Steven Peros is an American playwright, director and screenwriter of film and television. He is the author of both the stage play and screenplay for The Cat's Meow , which was made into the 2002 Lionsgate film directed by Peter Bogdanovich and starring Kirsten Dunst, Eddie Izzard, Edward Herrmann, Cary Elwes, Jennifer Tilly, and Joanna Lumley. [1] [2]
Steven George Peros was born in Brooklyn, New York, and raised in North Babylon, New York, where he attended public school. He graduated from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Film and Television.[ citation needed ]
As a playwright, The Cat's Meow had its world premiere in Los Angeles in 1997 and is published by Samuel French, Inc. It has been performed in four countries as of 2013. His earlier play, Karlaboy (1994) also premiered in Los Angeles where it received a Drama-Logue Award for Outstanding Achievement in Writing. [3] It is also published by Samuel French. In 2021, Peros would adapt the play to a musical. [4]
Peros made his directorial debut with Footprints (2011), which was hailed as "One of the Ten Best Films So Far This Year" [5] by Armond White, Chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle and was similarly praised by critics Kevin Thomas, F.X. Feeney, Mick LaSalle, [6] and White during the film's initial release. [7] He followed this with The Undying (2011), which he directed and co-wrote, and which starred Robin Weigert, Wes Studi, Jay O. Sanders, and Sybil Temtchine. For television, he wrote for The Lot and the Lifetime Original Movie A Country Christmas Story.
Kirsten Caroline Dunst is an American actress. She made her acting debut in the anthology film New York Stories (1989). Dunst gained recognition for her role as child vampire Claudia in the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), which earned her a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She also had roles in her youth in Little Women (1994) and Jumanji (1995).
James Kirkwood Jr. was an American playwright, author and actor. In 1976 he received the Tony Award, the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Book of a Musical, and the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the Broadway hit A Chorus Line.
The 71st Academy Awards ceremony, organized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), honored the best of 1998 in film and took place on March 21, 1999, at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in Los Angeles beginning at 5:30 p.m. PST / 8:30 p.m. EST. During the ceremony, AMPAS presented Academy Awards in 24 categories. The ceremony, televised in the United States by ABC, was produced by Gil Cates and directed by Louis J. Horvitz. Actress Whoopi Goldberg hosted the show for the third time. She first hosted the 66th ceremony held in 1994 and had last hosted the 68th ceremony in 1996. Nearly a month earlier in a ceremony held at the Regent Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills, California on February 27, the Academy Awards for Technical Achievement were presented by host Anne Heche.
Sean Patrick Hayes is an American actor, comedian, musician and producer. Known for his performances on stage and screen, he gained acclaim for his role as Jack McFarland on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace, for which he won a Primetime Emmy Award and four Screen Actors Guild Awards. He has also received nominations for six Golden Globe Awards and two Tony Awards, winning one of the latter.
Jeffrey Daniel Whitty is an American playwright, actor, and screenwriter.
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for The Chicago Reader from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to such notable film publications as Cahiers du cinéma and Film Comment.
The Cat's Meow is a 2001 historical drama film directed by Peter Bogdanovich, and starring Kirsten Dunst, Eddie Izzard, Edward Herrmann, Cary Elwes, Joanna Lumley, Jennifer Tilly, and Ronan Vibert. The screenplay by Steven Peros is based on his 1997 play of the same title, which was inspired by the mysterious death of film mogul Thomas H. Ince that occurred on William Randolph Hearst's yacht during a weekend cruise celebrating Ince's birthday in November 1924. Among those in attendance were Hearst's longtime companion and film actress Marion Davies, fellow actor Charlie Chaplin, writer Elinor Glyn, columnist Louella Parsons, and actress Margaret Livingston. The film provides a speculative assessment on the unclear manner of Ince's death.
Craig Lucas is an American playwright, screenwriter, theatre director, musical actor, and film director.
Lonne Elder III was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Elder was one of the leading African-American figures who informed the New York theater world with social and political consciousness. He also wrote scripts for television and film. His best known play, Ceremonies in Dark Old Men, won him a Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. The play, which was about a Harlem barber and his family, was produced by the Negro Ensemble Company in 1969.
Roger Kumble is an American film director, screenwriter, and playwright.
The Battle Over Citizen Kane is a 1996 American documentary film directed and produced by Thomas Lennon and Michael Epstein, from a screenplay by Lennon and Richard Ben Cramer, who also narrates. It chronicles the clash between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst over the production and release of Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane, which has been considered the greatest film ever made.
Samuel Garza Bernstein is an American screenwriter, playwright, director and author who grew up all over the world, living in Cairo, Honolulu, Austin, Phoenix, Albuquerque, New York City, Los Angeles, and Ft. Collins, Colorado, while his family also traveled through Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Caribbean. He is co-founder of Babyhead Productions with husband Ronald Shore. The couple have been together since 1994, and were married in a Jewish ceremony in 1996, then in Vancouver, Canada in 2003 when it became legal for same sex couples to marry, and then again in 2013 in West Hollywood, California, after the Supreme Court struck down Proposition 8. He is also a volunteer Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) for foster children in Los Angeles County.
Jonathan Drew Groff is an American actor and singer. He began his career on Broadway, rising to prominence for his portrayal of Melchior Gabor in the original production of Spring Awakening (2006–08), for which he was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical. He returned to Broadway to portray King George III in the original production of Hamilton (2015), for which he earned a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Musical. In 2019, he starred in the Off-Broadway revival of Little Shop of Horrors, originating the role of Seymour Krelborn. He currently stars as Franklin Shepard opposite Daniel Radcliffe and Lindsay Mendez in the first Broadway revival of Stephen Sondheim's Merrily We Roll Along, a performance for which he is nominated for the 2024 Tony Award for Best Leading Actor in a Musical.
Dan Remmes is an American writer and actor. He is best known as the author of Grumpy Old Men: The Musical, based on the 1993 movie Grumpy Old Men.
Tim Cummings is an American actor and author.
Craig J. Nevius is an American playwright, screenwriter and film producer. He is the owner of Windmill Entertainment LLC, a television development and production company that specializes in both scripted and unscripted projects with pop culture appeal.
Bernie is a 2011 American biographical black comedy crime film directed by Richard Linklater, and written by Linklater and Skip Hollandsworth. The film stars Jack Black, Shirley MacLaine and Matthew McConaughey. It is based on Hollandsworth's January 1998 article, "Midnight in the Garden of East Texas", published in Texas Monthly magazine. It explores the 1996 murder of 81-year-old millionaire Marjorie Nugent (MacLaine) in Carthage, Texas, by her 39-year-old companion, Bernhardt "Bernie" Tiede (Black).
The Decay of Fiction is a 2002 American 35mm part color and part black-and-white experimental film noir project directed by independent filmmaker and artist Pat O'Neill. The film, initially conceived as a documentary, was produced by O'Neill and Rebecca Hartzell for Lookout Mountain Films. Filming took place in Los Angeles.
Footprints is a 2011 American independent film written by Steven Peros and marking his feature directorial debut. The film stars Sybil Temtchine, H.M. Wynant, and Pippa Scott.
Joe Patrick Ward is an American playwright, composer and lyricist. Ward has scored music for film and television, and has written songs for several stage plays and musicals. He is a recipient of the Los Angeles Ovation Award for Best World Premiere Musical, and the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and NAACP Theatre Award for Best Production.