Robert Houston | |
---|---|
Born | 1955 (age 68–69) California, U.S. |
Other names | Robert Huston |
Occupation(s) | Film actor, director |
Known for | The Hills Have Eyes (1977) Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004) |
Awards | Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film (2005) Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Special (2005) |
Robert "Bobby" Houston (born 1955) is an American filmmaker and actor. He made his acting debut in The Hills Have Eyes (1977) before becoming a film director and screenwriter. His films include Shogun Assassin (1980) and Bad Manners (1984). Later in his career, Houston became a successful documentarian. He won an Emmy Award for the film Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks (2002) and an Academy Award for the film Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004) in 2005.
Houston first came to prominence with his performance of the character Bobby in Wes Craven's 1977 horror film The Hills Have Eyes . [1] He would reprise his role in the sequel The Hills Have Eyes Part II (1984).
In 1977, Houston modeled for pop artist Andy Warhol at his Factory in New York. Warhol's silkscreen painting Torso (1977) is based on a Polaroid photo he took of Houston as part of his "landscapes" series depicting nude males. [2] In the book The Andy Warhol Diaries , Warhol mentioned in a November 7, 1977 entry that Houston was writing a movie he had assigned to him about "kids who commit suicide." [3]
Houston and film producer David Weisman acquired the rights for the film Baby Cart at the River Styx, which had been adapted from the Lone Wolf & Cub Japanese action film. [4] They re-edited, re-scored, and co-wrote a script for the English-dubbed film they retitled Shogun Assassin (1980). Houston also wrote and directed several independent films in the 1980s, including the teen comedy Bad Manners (1984). [5]
Houston is also the author of the novel Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, which served as the basis for the 1986 film A Killing Affair .[ citation needed ]
Houston studied documentary filmmaking at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts before moving to Los Angeles. [6] He transitioned from writing to directing until his partner died of AIDS in 1995. [6] He then opened up a bookstore in Ojai, California, and to finance the store he would direct documentaries. [6]
Houston and his partner Robert Hudson formed their own company, Tell The Truth Pictures, to promote and distribute the documentary film Rock The Boat (1998). [7] It had screened at film festivals titled The Human Race. The film follows a crew of HIV+ sailors who enter the Trans-Pacific Yacht Race from Los Angeles to Hawaii. [7]
He would go on to direct Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks (2002) and Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004). Both films were nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Film, which the latter won in 2005. [8] [9] The Legacy of Rosa Parks won the Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Special after airing on HBO in 2005. [6]
After he was fired from HBO, he moved to the Berkshires. [6] There he met his current partner Eric Shamie, owner of Moon in the Pond Farm in Sheffield, Massachusetts. Houston started buying homes and fixing them up. [6] He also developed The Green Houses, a sustainable co-housing community, and opened Scout House, a boutique in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. [6]
Houston won an Academy Award for the documentary film Mighty Times: The Children's March (2004) in the category Documentary Short Film at the 77th Academy Awards in 2005. [10]
Year | Title | Actor | Director | Writer | Distribution | Note |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1977 | The Hills Have Eyes | Yes | No | No | Vanguard | credited at Robert Huston |
1979 | Cheerleaders Wild Weekend | Yes | No | No | ||
1979 | 1941 | Yes | No | No | Universal Pictures | |
1980 | Shogun Assassin | No | Yes | Yes | New World Pictures | |
1984 | Bad Manners | No | Yes | Yes | New World Pictures | credited as Bobby Houston |
1985 | The Hills Have Eyes Part II | Yes | No | No | Castle Hill Productions | |
1986 | A Killing Affair | No | No | Yes | Prism Entertainment | based on a novel by Houston |
1998 | Rock The Boat | No | Yes | Yes | documentary | |
2002 | Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks | No | Yes | Yes | Teaching Tolerance | documentary short |
2004 | Mighty Times: The Children's March | No | Yes | Yes | HBO | documentary short |
Andy Warhol was an American visual artist, film director and producer. A leading figure in the pop art movement, Warhol is considered one of the most important American artists of the second half of the 20th century. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media, including painting, silkscreening, photography, film, and sculpture. Some of his best-known works include the silkscreen paintings Campbell's Soup Cans (1962) and Marilyn Diptych (1962), the experimental films Empire (1964) and Chelsea Girls (1966), and the multimedia events known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–67).
