Michael Almereyda

Last updated
Michael Almereyda
Born (1959-04-07) April 7, 1959 (age 64)
Overland Park, Kansas, U.S.
Occupations
  • Film director
  • screenwriter
  • producer
Years active1985–present

Michael Almereyda (born April 7, 1959) is an American film director, screenwriter, and film producer.

Contents

Early work

Almereyda studied art history at Harvard but dropped out after three years to pursue filmmaking. He acquired a Hollywood agent on the strength of a spec script about Nikola Tesla. [1] His first film as writer/director was a self-financed, black-and-white short featuring Dennis Hopper, A Hero of Our Time , based on Mikhail Lermontov's novel of the same title. Shot in 1985, it was finished in 1987 and screened in the 1992 Sundance Film Festival.

Early screenplays include Cherry 2000 (1987), the first draft for Wim Wenders’ Until the End of the World (1991), and uncredited work on Total Recall (1990).

Almereyda's films range across many genres, styles, and formats. His first feature, Twister (1989), based on Mary Robison’s novel Oh , was a comedy about a dysfunctional mid-Western family.

Another Girl Another Planet (1992) was a romantic chamber piece, a black-and-white, one-hour featurette shot with a Fisher-Price Pixelvision camera. [2] Nadja (1994) was a comic vampire film shot on 35mm with Pixelvision inserts.

Hamlet (2000) was shot on Super 16mm and featured Ethan Hawke, Bill Murray, Kyle MacLachlan, Julia Stiles, Liev Schreiber and Sam Shepard. The adaptation layered a contemporary New York setting on Shakespeare's text.

2000s

Almereyda directed features set in pre- and post-Katrina New Orleans: Happy Here and Now (2002) and New Orleans, Mon Amour (2008). In 2004, he directed an episode of the HBO series Deadwood , His most recent work has mainly involved documentaries and shorts.

William Eggleston in the Real World (2005) was nominated for a Gotham Award for Best Documentary from the Independent Filmmaker Project, [3] [4] as was the sketchbook film Paradise (2009).

He has recently returned to fiction film with a 2013 adaptation of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline , a spiritual successor to his earlier Hamlet. Experimenter (2015), was based on the life of Stanley Milgram, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and received critical acclaim. Marjorie Prime (2017), a philosophical science-fiction film based on Jordan Harrison's play of the same name, again screened at Sundance and won the Sloan Feature Film Prize. [5] Most recently, he has directed a documentary on Hampton Fancher and adapted his Tesla spec script into a 2020 film of the same name.

Additional works & Style

Almereyda edited and contributed texts for Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and About Mayakovsky, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2008, and William Eggleston: For Now, published by Twin Palms in 2010.

He has written criticism and commentary for The New York Times , Film Comment , Artforum , Bookforum , The Believer , and Triple Canopy .

In 2015 Almereyda received the Moving Image Creative Capital Award. [6]

Almereyda frequently uses the same actors. He has worked more than once with Suzy Amis, Karl Geary, Jared Harris, Ethan Hawke, Kyle MacLachlan, Isabelle Gillies, John Leguizamo, Lois Smith, Hannah Gross, and Jim Gaffigan.

Partial filmography

Related Research Articles

<i>Hamlet</i> (2000 film) 2000 film by Michael Almereyda

Hamlet, also known as Hamlet 2000, is a 2000 American drama film written and directed by Michael Almereyda, set in contemporary New York City, and based on the Shakespeare play of the same name. Ethan Hawke plays Hamlet as a film student, Kyle MacLachlan co-stars as Uncle Claudius, with Diane Venora as Gertrude, Liev Schreiber as Laertes, Julia Stiles as Ophelia, Steve Zahn as Rosencrantz, Bill Murray as Polonius, and Sam Shepard as Hamlet's father.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ethan Hawke</span> American actor and film director (born 1970)

Ethan Green Hawke is an American actor, author and film director. He made his film debut in Explorers (1985), before making a breakthrough performance in Dead Poets Society (1989). Hawke starred alongside Julie Delpy in Richard Linklater's Before trilogy from 1995 to 2013. Hawke received two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Training Day (2001) and Boyhood (2014) and two for Best Adapted Screenplay for co-writing Before Sunset (2004) and Before Midnight (2013). Other notable roles include in Reality Bites (1994), Gattaca (1997), Great Expectations (1998), Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007), Maggie's Plan (2015), First Reformed (2017), The Black Phone (2021) and The Northman (2022).

<i>Reality Bites</i> 1994 film by Ben Stiller

Reality Bites is a 1994 American romantic comedy-drama film written by Helen Childress and directed by Ben Stiller in his feature directorial debut. It stars Winona Ryder, Ethan Hawke, and Stiller, with supporting roles by Janeane Garofalo and Steve Zahn. In the film, Lelaina (Ryder), an aspiring videographer, works on a documentary about the disenchanted lives of her friends and roommates.

<i>Before Sunset</i> 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater

Before Sunset is a 2004 American romantic drama film directed by Richard Linklater, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, from a story by Linklater and Kim Krizan. It is the first film by Warner Independent Pictures. The sequel to Before Sunrise (1995) and the second installment in the Before trilogy, Before Sunset follows Jesse (Hawke) and Céline (Delpy) as they reunite nine years later in Paris.

