, October 2015. ISSN 0037-4806

References

Further reading

Printed material

• Anders, Allison, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino. "Strange Brew." Four Rooms: Four Friends Telling Four Stories Making One Film. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. ISBN 978-0-571-17684-7 OCLC 797629367
• Roman, Shari. "Allison Anders." Digital Babylon: Hollywood, Indiewood & Dogme 95. Hollywood: Lone Eagle, 2001. pp. 142–144. ISBN 978-1-580-65036-6 OCLC 464743610
• White-Stanley, Debra. 2003. ""God Give Me Strength": The Melodramatic Sound Tracks of Director Allison Anders". Velvet Light Trap. 51, no. 1: pp. 54–66. ISSN 0149-1830 doi:10.1353/vlt.2003.0012 OCLC 704028308
• Murphy, J. J. "Shifting Goals and Plotlines in Gas Food Lodging." Me and You and Memento and Fargo How Independent Screenplays Work. New York: Continuum, 2007. ISBN 978-0-826-42804-2 OCLC 651772634
• Campbell, Neil. "The Idioms of Living: Donna Deitch and Allison Anders." Post-Westerns Cinema, Region, West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. pp. 272–304. ISBN 978-1-461-93720-3 OCLC 856584709
• Silverstein, Melissa. "On 'Gas Food Lodging.'" Sight & Sound. Vol. 25 (10). London: British Film Institute, October 2015. ISSN 0037-4806

Audio visual material

• Mori, Mark, and Alec Baldwin. "Allison Anders; David O Russell." Raw Footage. Pt. 6. Santa Monica, CA: Direct Cinema Ltd, 2008. Video. Original air date: 1996. ISBN 978-1-559-74798-1 OCLC 651047709
• Calabrese, Peter, Tamara Gould, Jack Walsh, Xandra Castleton, Alexis Lezin, Danny L. McGuire, Gregory Nava, Allison Anders, and Michael Fox. Independent View. San Francisco, CA: KQED, 2001. Video. OCLC 55072014
• DiPersio, Vince, Adam Bardach, Alan Smithee, Tony Kahn, William Hooke, Michael H. Amundson, Steve Audette, and Michael Bloecher. "The Monster That Ate Hollywood." Frontline. PBS. Season 19, Episode 18. 2015. Video. Original air date: November 22, 2001. OCLC 891699575
• Maslin, Janet, John Waters, Allison Anders, Hal Hartley, David O. Russell. Four Independents That Turned the Tide. 2006. Video. Videotaped at the BAMcafe, Brooklyn, NY, as part of the Sundance Institute at BAM season, May 21, 2006. OCLC 123421251

External links

• Allison Anders at the Internet Movie Database
• Allison Anders on Tumblr – Blitter Baroque: workbook y public diary de Allison Anders
• Allison Anders on Tumblr – Gretas Records by Allison Anders
• Allison Anders on Twitter