Sam Shepard

Sam ShepardSam Shepard

Born Samuel Shepard Rogers III 5 November 1943 Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USAOccupation Actor, author, playwrightYears active 1960s-presentSpouse(s) O-Lan Johnson Jones (1969-1984)

Samuel Shepard Rogers III (born 5 November 1943) is an American playwright, and actor, director of stage and screen. He is author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play, Buried Child.Early YearsShepard was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois and worked on a ranch as a teenager. His father, Samuel Shepard Rogers II, was a teacher, farmer, and served in the Air Force as a bomber pilot during World War II; his mother, Jane Elaine Schook was a teacher and a native of Chicago. After high school Shepard briefly attended college, but dropped out to join a travelling 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, featured in the movie Easy Rider.

I. Introduction to Sam Shepard

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 Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (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 and co-wrote with Dylan an epic, 11 minute song entitled "Brownsville Girl", included on the 1986 Knocked Out Loaded album and later compilations.

Career

Career

Shepard began his acting career in earnest when he was cast as the handsome 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.

Career

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 2006, Shepard performed Spalding Gray's final monologue Life Interrupted for its audio release through Macmillan Audio.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.

Personal LifeWhen 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 (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 Walker Samuel 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 the legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, and went through an airliner crash in the film 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 1960s. However, he allowed the real Chuck Yeager to take him up in a jet plane in 1982, when he was preparing for his role as Yeager in The Right Stuff.

In the early morning hours of January 3, 2009, Shepard was arrested and charged with speeding and drunken driving in Normal, Illinois; his blood alcohol content was allegedly 0.175. Shepard was taken to the McLean County Jail, in Bloomington, IL, and posted bond after processing.

Awards and honors • Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play, Buried

Child.• 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.

• His screenplay for the 1984 Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas garnered him a nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

• 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.

• For his performance as Dashiell Hammett in the 1999 TV movie Dash and Lilly he received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for "Best Actor in a Miniseries or Movie".

• He has also won a Drama Desk Award for his play A Lie of the Mind.• His most recent accolade was a 2008 SAG nomination for "Outstanding

Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries" for his performance as Frank Whiteley in Ruffian.

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 (with Patti Smith)

• 1972 The Tooth of Crime

• 1975 Action• 1976 Suicide in B

Flat• 1976 Angel City • 1977 Inacoma• 1978 Buried Child • 1978 Curse of the

Starving Class • 1978 Tongues (with

Joseph Chaikin) • 1980 True West

1981 Savage/Love (with Joseph Chaikin)

1983 Fool for Love 1985 A Lie of the Mind 1987 A Short Life of

Trouble1991 States of Shock1993 Simpatico 1995 Buried Child

(Revised )1998 Eyes for Consuela2000 The Late Henry

Moss 2004 The Notebook 2004 The God of Hell2007 Kicking a Dead

Horse2009 Ages of the Moon

II. Analysis of Buried Child

Buried Child is a play by Sam Shepard that won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and launched Shepard to national fame as a playwright. Buried Child is a piece of theatre which depicts the fragmentation of the American nuclear family in a context of disappointment and disillusionment with American mythology and the American dream, the 1970s rural economic slowdown and the breakdown of traditional family structures and values.

Characters

• Dodge - in his seventies

• Halie - Dodge's wife; mid-sixties

• Tilden - Their oldest son

• Bradley - Their next-oldest son, an amputee

• Vince - Tilden's son

• Shelly - Vince's girlfriend

• Father Dewis - a Protestant minister

Themes1. Disappointment and disillusionment with American Mythology and the American Dream:

• The character of Ansel; he is the son which Halie idolizes as an All-American hero, yet he died under suspicious circumstances in a motel room. Halie fantasises about his potential to be a Hero, to be an All-American star basketball player, reflecting the American hope in the youth. Yet his death and subsequent denouncement reflects the disappointment and disillusionment which many people experienced when they realised the actuality of the American circumstance.