Bob Gosse is an American film producer, film director and actor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Debra Granik</span> American film director, screenwriter and cinematographer (born 1963)

Debra Granik is an American filmmaker. She is most known for 2004's Down to the Bone, which starred Vera Farmiga, 2010's Winter's Bone, which starred Jennifer Lawrence in her breakout performance and for which Granik was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and 2018's Leave No Trace, a film based on the book My Abandonment by Peter Rock.

<i>William Eggleston in the Real World</i> 2005 American documentary film

William Eggleston in the Real World is a documentary film about the photographer William Eggleston directed by Michael Almereyda and released in 2005.

Over fifty films of William Shakespeare's Hamlet have been made since 1900. Seven post-war Hamlet films have had a theatrical release: Laurence Olivier's Hamlet of 1948; Grigori Kozintsev's 1964 Russian adaptation; a film of the John Gielgud-directed 1964 Broadway production, Richard Burton's Hamlet, which played limited engagements that same year; Tony Richardson's 1969 version featuring Nicol Williamson as Hamlet and Anthony Hopkins as Claudius; Franco Zeffirelli's 1990 version starring Mel Gibson; Kenneth Branagh's full-text 1996 version; and Michael Almereyda's 2000 modernisation, starring Ethan Hawke.

Tia Lessin is an American documentary filmmaker. Lessin has produced and directed documentaries and earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary and the Sundance Grand Jury Prize for Documentary.

Alex Rivera is a Sundance award-winning American film maker and MacArthur Fellow, best known for his films about labor, immigration, and politics.

Douglas J. Sloan is a filmmaker, known for his documentaries on the lives and work of renowned artists and photographers, such as photographers William Klein, Annie Leibovitz, Elliott Erwitt, William Eggleston, Helmut Newton, Diane Arbus and John G. Morris.

Braden King is a New York–based filmmaker, photographer and visual artist. His feature film, Here (2011), starring Ben Foster and Lubna Azabal, premiered at the 2011 Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals and was distributed theatrically by Strand Releasing in 2012. A multimedia installation version of the project, Here [ The Story Sleeps ], premiered at The Museum of Modern Art in 2010 and toured internationally with live soundtrack accompaniment by composer Michael Krassner and Boxhead Ensemble. King's previous work includes the feature film Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks It's Back, the award-winning short film Home Movie and music videos for Glen Hansard, Sparklehorse, Sonic Youth, Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and Dirty Three.

<i>Cymbeline</i> (film) 2014 film by Michael Almereyda

Cymbeline is a 2014 American crime thriller film written, produced, and directed by Michael Almereyda, based on the play of the same name by William Shakespeare. The film stars Ethan Hawke, Ed Harris, Milla Jovovich, John Leguizamo, and Dakota Johnson.

Jonathan Philip Wacks is an American film director, producer and screenwriter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uri Singer</span> Businessman and film producer

Uri Singer, is a businessman and film producer. He is the owner and CEO of Passage Pictures.

The 26th Annual Gotham Independent Film Awards, presented by the Independent Filmmaker Project, were held on November 28, 2016. The nominees were announced on October 20, 2016. Actors Ethan Hawke and Amy Adams, director Oliver Stone and producer Arnon Milchan received tribute awards. The ceremony was hosted by Keegan-Michael Key.

<i>First Reformed</i> 2017 film by Paul Schrader

First Reformed is a 2017 American psychological drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader. It stars Ethan Hawke as a minister of a small congregation in upstate New York who grapples with mounting despair brought on by tragedy, worldly concerns, and a tormented past. Amanda Seyfried, Cedric Kyles, Victoria Hill, and Philip Ettinger appear in supporting roles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2020 Sundance Film Festival</span> Film festival

The 2020 Sundance Film Festival took place from January 23 to February 2, 2020. The first lineup of competition films was announced on December 4, 2019. The opening night film was Miss Americana directed by Lana Wilson and produced by Morgan Neville, Caitrin Rogers, and Christine O'Malley.

<i>Tesla</i> (2020 film) 2020 film by Michael Almereyda

Tesla is a 2020 American biographical drama film written and directed by Michael Almereyda. It stars Ethan Hawke as Nikola Tesla. Eve Hewson, Ebon Moss-Bachrach, Jim Gaffigan, and Kyle MacLachlan also star.

References

  1. ↑ Leland, Erin (March 25, 2020). "Binge Watch This: Director Michael Almereyda is the Avant-Garde Historian and Storyteller We Need". Cultured Magazine. Retrieved July 22, 2020. In 1980, Almereyda dropped out of Harvard in order to craft his first screenplay for Tesla.
  2. ↑ Profile, Squarespace.com. Accessed June 5, 2023.
  3. 1 2 "Gotham Awards Nominations Announced Archived 2014-03-14 at the Wayback Machine ", Filmmaker (magazine). Accessed 8 August 2014.
  4. 1 2 "'Brokeback,' 'Capote' Get Gotham Award Nods", Fox News Channel. Accessed 8 August 2014.
  5. ↑ "Sloan Science & Film". scienceandfilm.org. Retrieved 2017-02-03.
  6. ↑ "Creative Capital – Investing in Artists who Shape the Future". creative-capital.org. Retrieved May 25, 2017.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.