Anders was born in Ashland, Kentucky, to mother Alberta "Rachel" Anders (née Steed) and father Robert "Bob" Anders.[4][5] She has two sisters, one of whom, Luanna Anders,[6] starred in her first film, Border Radio. Her paternal side has ancestry that traces back to the SouthernHatfield family and, more distantly, to George Washington's spy, Caleb Brewster, while her maternal side includes another 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. At age 12, she was gang raped by three boys at a party in Cape Canaveral, Florida, an event that influenced several of her films.[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, 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. Inspired by the films of Wim Wenders and other filmmakers, Anders applied to UCLA Film School.[10] During her time at UCLA, Anders produced her first sound film. Wenders attended the screening.[8] She has called Wenders' 1974 film Alice in the Cities "one of my very favorite films, and a guiding light, since I first saw it at the Nuart in Santa Monica in the 1970s."[11] In 1986, Anders got her B.A. in Motion Picture-Television from the University of California Los Angeles.[3]
Career
Film
In 1986, Anders won a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for a script called Lost Highway that she wrote about her father.[12] 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.[13] The film told the story of three musicians who stole money owed to them from a job and then fled to Mexico. The story is set amid the Los Angeles punk-rock scene of the 1980s.[13] With a $2,000 contribution from actor Vic Tayback and loans from Voss's parents to fund the film, the filmmakers made up for the small budget by using local locations and casting performers they knew. 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, while Anders' two young daughters slept on the floor.[13] In 2007, Border Radio was given a special release on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection[13] and was lauded as groundbreaking independent cinema.[14]
Her next film, Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life), was 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 story features a female perspective on growing up in the inner city.
Anders' 1996 film, Grace of My Heart, was a musical drama executive produced by Martin Scorsese, about a songwriter (played by Illeana Douglas) and her career over several years, including work in the early 1960s in music publishing and production offices, a setting based on the Brill Building. This marriage to a songwriting partner and her emergence as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s are among elements paralleling the career of Carole King, but the film is neither a biography nor entirely fiction. The original soundtrack features new songs written in various styles of the era.[10][17]Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach had their first collaboration composing a song for the film, "God Give Me Strength," and were nominated for a Grammy Award.
In the late 1980s, Anders had become friends with members of 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 and Voss co-wrote and co-directed Sugar Town, about the Los Angeles film and music industry. The film starred several musical friends of Anders', 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, is working as an assistant to production designer Liz (Ally Sheedy); when Gwen discovers Liz has a date with a music producer (Larry Klein), any loyalty she has to her boss disappears.[18] The film received two Independent Spirit Award nominations, for Best Film and Best Newcomer (Jade Gordon). The film also won Anders and Voss the Fantasporto award for Best Screenplay.[citation needed]
Her 2001 autobiographical film, Things Behind the Sun,[19] deals with the long-term aftermath of rape.[20] It was released on the Showtime cable TV network. The film earned an Emmy nomination for actor Don Cheadle as Best Supporting Actor; and three Independent Spirit Award nominations: Cheadle for Best Supporting Actor, Kim Dickens for Best Actress, and Best Film. Anders and co-writer Kurt Voss also received a nomination for an 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 when she was raped by a group of boys.[21] Anders actually shot some of the film in the same location in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where the gang rape occurred.[20]
Anders' 2012 film, Strutter, co-directed with Voss, completed a loose trilogy of films about Southern California musicians that began with Border Radio and Sugar Town. A black-and-white road picture, the film featured Luanna Anders from Border Radio, a scene in the motel room where Gram Parsons died, and a score with music by Ariel Pink and J Mascis.[22] The film was funded by a Kickstarter campaign.[23]
In 2011, she directed an episode of the John Wells production, Southland, which involved a car chase scene.[25] Anders directed an episode of Turn: Washington's Spies, which was especially interesting to her because she has distant relatives on both sides of her family 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 1968 cult film The Swimmer, which starred Burt Lancaster. The interview was featured among behind-the-scenes supplementary material on a 2014 Blu-ray/DVD release of the film by Grindhouse Releasing/Box Office Spectaculars Blu-ray/DVD restoration of the film.[26]
Anders and her musician daughter, Tiffany Anders, started the Don't Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival in 2003 in Los Angeles.[27]
In 2013, Anders bid on and won a rock and roll record collection formerly owned by the actress Greta Garbo. She created a website called "Greta's Records" to curate and share the collection of 50 records.[28]
Anders counts filmmaker Wim Wenders as a mentor. She started as a fan, sending him letters and music, and 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 for his film Paris, Texas. They have been friends for over 30 years.[31]
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 each year. She has taught courses on topics including autobiographic writing, rock and roll films, and music supervision.[3]
Anders has three children. Her two daughters are Tiffany Anders, a musician and music supervisor, and Devon Anders. Her son, Ruben Goodbear Anders, was fostered (and eventually adopted) by the Anders family for three years after the death of his mother, Nica Rogers,[35] who appeared in Mi Vida Loca.[20][36][37] Tiffany was named after the film Breakfast at Tiffany's.[9]
2019–2023: Mayans MC – director, 2 episodes: "Kukuklan" and "My Eyes Closed and Then Filled on the Last of Childhood Tears"
Works and publications
Anders, Allison. "On Claudia Weill's film 'Girlfriends.'" Sight & Sound. Vol. 25 (10). London: British Film Institute, October 2015. ISSN0037-4806
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Silverstein, Melissa. "On 'Gas Food Lodging.'" Sight & Sound. Vol. 25 (10). London: British Film Institute, October 2015. ISSN0037-4806
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. ISBN978-1-559-74798-1OCLC651047709
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. OCLC55072014
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