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The Factory was Andy Warhol's studio in Manhattan, New York City, which had four locations between 1963 and 1987. The Factory became famed for its parties in the 1960s. It was the hip hangout spot for artists, musicians, celebrities, and Warhol's superstars. The original Factory was often referred to as the Silver Factory. In the studio, Warhol's workers would make silkscreens and lithographs under his direction.
Shogun Assassin is a 1980 jidaigeki film directed by Robert Houston. It was edited and compiled from the first two films in the Lone Wolf and Cub series, using 12 minutes of the first film, Lone Wolf and Cub: Sword of Vengeance, and most of Lone Wolf and Cub: Baby Cart at the River Styx, both released in 1972 and based on the long-running 1970s manga series Lone Wolf and Cub created by the writer Kazuo Koike and the artist Goseki Kojima.
Shōgun is a 1980 American historical drama miniseries based on James Clavell's 1975 novel of the same name. The series was produced by Paramount Television and first broadcast in the United States on NBC over five nights between September 15 and 19, 1980. It was written by Eric Bercovici and directed by Jerry London, and stars Richard Chamberlain, Toshiro Mifune, and Yoko Shimada, with a large supporting cast. Clavell served as executive producer.
Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III is an American actor and Warhol superstar. He was a sex symbol of gay subculture in the 1960s and 1970s, and of several American underground films before going mainstream.
Bob Colacello is an American writer. He began his career writing for TheVillage Voice before becoming editor-in-chief of pop artist Andy Warhol's Interview magazine from 1971 to 1983. As part of Warhol's entourage, they collaborated on the books The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (1975) and Exposures (1979). Colacello has been a contributing editor for Vanity Fair since 1984 and has been a special correspondent since 1993.
Peter Sellars is an American theatre director, noted for his unique stagings of classical and contemporary operas and plays. Sellars is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where he teaches Art as Social Action and Art as Moral Action. He has been described as a key figure of theatre and opera for the last 50 years.
William Couturié is a film director and producer, best known for his work in the field of documentary film.
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Chelsea Girls is a 1966 American experimental underground film directed by Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey. The film was Warhol's first major commercial success after a long line of avant-garde art films. It was shot at the Hotel Chelsea and other locations in New York City, and follows the lives of several of the young women living there, and stars many of Warhol's superstars. The film is presented in a split screen, accompanied by alternating soundtracks attached to each scene and an alternation between black-and-white and color photography. The original cut runs at just over three hours long.
Jed Johnson was an American interior designer and film director. TheNew York Times hailed Johnson as "one of the most celebrated interior designers of our time."
Mighty Times: The Children's March is a 2004 American short documentary film about the Birmingham, Alabama civil rights marches in the 1960s, highlighting the bravery of young activists involved in the 1963 Children's Crusade. It was directed by Robert Houston and produced by Robert Hudson. In 2005, the film won an Oscar at the 77th Academy Awards for Documentary Short Subject. The film was co-produced by the Southern Poverty Law Center and HBO.
Mighty Times can refer to:
Mighty Times: The Legacy of Rosa Parks is a 2002 American short documentary film directed by Robert Houston and produced by Robert Hudson about the 1955/56 Montgomery bus boycott led by Rosa Parks.
Tally Brown was an American singer and actress who was part of the New York underground performance scene, particularly Andy Warhol's "Factory" and who appeared in or was the subject of films by Andy Warhol and Rosa von Praunheim. She was born and died in New York City.
David Weisman was an American film producer, author, and graphic artist, most noted for his films Ciao! Manhattan and Kiss of the Spider Woman. He was the brother of film director Sam Weisman.
Norman Seeff is a photographer and filmmaker. Since moving to the United States in 1969, his work has been focused on the exploration of human creativity and the inner dynamics of the creative process.
Robert Hudson is an American documentary filmmaker. He won an Academy Award in the category Documentary Short Subject for the film Mighty Times: The Children's March.
Bad Manners is a 1984 American black comedy teen film released by New World Pictures. Written and directed by Robert Houston and produced by Kim Jorgensen, the film follows a group of juvenile delinquents who escape the oppressive Catholic orphanage where they live in order to rescue one of their fellow "inmates". While the film's adult stars Martin Mull, Karen Black, Anne De Salvo, and Murphy Dunne received top billing in promotional materials, the story is told through the perspective of the adolescent protagonists; played by Georg Olden, Pamela Segall, Michael Hentz, Joey Coleman, and Christopher Brown.
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