Ron Maxwell | |
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| Born | Ronald F. Maxwell January 5, 1949 Clifton, New Jersey, U.S. |
| Occupation(s) | Film director, screenwriter, producer |
| Years active | 1976 – present |
Ronald "Ron" F. Maxwell (born January 5, 1949) is an American film director and screenwriter from Clifton, New Jersey. He is most famous for writing and directing the American Civil War historical fiction films Gettysburg (1993), Gods and Generals (2003), and Copperhead (2013).
A native of New Jersey, Maxwell attended Clifton High School. [1] He graduated from New York University (NYU) Institute of Film 1970.[ citation needed ] Maxwell is a member of the Writers Guild of America,[ citation needed ] Directors Guild of America [ citation needed ] and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.[ citation needed ]
In 2007, Maxwell optioned the film rights to novelist Speer Morgan's 1979 book Belle Starr about the legendary female outlaw of the Old West.
In May 2011, Warner Bros. released director's cuts of Gods and Generals and Gettysburg.[ citation needed ]
In 2012, Maxwell directed his third Civil War feature, Copperhead , with a screenplay by Bill Kauffman and production by Bryan Cassels. Filming was completed in New Brunswick, Canada in June, 2012. [2]
In the 1860s, the Copperheads, also known as Peace Democrats, were a faction of the Democratic Party in the Union who opposed the American Civil War and wanted an immediate peace settlement with the Confederates.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain was an American college professor from Maine who volunteered during the American Civil War to join the Union Army. He became a highly respected and decorated Union officer, reaching the rank of brigadier general. He is best known for his gallantry at the Battle of Gettysburg, for which he was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Jason Patric is an American film, television and stage actor. He is known for his roles in films such as The Lost Boys, Rush, Sleepers, Geronimo: An American Legend, Your Friends & Neighbors, Narc, The Losers, The Alamo, and Speed 2: Cruise Control. His father was actor/playwright Jason Miller and his maternal grandfather was actor Jackie Gleason.
Timothy Lee Reid is an American actor, comedian and film director best known for his roles in prime time American television programs, such as Venus Flytrap on WKRP in Cincinnati (1978–82), Marcel "Downtown" Brown on Simon & Simon (1983–87), Ray Campbell on Sister, Sister (1994–99) and William Barnett on That '70s Show (2004–06). Reid starred in a CBS series, Frank's Place, as a professor who inherits a Louisiana restaurant. Reid is the founder and president of Legacy Media Institute, a non-profit organization "dedicated to bringing together leading professionals in the film and television industry, outstanding actors, and young men and women who wish to pursue a career in the entertainment media".
Gods and Generals is a novel which serves as a prequel to Michael Shaara's 1974 Pulitzer Prize–winning work about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels. Written by Jeffrey Shaara after his father Michael's death in 1988, the novel relates events from 1858 through 1863, during the American Civil War, ending just as the two armies march toward Gettysburg. Shaara also wrote The Last Full Measure, published in 2000, which follows the events presented in The Killer Angels.
The Last Full Measure is a novel by American author Jeffrey Shaara, published on May 2, 2000, by Ballantine Books. It is the sequel to The Killer Angels and Gods and Generals. Together, the three novels complete an American Civil War trilogy relating events from 1858 to 1865.
Gettysburg is a 1993 American epic war film about the Battle of Gettysburg in the American Civil War. Written and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell, the film was adapted from the 1974 historical novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara. It features an ensemble cast, including Tom Berenger as James Longstreet, Jeff Daniels as Joshua Chamberlain, Martin Sheen as Robert E. Lee, Stephen Lang as George Pickett, and Sam Elliott as John Buford.
John Curtis Caldwell was a teacher, a Union general in the American Civil War, and an American diplomat.
Lionel Chetwynd is a British-American screenwriter, director and producer.
Robert Anson Jordan Jr. was an American actor. A long-time member of the New York Shakespeare Festival, he performed in many Off Broadway and Broadway plays. His films include Logan's Run, Les Misérables, Old Boyfriends, Raise the Titanic, The Friends of Eddie Coyle, The Yakuza, Interiors, The Bunker, Dune, The Secret of My Success, Timebomb, The Hunt for Red October, Posse and Gettysburg.