• The two sons (Tilden and Bradley) both failed their parents' expectation; they were expected to take over the farm or at least care for the parents in their old age, thus fulfilling the American mythology of the next generation taking over from the last. However both sons are handicapped – Tilden emotionally and Bradley physically. They are unable to care for their parents and thus unable to carry out the American Dream.

• The failure of the farm and the family as whole. In failing to make the farm successful (Dodge has not planted anything for a number of years) Dodge has failed to fulfill his American Dream. He thus sits and decays in the living room, manifesting his disappointment and disillusionment through his physical immobility.

• When Shelley arrives she outlines what the ideal American farm house should be, the reality which greets her is very different. This reflects the disparity between reality and the fantasy, embodied in the American Dream, of American life.

2. 1970s economic slowdown• The house itself is run down, reflecting the poverty of

American farms. • Nothing has been planted in the fields.

3. Breakdown of traditional family structures and values

• Dodge the ineffectual patriarch is meant to be the breadwinner and ethical guardian of the family. Instead he takes on the role of a sardonic alcoholic who is bullied by his wife and children, and is furthermore disempowered through their actions. His character reflects the failed patriarchs in America who have failed to create the family environments idealized in the American Dream.

• The act of incest and the resultant murder are indicative of a breakdown in the ethical rigidity which characterizes the typical American family.

• The character of Father Dewis, adulterous and unauthoritative, fails to fulfill the role of moral guardian assigned to him by society and thus reflects the breakdown of morality and ethics within America.

Buried Child is postmodern. It incorporates many postmodern elements such as the mixing of genres, the deconstruction of a grand narrative, and the use of pastiche and layering. In addition the use of humor is also an essential postmodern element.

Style

Mixing of genres Buried Child is laid in the framework of realism; the play is essentially a family drama. However, added into the realistic framework are distinct elements of surrealism and symbolism. The three-act structure, the immediate time frame and the setting of the play in reality give it an overall realistic appearance. Yet the use of symbols such as the corn and the rain give the play a symbolist element while the fragmented characterization and actions like the multiple burials of Dodge are somewhat surreal or dreamlike. The humor is also an essential element of the style, giving the play sardonic, black and even at times slapstick elements. All these stylistic elements combine to give the play an overall postmodern feel.

Character Summaries Dodge:

• Aging dysfunctional patriarch of the family

• Is an alcoholic • Is dying • Has been emasculated by his

son and the infertility of his fields • Is ashamed of Halie's conceiving

the child and is ashamed of killing it

• Sits and watches television and drinks Tilden:

• Lost son, he has no purpose, no direction in his life

• Had sex with his mother • Is

confused/ashamed/embarrassed about the child and its death

• Is bullied by the other characters • Brings into house crops from the

field in the backyard

Bradley:• Aggressive brother • Lost his leg in a chainsaw

accident • Is emasculated by the removal

of his leg • Halie:• The wife and mother in the

family • Nags Dodge • Has sex with her son and gives

birth to her grandson/son • Abandons the family to socialise

with Dewis and revel in past • Hero-worships the images of her

lost son • Vince:• Tilden's son • Reclaims possession of the

house • No one recognises him when he

arrives

Paris, Texas is a 1984 film directed by Wim Wenders. The screenplay is by L.M. Kit Carson and Sam Shepard, and the distinctive musical score was composed by Ry Cooder. The cinematography is by Robby Müller.

The film stars character actor Harry Dean Stanton as Travis, who has been lost for four years and is taken in by his brother (played by Dean Stockwell). He later tries to put his life back together and understand what happened between him, his wife Jane (Nastassja Kinski), and his son Hunter (Hunter Carson).

The film was a co-production between companies in France and West Germany, but was filmed in the United States.

III. Introduction to Paris, Texas (film)

The film is named after the Texas town of Paris, but no footage was shot there. Instead, Paris is referred to as the location of a vacant lot owned by Travis that is seen in a photograph.

The photograph shows a desert landscape, but in fact the real Paris rests on the edge of the forests of East Texas, far from any desert.

The film won the 1984 Palme d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival. It was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in 1985 and again in 2006 as part of the Sundance Collection category.