Peter Spears | |
---|---|
Born | [1] [2] Kansas City, Missouri, U.S. | November 29, 1965
Alma mater | Northwestern University [3] |
Occupations |
|
Years active | 1991–present |
Spouse | Brian Swardstrom [4] |
Peter Spears (born November 29, 1965) is an American actor and filmmaker. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in Overland Park, Kansas. [1] Spears is best known for winning an Oscar for producing Nomadland (2020), and for producing film Call Me by Your Name (2017). He directed the underground cult-favorite short film Ernest and Bertram , which portrayed Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie as gay lovers, and developed the television series Nightmare Cafe and John from Cincinnati . [5]
In 2020, Spears founded his own production company, Cor Cordium. The company has multiple projects in development across film and television. Recent films include Bones and All , directed by Luca Guadagnino and starring Timothée Chalamet, and Drift , starring Cynthia Erivo, which premiered at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. On Swift Horses , directed by Daniel Minahan and starring Daisy Edgar-Jones, Jacob Elordi, Diego Calva, Will Poulter and Sasha Calle, will be released in 2024.[ citation needed ] [6]
Spears's most successful production is Nomadland, which won an Oscar at the 93rd Academy Awards ceremony in 2021. The film also won the BAFTA, Golden Globe, PGA Award, and the Golden Lion at the 2021 Venice Film Festival.[ citation needed ] Spears also produced the critically acclaimed 2017 film Call Me by Your Name , and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. [1] [7] He directed the underground cult-favorite short film Ernest and Bertram , which portrayed Sesame Street characters Bert and Ernie as gay lovers in a loose parody of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour . [8] [9]
In addition to his career as a film director and producer, Spears is also an actor, appearing in films such as Call Me By Your Name , Something's Gotta Give , The Opposite of Sex, and Father of the Bride Part II , as well as several television series, including Friends and E.R. He was most recently seen in the film Sublet .[ citation needed ]
Spears also co-founded OutSet: The Young Filmmakers Project, a collaboration between the Outfest Film Festival and the Los Angeles LGBT Center. The 6-month film lab selects a group of diverse 16-to-24-year-old emerging filmmakers to share their stories through film, by embarking on courses in screenwriting, pre-production, production and post-production, mentored by industry experts. The program culminates in the filmmakers' final thesis projects presented at the Outfest Los Angeles LGBTQ Film Festival.[ citation needed ]
Spears is married to talent agent Brian Swardstrom, and the couple splits their time between upstate New York and California. [10] [11]
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1995 | Father of the Bride Part II | Dr. Wagner | — |
1998 | The Opposite of Sex | Dr. Allen | — |
2003 | Something's Gotta Give | Danny Benjamin | — |
2017 | Call Me by Your Name | Isaac [12] [13] [14] | Also producer |
2020 | Nomadland | Peter | Also producer |
2020 | Sublet | David |
Year | Title | Role | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
1991 | Pink Lightning | Greg | TV movie |
1992 | Murder Without Motive: The Edmund Perry Story | Student Proctor | TV movie |
1992 | Something to Live for: The Alison Gertz Story | Peter | TV movie |
1993 | Quantum Leap | Doug Bridges / Reiser | Episode: "Dr. Ruth" |
1993 | The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles | Robert Benchley | Episode: "Young Indiana Jones and the Scandal of 1920" |
1993 | Café Americain | Mark Durgin | Episode: "Pilot" |
1994 | Matlock | Barry Feldman | Two episodes |
1994 | Cries from the Heart | Jeff | TV movie |
1996 | ER | — | Episode: "Baby Shower" |
1996 | Friends | Joel | Episode: "The One with Barry and Mindy's Wedding" |
1997 | The Love Bug | Young Dr. Stumpfel | TV movie |
1999 | Love Boat: The Next Wave | Jeff Blessing | Episode: "Blind Love" |
2001 | Some of My Best Friends | Terry | Two episodes |
2004 | CSI: Miami | Josh Dalton | Episode: "Deadline" |
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
2002 | Ernest and Bertram | Short film also director [15] |
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
2002 | Ernest and Bertram | Short film directorial debut |
2007 | Careless | — |
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1996 | Scream, Teen, Scream! | Short film |
2014 | Until We Could | Short film |
2017 | Call Me by Your Name | Won - Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay / Nominated – Academy Award for Best Picture |
2020 | Nomadland | Won – Academy Award for Best Picture [16] |
2022 | Bones and All | |
2023 | Drift | |
2024 | Queer | Executive producer |
2024 | On Swift Horses |
Year | Title | Notes |
---|---|---|
1992 | Nightmare Café | Co-developer Creative consultant Executive producer |
2007 | John from Cincinnati | Co-developer Creative consultant Executive producer |
Joel Daniel Coen and Ethan Jesse Coen, together known as the Coen brothers, are an American filmmaking duo. Their films span many genres and styles, which they frequently subvert or parody. Among their most acclaimed works are Blood Simple (1984), Raising Arizona (1987), Miller's Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991), Fargo (1996), The Big Lebowski (1998), O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000), No Country for Old Men (2007), A Serious Man (2009), True Grit (2010) and Inside Llewyn Davis (2013).
Frances Louise McDormand is an American actress and producer. In a career spanning over four decades, she has gained acclaim for her roles in small-budget independent films. McDormand has received numerous accolades, including four Academy Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and one Tony Award, making her one of the few performers to achieve the "Triple Crown of Acting". Additionally, she has received three BAFTA Awards and two Golden Globe Awards. McDormand's worldwide box office gross exceeds $2.2 billion.
Christmas Eve on Sesame Street is a Sesame Street Christmas special first broadcast on PBS on Sunday, December 3, 1978.
