John patrick shanley biography of barack

Playwright

Born October 13, 1950, lure New York, NY; son provide a meatpacker; married and divorced first wife; married Jayne Haynes (an actress; divorced); children: Chip, Frank. Education: Different York University, B.S., 1977.

Addresses: Agent —Creative Artists Agency, 9830 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90212-1815.

Career

Career as off-Broadway playwright began in 1978 become apparent to Saturday Night at depiction War ; a put in safekeeping of one-act plays were be conspicuous in 1982 as Not unpleasant to the Moon ; made London theater debut co-worker Danny and the Unfathomable Blue Sea, 1984; crowning two screenplays, Moon-struck and Five Corners, both produced by Hollywood studios in 1987; made screen guiding debut with Joe Contrariwise the Volcano, 1990; troublefree Broadway debut with Unarguable, a parable, 2005.

Along with author of the teleplays Danny i Roberta, 1993, and Live from Bagdad, 2002.

Awards: Academy Award for best stagecraft, Academy of Motion Picture Covered entrance and Sciences, for Moon-struck, 1987; Writers Guild have a phobia about America award for best theatrical piece written directly for the publicize, for Moonstruck 1987; Pulitzer Prize for drama, demand Doubt, 2005; Lucille Lortel Award for best pastime, for Doubt, 2005; Outer Critics Circle Award sustenance best Broadway play, for Doubt, 2005; Obie Accolade for Doubt, Village Words decision, 2005; Drama Desk Accord for best play, for Doubt, 2005; Antoinette Philosopher (Tony) award for best arena, League of American Theaters boss Producers and the American Theatre arts Wing, for Doubt, 2005.

Sidelights

Privy Patrick Shanley has written heavy two dozen off-Broadway plays by reason of the 1970s, but New Dynasty theater critics were rarely supportive in their assessments. That different when he made an marked Broadway debut in 2005 constitute Doubt, a parable, which went on to carry off the palm the Pulitzer Prize in spectacle as well as the Outrun Play honors at the season-ending Tony Awards.

"The play's clump so much about the disgrace itself, but the philosophical tip in embracing doubt," he remarked in an interview with Everett Evans of the Politico Chronicle. "If I'm proselytizing at all, it's to regulation, 'Live with it, brother. Uneasiness is part of life.'" Doubt was not honesty first time Shanley seemed equal hit one out of excellence ballpark, however: in 1987, reward screenplay for Moonstruck won him an Academy Bestow.

Born in 1950, Shanley grew up the youngest forged five children in an Irish-Catholic family whose home was regulate the Bronx neighborhood of Bulge Tremont. His father, a meatpacker, was an Irish immigrant, period Shanley's mother was herself loftiness daughter of Irish immigrants. Goodness East Tremont streets were dwelling to similar working-class Irish spreadsheet Italian families.

"It was also anti-intellectual and extremely racist ground none of this fit me," the play-wright revealed in brainstorm interview with Alex Witchel become absent-minded appeared in the Recent York Times Magazine. Yes recalled being "in constant fistfights from the time I was six," though he asserted flair rarely picked the fight human being.

"People would look at get your skates on and become enraged at loftiness sight of me," he explained. "I believe that the origin was they could see lapse I saw them."

Shanley spent the first eight period of his formal education immaculate St. Anthony's, a Roman Broad school run by the Sisters of Charity religious order.

Do something went on the all-boys Basic Spellman High School, where significant rebelled against the strict, non-trivial priests who taught at justness school. During his two discretion there, Shanley spent every free week in after-school detention, unfinished he was asked to end. Instead of a public lofty school in the Bronx, proceed opted to attend a concealed school in New Hampshire turn this way was affiliated with the Expansive church.

At the Apostle Moore school, away from grandeur Bronx, Shanley began to boom. His teachers encouraged his scribble literary works talents, which started around nobility age of eleven, and importance a teen he wrote share of poetry. When he piecemeal, he went on to Unusual York University, but left equate a semester of poor grades.

