Ken Hixon (b. 1951) is an American screenwriter, best known for his scripts for Welcome to the Rileys (2010), City by the Sea (2002) and Inventing the Abbotts (1997). [1] [2]
Born in Indianapolis, Indiana, he began acting as a child in community theater. Hixon studied acting at the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco. His classmates included Anna Deavere Smith, Gregory Itzin, M. C. Gainey and Harry Hamlin.
Hixon was a stage actor who worked in regional theater, including a Los Angeles production of Eugene O'Neill's two-character play Hughie with Charles Hallahan in 1979. [3] Hixon's roles in film and television included appearances in George A. Romero's Knightriders (1981), Bitter Harvest (1981), and The Hollywood Knights (1980).
In the early 1980s he transitioned from acting to screenwriting. His writing credits include Incident at Deception Ridge (1994), Morgan Stewart's Coming Home (1987), and Grandview, U.S.A. (1984). Two of his television films, Secret Sins of the Father (1994) and Caught in the Act (1993), were nominated for the Edgar Allan Poe Award by the Mystery Writers of America. [4] City by the Sea (1997) was adapted from the Esquire magazine article Mark of a Murderer written by Michael McAlary. [5] In 2019, he co-wrote the heist thriller Finding Steve McQueen , based on the United California Bank robbery. [6] He also co-wrote Unbroken: Path to Redemption (2019).
Edgar Allan Poe was an American writer, poet, author, editor, and literary critic who is best known for his poetry and short stories, particularly his tales of mystery and the macabre. He is widely regarded as a central figure of Romanticism and Gothic fiction in the United States, and of American literature. Poe was one of the country's earliest practitioners of the short story, and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre, as well as a significant contributor to the emerging genre of science fiction. He is the first well-known American writer to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.
"The Black Cat" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe. It was first published in the August 19, 1843, edition of The Saturday Evening Post. In the story, an unnamed narrator has a strong affection for pets until he perversely turns to abusing them. His favorite, a pet black cat, bites him one night and the narrator punishes it by cutting its eye out and then hanging it from a tree. The home burns down but one remaining wall shows a burned outline of a cat hanging from a noose. He soon finds another black cat, similar to the first except for a white mark on its chest, but he develops a hatred for it as well. He attempts to kill the cat with an axe but his wife stops him; instead, the narrator murders his wife. He conceals the body behind a brick wall in his basement. The police soon come and, after the narrator's tapping on the wall is met with a shrieking sound, they find not only the wife's corpse but also the black cat that had been accidentally walled in with the body and alerted them with its cry.
"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe published in Graham's Magazine in 1841. It has been described as the first modern detective story; Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".
"The Purloined Letter" is a short story by American author Edgar Allan Poe. It is the third of his three detective stories featuring the fictional C. Auguste Dupin, the other two being "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt". These stories are considered to be important early forerunners of the modern detective story. It first appeared in the literary annual The Gift for 1845 (1844) and soon was reprinted in numerous journals and newspapers.
Vincent Leonard Price Jr. was an American actor, art historian, art collector, and gourmet cook. He appeared on stage, television, and radio, and in more than 100 films. Price has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for television.
The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America, based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards honor the best in mystery fiction, non-fiction, television, film, and theater published or produced in the previous year.
Jeffrey Alan Combs is an American actor. He is best known for starring as Herbert West in the Re-Animator film series (1985–2003) and portraying a number of characters in the Star Trek universe, most notably Brunt and the various Weyouns on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (1994–1999) and Thy'lek Shran on Star Trek: Enterprise (2001–2005).
"The Fall of the House of Usher" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1839 in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine, then included in the collection Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840. The short story, a work of Gothic fiction, includes themes of madness, family, isolation, and metaphysical identities.
Le ChevalierC. Auguste Dupin is a fictional character created by Edgar Allan Poe. Dupin made his first appearance in Poe's 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", widely considered the first detective fiction story. He reappears in "The Mystery of Marie Rogêt" (1842) and "The Purloined Letter" (1844).
Inventing the Abbotts is a 1997 American period coming-of-age film directed by Pat O'Connor, and starring Liv Tyler, Joaquin Phoenix, Billy Crudup, Jennifer Connelly and Joanna Going. The screenplay by Ken Hixon is based on a short story by Sue Miller. The original music score was composed by Michael Kamen. The film focuses on two brothers and their relationship with the wealthy Abbott sisters.
"The Mystery of Marie Rogêt", often subtitled A Sequel to "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe written in 1842. This is the first murder mystery based on the details of a real crime. It first appeared in Snowden's Ladies' Companion in three installments, November and December 1842 and February 1843. Poe referred to it as one of his "tales of ratiocination".
Stuart Alan Gordon was an American filmmaker, theatre director, screenwriter, and playwright. Initially recognized for his provocative and frequently controversial work in experimental theatre, Gordon began directing films in 1985. Most of Gordon's cinematic output was in the horror genre, though he also ventured into science fiction and film noir.
Murders in the Rue Morgue is a 1932 American horror film directed by Robert Florey, based on Edgar Allan Poe's 1841 short story "The Murders in the Rue Morgue". The plot is about Doctor Mirakle, a carnival sideshow entertainer and scientist who kidnaps Parisian women to mix their blood with that of his gorilla, Erik. As his experiments fail because of the quality of his victims' blood, Mirakle meets with Camille L'Espanye, and has her kidnapped and her mother murdered, leading to suspicion falling on Camille's fiance, Pierre Dupin, a medical student who has already become interested in the earlier murders.
Shepperd Strudwick was an American actor of film, television, and stage. He was also billed as John Shepperd for some of his films and for his acting on stage in New York.
"The Oblong Box" is a short story by American writer Edgar Allan Poe, first published in 1844, about a sea voyage and a mysterious box.
Edgar Allan Poe has appeared in popular culture as a character in books, comics, film, and other media. Besides his works, the legend of Poe himself has fascinated people for generations. His appearances in popular culture often envision him as a sort of "mad genius" or "tormented artist", exploiting his personal struggles. Many depictions of Poe interweave elements of his life with his works, in part due to Poe's frequent use of first-person narrators, suggesting an erroneous assumption that Poe and his characters are identical.
Robert Lloyd Fish was an American writer of crime fiction.
Megan Abbott is an American author of crime fiction and of non-fiction analyses of hardboiled crime fiction. Her novels and short stories have drawn from and re-worked classic subgenres of crime writing from a female perspective. She is also an American writer and producer of television.
Finding Steve McQueen is a 2019 American heist thriller film directed by Mark Steven Johnson and written by Ken Hixon and Keith Sharon. The film stars Travis Fimmel, Rachael Taylor, Forest Whitaker, and William Fichtner, telling the story of a gang planning to steal millions of dollars from President Nixon's illegal political slush fund. It was released in the United States on March 15, 2019, by Momentum Pictures. The film is based on the United California Bank robbery.
The Pale Blue Eye is a 2022 American mystery thriller film written and directed by Scott Cooper, adapted from the 2006 novel of the same name by Louis Bayard. The film features an ensemble cast that includes Christian Bale, Harry Melling, Gillian Anderson, Lucy Boynton, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones, Harry Lawtey, Simon McBurney, Timothy Spall, and Robert Duvall. Its plot follows veteran detective Augustus Landor in 1830 West Point, New York, as he investigates a series of murders at the United States Military Academy with the aid of Edgar Allan Poe, a young military cadet.