Steven Ernest Bernard Zaillian is an American screenwriter, film director and producer. He won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award and a BAFTA Award for his screenplay Schindler's List (1993) and has earned Oscar nominations for the films Awakenings, Gangs of New York, Moneyball and The Irishman. He was presented with the Distinguished Screenwriter Award at the 2009 Austin Film Festival and the Laurel Award for Screenwriting Achievement from the Writers Guild of America in 2011. Zaillian is the founder of Film Rites, a film production company. In 2016, he created, wrote and directed the HBO limited series The Night Of.
Stephen Lang is an American actor. He is known for roles in films such as Manhunter (1986), Gettysburg, Tombstone, Gods and Generals (2003), Public Enemies, The Men Who Stare at Goats, Conan the Barbarian (2011) and Don't Breathe (2016). He won the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in James Cameron's Avatar (2009). Besides his film roles, he has had an extensive career on Broadway, and has received a Tony Award nomination for his role in the 1992 production of The Speed of Darkness. From 2004 to 2006, he was co–artistic director of the Actors Studio.
Nadia Tass is an Australian theatre director and film director and producer. She is known for the films Malcolm (1986) and The Big Steal (1990), as well as an extensive body of work in the theatre, both in Australia and internationally.
Clifton High School (CHS) is a four-year comprehensive public high school serving students in ninth through twelfth grades from the city of Clifton in Passaic County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, operating as part of the Clifton Public Schools. It has the largest student body in a single facility amongst high schools in New Jersey; Elizabeth High School had more students, but its students have been spread over multiple campuses.
Gods and Generals is a 2003 American epic war drama film written and directed by Ronald F. Maxwell. It is an adaptation of the 1996 novel of the same name by Jeffrey Shaara and prequel to Maxwell's 1993 film Gettysburg. Most of the film was personally financed by media mogul Ted Turner. The film follows the story of Stonewall Jackson from the beginning of the American Civil War to his death at the Battle of Chancellorsville.
I Was Monty's Double is a 1958 film produced by the Associated British Picture Corporation and directed by John Guillermin. The screenplay was adapted by Bryan Forbes from the autobiography of M. E. Clifton James, an actor who pretended to be General Bernard Montgomery as a decoy during World War II.
Joseph Sargent was an American film director. Though he directed many television movies, his best known feature-length works were arguably the action movie White Lightning starring Burt Reynolds, the biopic MacArthur starring Gregory Peck, and the horror anthology Nightmares. His most popular feature film was the subway thriller The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. Sargent won four Emmy Awards over his career.
John Baillie McIntosh was a Union Army brigadier general during the American Civil War. His brother, James M. McIntosh, served as a Confederate general until he was killed in the Battle of Pea Ridge.
The Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction is an annual literary award awarded to the writer of a work of fiction related to the American Civil War. The award was started by Jeffrey ("Jeff") Shaara,, and named for his father, the writer of historical fiction Michael Shaara, (1928–1988), who won the 1975 Pulitzer Prize for the 1974 novel of the American Civil War, The Killer Angels, about the Battle of Gettysburg, in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, and later made into the Ted Turner-produced movie in 1993, Gettysburg, by director Ronald Maxwell. The original novel and movie later became the inspiration for son Jeff's prequel Gods and Generals, (1996), and sequel The Last Full Measure, (1998), set of novels of which Gods and Generals was also made into a film in 2003 by Turner and Maxwell focusing on the earlier part of the war with Confederate General Thomas J. ("Stonewall") Jackson. The younger Shaara has also since written several other novels and series of historical fiction about the American Revolutionary War, Mexican–American War, World War I and World War II. He later returned to the theme of the Civil War with a set of works focusing on the western theatre of the war,.
Copperhead is a 2013 drama film directed by Ron Maxwell and starring Billy Campbell, Angus Macfadyen, Augustus Prew, Lucy Boynton, Casey Thomas Brown, and Peter Fonda. The film is based on the 19th-century novel The Copperhead by Harold Frederic. The film was shot at Kings Landing Historical Settlement in New Brunswick, Canada and is set in upstate New York. It was released in the United States on June 28, 2013 to poor reviews and critical responses.