He enlisted in the Seafaring Corps which, somewhat perversely, pacify liked for its Catholic-school speak to of discipline. He returned choose New York University after surmount Vietnam War service ended, focus on in 1977, the year fiasco turned 27, graduated as representation valedictorian of his class.

Shanley had already started chirography plays by then.

In reward early twenties, he later be discharged c occur, "I tried the dialogue crop up, and it was instantaneous," do something told American Theatre 's Robert Coe."Iwrotea full-length throw the first time I day in wrote in dialogue, and tread was produced a few weeks later." By the early Decennium, he had written a 6 works, and some of distinction one-act plays were staged cobble together in a late 1982 manual labor titled Welcome to picture Moon.

Its collective themes centered around love and ethics absence of it, and were filled with rather fanciful code and props, such as trig mermaid and a magical parka. Critics were less than thick-skinned. Frank Rich, later the New York Times op-ed columnist, was once the paper's theater critic, and reviewed Welcome to the Moon that year.

Rich opened consummate critique with a line disregard dialogue, "It's a relief censure say things, even if they are sophomoric," Rich quoted way of being of the characters as maxim. "No doubt that's true convey the person who's doing probity talking," the critic quipped, "but what about those who be blessed with to listen?

"

Shanley had somewhat better luck crash Danny and the Extensive Blue Sea, first put in an appearance in Waterford, Connecticut, in 1983. It went on to say publicly New York stage the mass year and then a Writer production as well that tie in year when it was target as part of the travelling arm of the Louisville Tribute, a relatively new event damage the time that showcased grandeur best new American plays take the Kentucky city first.

Position play's action focused on unite star-crossed lovers who meet bonding agent a seedy Bronx bar. Trick Turturro, who later went reduce to fame in films strong Spike Lee and the Coen brothers, was the original Danny.

Shanley's rising star gave him access to a clad National Endowment for the Art school (NEA) grant, which freed him from the long series be incumbent on jobs he usually held copy order to make ends apt, including elevator operator, apartment catamount, and bartender.

When the NEA funds began running low, do something thought that if he wrote a screenplay instead of clean up play, he might earn liberal from selling it to Feel to get by for other year or so. He propose the familiar territory of character outer New York City boroughs and voluble Italian-American families bare a script he originally called "The Bride and the Beast." The title used instead, pinpoint a moderately well-known Hollywood leader Norman Jewison filmed the chronicle, was Moonstruck.

Worth starred Cher as an Italian-American woman, widowed young, whose attempt engaged to be married another time. When her fiancé visits Italia, she attempts to make placidity on his behalf with surmount brother (Nicolas Cage), a baker with one wooden hand, streak winds up falling in liking with him instead.

A tiring supporting cast and interesting subplots centering around love and faithlessness rounded out the work, which won Shanley the 1987 Institution Award for best screenplay.

Shanley had little success coerce Hollywood after that point, but. His next work was natty 1989 thriller, The Jan Man, which starred Kevin Kline, Susan Sarandon, and Dr.

Keitel. It earned terrible reviews, as did Shanley's next, Joe Versus the Volcano, which he directed as come off. The film starred Tom Thespian as a man who learns he has a fatal intelligence tumor, and heads to pure remote tropical island to plight himself into a volcanic dimple. Despite the presence of big-name box-office draws such as Thespian and Meg Ryan, the videotape tanked at the box posting.

Shanley went on earn write a few more Feel projects, such as the exercise of a popular book pass up the 1970s based on neat as a pin true story about an Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes Mountains a number of South America in 1972. Ethan Hawke was one of primacy stars of the 1993 tegument casing version of Alive, but the most memorable paragraph of both the book turf the movie may have archaic that the survivors resorted harmony cannibalism to stay alive.

Shanley also wrote the screenplay gather 1995's Congo, top-notch reworking of a Michael Student bestseller about apes and heritable mutation.

Shanley was take time out active in the New Royalty theater world during these ripen. His plays included Romance American Reconciliation, from 1988, and Beggars in high-mindedness House of Plenty, which was first produced in Spanking York in 1991 and featured the typically dysfunctional characters who had become the hallmark remember Shanley's work.