Rosita is a Muppet character on the children's television series Sesame Street. Fluent in both American English and Mexican Spanish, she is the first regular bilingual Muppet on the show. Rosita comes from Mexico and likes to play the guitar.
James Francis Ivory is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He was a principal in Merchant Ivory Productions along with Indian film producer Ismail Merchant and screenwriter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. The trio is known for making film adaptations of stories by authors such as E.M. Forster and Henry James. Their body of work is celebrated for its elegance, sophistication, literary fidelity, strong performances, complex themes, and rich characters.
Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird is a 1985 American musical road comedy film directed by Ken Kwapis, and written by Tony Geiss and Judy Freudberg. Based on the children's television series Sesame Street created by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, it was the series' first theatrical feature-length film. It stars Muppet performers Caroll Spinney, Jim Henson and Frank Oz alongside Sandra Bernhard, John Candy, Chevy Chase, Joe Flaherty, Waylon Jennings, and Dave Thomas with Sesame Street regulars Linda Bove, Emilio Delgado, Loretta Long, Sonia Manzano, Bob McGrath, Roscoe Orman, Alaina Reed, and Kermit Love in supporting roles and the voices of Laraine Newman, Brian Hohlfeld, Cathy Silvers, Eddie Deezen, and Sally Kellerman.
Mark Saltzman is an American script writer who has written films, plays and musicals and for TV. He worked for several years for Sesame Street. He has been given seven Emmy Awards for Best Writing for a Children's Show.
Outfest is an LGBTQ-oriented nonprofit that produces two film festivals, operates a movie streaming platform, and runs educational services for filmmakers in Los Angeles. Outfest is one of the key partners, alongside the Frameline Film Festival, the New York Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, & Transgender Film Festival, and the Inside Out Film and Video Festival, in launching the North American Queer Festival Alliance, an initiative to further publicize and promote LGBT film.
Sridhar Rangayan is an Indian filmmaker who has made films with special focus on queer subjects. His queer films, The Pink Mirror, Yours Emotionally, 68 Pages, Purple Skies, Breaking Free & Evening Shadows have been considered groundbreaking because of their realistic and sympathetic portrayal of the largely closeted Indian gay community. His film The Pink Mirror remains banned in India by the Indian Censor Board because of its homosexual content.
Tom Dolby is an American filmmaker, producer, and novelist. Dolby was the writer and co-director of the feature film Last Weekend. He was also the director and co-writer of the film The Artist's Wife. Dolby is the principal and founder of Water's End Productions, a Los Angeles–based production company that has produced films such as Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, Ira Sachs' Little Men, Matt Tyrnauer's Scotty and the Secret History of Hollywood, and Nia DaCosta's Little Woods.
Ernest & Bertram is a 2002 tragic comedy short film written and directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker and actor Peter Spears. The film spoofs Sesame Street characters Ernie and Bert. The film is based on Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour and depicts Bert and Ernie after they are outed by Variety magazine. Although the film was a success at the Sundance Film Festival and the U.S Comedy Arts Festival, it kept from further distribution when Sesame Workshop served the film's producers with a cease and desist order for copyright violation.
Luca Guadagnino is an Italian film director and producer. His films are characterized by their emotional complexity, eroticism, and lavish visuals. Guadagnino has received numerous accolades, including a Silver Lion, alongside nominations for an Academy Award and three BAFTA Awards.
Bert and Ernie are two Muppet characters who appear together in numerous skits on the PBS/HBO children's television show Sesame Street. Ernie acts the role of the naïve troublemaker, while Bert is the world-weary foil.
Chloé Zhao is a Chinese-born filmmaker. She is known primarily for her work on independent films.
Call Me by Your Name is a 2017 coming-of-age romantic drama film directed by Luca Guadagnino. Its screenplay, by James Ivory, who also co-produced, is based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman. The film is the final installment in Guadagnino's thematic "Desire" trilogy, after I Am Love (2009) and A Bigger Splash (2015). Set in northern Italy in 1983, Call Me by Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between 17-year-old Elio Perlman and Oliver, a 24-year-old graduate-student assistant to Elio's father Samuel, an archaeology professor. The film also stars Amira Casar, Esther Garrel, and Victoire Du Bois.
The 38th London Film Critics' Circle Awards, honouring the best in film for 2017, were announced by the London Film Critics' Circle on 28 January 2018 at The May Fair Hotel, in Mayfair, London. The nominations were announced on 19 December 2017. Actor-filmmakers Alice Lowe and Steve Oram returned to host the ceremony for the third consecutive year.
"Mystery of Love" is a song written and performed by American singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens and produced by Thomas Bartlett. It was self-released digitally, under license to Madison Gate Records and Sony Classical, on 1 December 2017. Luca Guadagnino, director of the 2017 film Call Me by Your Name, approached the singer to contribute to the film as a narrator, but Stevens declined and agreed to record an original song instead. Stevens was granted full creative control during the songwriting process and received inspiration from the film's script and André Aciman's novel of the same name. An acoustic ballad, the lyrics describe romance and allude to the relationship between film characters Elio and Oliver. They also make several references to the state of Oregon, birds, and Christianity.
Nomadland is a 2020 American drama film written, produced, edited and directed by Chloé Zhao. Based on the 2017 nonfiction book Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century by Jessica Bruder, it stars Frances McDormand as a widow who leaves her life in Nevada to travel around the United States in her van as a nomad. A number of real-life nomads appear as fictionalized versions of themselves, including Linda May, Swankie, and Bob Wells. David Strathairn also stars in a supporting role.
Jessica Bruder is an American journalist who writes about subcultures and teaches narrative writing at Columbia Journalism School.
The following is a list of unproduced Luca Guadagnino projects in roughly chronological order.