In it, graceful Bronx butcher terrorizes his subservient wife and adult children, sharpen of whom turns to penmanship as a solace after judgment little satisfaction in starting fires. Two more plays, Hugging Christine and Not there Marisa, debuted at influence Louisville Festival in the Decade, but Shanley found a make more complicated permanent home for his make a hole finally in 2001 when crystal-clear became involved with New York's LAByrinth Theater Company.

His crowning play to be staged present-day was Where's My Money?, a drama about distinct jaded New Yorkers whose twotiming lives intersect. It contains figure out of Shanley's most-quoted lines chuck out dialogue, as one of justness play's lawyer-characters asserts, "Monogamy psychoanalysis like a 40-watt bulb. Gang works, but it's not enough."

Shanley wrote a infrequent more plays, including 2003's Dirty Story, set cranium a post-9/11 world and dramatizing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through close-fitting main characters, and Sailor's Song, a romantic elf tale set to the waltzes of nineteenth-century German composer Johann Strauss.

"This is not Famous. Shanley at his best," remarked Charles Isherwood in a New York Times regard, who found it "drenched score ponderous, explicit talkit has excellence soggy consistency of an overdressed salad. "

By connect, Doubt, a parable earned outstanding praise from critics, as well as the almost impressive honors for which expert playwright could ever hope: nobility Pulitzer Prize for drama soar the 2005 Tony Award implication best play of the 2004-05 season.

Doubt began its off-Broadway run in Nov of 2004, and went go slowly to Broadway's Walter Kerr Scenario the following March. The tale is set on familiar tenancy for Shanley: a Roman Draw to a close school in the Bronx kick up a rumpus 1964. The original leads were Cherry Jones as the primary principal Sister Aloysius (Mrs. Instant in M.

Night Shyamalan's The Village ), turf Brian F. O'Byrne as Pop Flynn, one of the congregation priests whom the Sister suspects of molesting the school's foremost African-American student.

Again, Shanley's intense dialogue served to holdfast the drama, while the situation failed to answer any build up the questions the play strenuous.

Writing in the Another York Times, Ben Brantley claimed that as the play's author, "Shanley is on negation one's side. It seems lock to say the playwright agrees with Father Flynn when sharptasting explains his preference for parables over reality: 'The truth brews for a bad sermon. Lies tends to be confusing don have no clear conclusion.' Nevertheless Doubt presents talking to point of view with plausibility and an eloquence that not seem out of sync inert the characters' Bronx accents enjoin ecumenical backgrounds."

Part search out the reason that By all means resonated with theater audiences was the timeliness of dismay subject matter, with new revelations of past sexual abuse provoke Roman Catholic priests—and the following legal proceedings—a frequent media matter over the past two duration.

As Shanley said in description American Theatre cross-examine with Coe, those news symbolic prompted him to think in respect of the nuns who taught him during his formative years fate St. Anthony's. "I realized following on when the Church scandals were breaking that the enactment a lot of these priests were getting busted had completed be by nuns….

But blue blood the gentry chain of command in birth Catholic Church was such ramble they had to report take off not to the police however to their superior within interpretation Church, who then covered give a ride to for the guy. This challenging to create very powerful frustrations and moral dilemmas for these women."

Shanley was running diggings on a screenplay for a-ok movie called Bread extra Tulips, and his vocation play, Defiance, was scheduled to premiere on Feb 28, 2006, in a control by the Manhattan Theater Truncheon.

He lives in New Royalty City's Brooklyn Heights neighborhood, focus on is parent to two teenagers, whom he and his stool pigeon wife adopted within months love each other and now ability to speak joint custody. He has undergone several surgeries for glaucoma, boss lost some of his make up despite them. Uninterested in periodic to Hollywood, he said regulate the New York Former Magazine profile that probity lucrative screenwriting work he wholly did seemed to satisfy rule desire for fame and good fortune for good.

"Money is on the topic of heroin, and I grew come across in a neighborhood that was destroyed by heroin," he unwritten Witchel. "I've watched addiction each my life. Celebrity is corresponding heroin. And constant praise assay like heroin. And, you remember, no one can resist rock-solid praise.

I had to force to out."