Sam Shepard Biography and List of Works

Playwright and actor, leader of the avant-garde in contemporary American theatre since his earliest work. Shepard's plays are not easy to categorize, but in general they blend images of the Old West, fascination with pop culture - rock and roll, drugs and television - and bizarre family problems. In 1971 he stated that "I don't want to be a playwright, I want to be a rock and roll star..."

Before he was thirty, Shepard had over thirty plays produced in New York. Shepard repeatedly examines the moral anomie and spiritual starvation that label the world of his drama.

"LEE: I don't need toast. I need a woman.
AUSTIN: A woman isn't the answer. Never was.
LEE: I'm not talkin' about permanent. I'm talkin' about temporary."
(from True West, 1981)

Sam Shepard was born Samuel Shepard Rogers VII in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, the son of an Air Force man. He had been a bomber pilot in World War II, and after the war he got a Fulbright fellowship, taught high school Spanish, and moved around between various army bases, until he retired to be a farmer. The family raised sheep and grew avocados in their farm in Duarte, California. Shepard's youth was shadowed by his father's descent into alcoholism and the deterioration of the family. He studied agriculture at San Antonio Junior College, but after a year he joined a touring company of actors. Later he was appointed playwright-in-residence at the Magic Theatre in San Francisco. At the age of 19 he moved to New York, supported himself by serving tables at the Village Gate, and pursued his theatrical interests. His first complete play, COWBOYS, is autobiographical, and received good reviews in The Village Voice. Shepard's reputation was built with a series of one act-plays presented in off Broadway theatres. He worked at experimental spots like La Mama, Cafe Cino, the Open Theatre, and the American Place Theatre.

"DODGE: He's run off with my money? He's not coming back. There.
SHELLEY: He'll be back.
DODGE: You're a funny chicken, you know that?
SHELLEY: Thanks.
DODGE: Full of faith. Hope. Faith and hope. You're all alike you hopers. If it's not God then it's a man. If it's not a man then it's a woman. If it's not a woman then it's the land of the future of some kind. Some kind of future."
(from Buried Child, 1979)

In the 1965-66 season, Shepard won the Village Voice newspaper's Obie awards for his plays CHIGACO, ICARUS'S MOTHER, and RED CROSS. The works were written hastily. His bizarre comedy, LA TURISTA, was produced in 1967 in New York and two years later in London. During these years Shepard met the writer-director Joseph Chaikin, with whom he would collaborate throughout the seventies and eighties. European drama in the sixties deeply influenced Shepard's work, especially Beckett.

Despite the critical acclaim of MAD DOG BLUES (1971), Shepard moved with his wife and son to England, where he lived until 1974. He wrote several medium-length plays that were a success on both sides of the Atlantic, among others THE TOOTH OF CRIME (1972) and GEOGRAPHY OF A HORSE DREAMER (1974). In the mid-1970s Shepard wrote the plays that secured his reputation - CURSE OF THE STARVING CLASS (1976), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning BURIED CHILD (1979), a story of incest and murder.

In 1983 Shepard divorced his wife and began a relationship with the actress-producer Jessica Lange. Shepard's A LIE OF THE MIND (1986), a poetic look at the American West, won New York Drama Critics Circle Award. In 1986 Shepard was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Among his works from the 1990s are SIMPATICO (1994), which he began to write while he was driving to Los Angeles, and CRUISING PARADISE (1996), which contains 40 short stories exploring the themes of solitude and loss of angry and anguished men. After a pause of 20 years, Shepard directed his new play, THE LATE HENRY MOSS (2000) in San Francisco at the Magic Theatre, starring Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, and James Gammon.

One of Shepard's trademarks, breathtaking monologues, was according to the author mixed up with the idea of an aria. "But then I realized that what I'd written was extremely difficult for actors. I mean, I was writing monologues that were three or four pages long. Now it's more about elimination, but the character still sometimes move into other states of mind, you know, without any excuses. Something lights up and the expression expands." (from Playwrights at Work, ed. by George Plimpton, 2000)

As a film actor and scriptwriter Shepard started his career in the 1960s and co-wrote the script for Michelangelo Antonioni's film ZABRISKIE POINT (1970). He appeared as the doomed farmer in Terence Malick's Days of Heaven (1978), acted in Philip Kaufman's The Right Stuff (1983), and was nominated for an Oscar for his role as the test pilot Chuck Yeager. He wrote the script and acted in FOOL FOR LOVE (one-act play published in 1983, film 1985) with Kim Basinger, and has had roles in several other films. In 1988 Shepard made his debut as a director with FAR NORTH. Other films include Thunderheart (1992), The Pelican Brief (1993) and SILENT TONGUE (1994), which he wrote and directed.

Paris, Texas (1984) - film, dir. by Wim Wenders, screenplay Sam Shepard, adapted by L.M. 'Kit' Carson, music by Ry Cooder, starring Harry Fean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clement, Hunyter Carson, Nastassja Kinski.
Travis Anderson walks through the Texas desert and comes to a small border town. He has been away four years, his mind gone from the break-up of his marriage. He tells his brother Walt his story on the drive back to Los Angeles. Walt and Ann have taken care of Travis's young son Hunter. Travis starts to search for his wife Jane with Hunter. Travis meets her in a sex-fantasy booth, but does not reveal his identity until their second meeting. Hunter stays with Jane, it is Travis's desire to reunite mother and son. Travis returns to the road alone. The key scene is the confrontation between Travis and Jane through the peepshow mirror. - Paris, Texas is a plot of land. Travis has bought it with the dream of settling there with his family.

For further reading: Playwrights at Work, ed. by George Plimpton (2000); A Body Across the Map by Michael Taav (1999); The Theatre of Sam Shepard, ed. by Stephen J. Bottoms (1998); Sam Shepard by Carol Rosen (1998); Sam Shepard and the American Theatre by Leslie A. Wade (1997); Sam Shepard by Don Shewey (1997, paperback);: Sam Shepard by Laura J. Graham (1995); Sam Shepard on the German Stage by Carol Benet (1993); True Lies by Jim McGhee (1993); A Reconstruction-Analysis of 'Buried Child' by Playwright Sam Shepard by Frederick J. Perry (1992); Rereading Shepard, ed. by Leonard Wilcox (1992); Sam Shepard: A Casebook, ed. by Kimball King (1989); Sam Shepard's Metaphorical Stages by Lynda Hart (1987); American Dreams , ed. by by Bonnie Maranca (1981, paperback)

Films (as actor, scriptwriter or director):

• ME AND MY BROTHER, 1969 (doc. drama, co.script)
• BRAND X, 1969
• EASY RIDER, 1969 (voice only, dir. by Dennis Hopper, starring Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson)
• ZABRIESKIE POINT, 1970 (dir. by Michelangelo Antonioni)
• BRONCO BULFROG, 1970
• OH CALCUTTA! 1972 (co-script)
• RENALDO AND CLARA, 1978
• DAYS OF HEAVEN, 1978 (dir. by Terrence Malick, starring Richard Gere, Brooke Adams, Sam Shepard)
• RESURRECTION, 1980 (dir. by Daniel Petrie, starring Ellen Burstyn, Sam Shepard)
• RAGGEDY MAN, 1981 (dir. by Jack Fish, starring Sissy Spacek, Eric Roberts)
• FRANCES, 1982 (dir. by Graeme Clifford, starring Jessica Lange, Kim Stanley, Sam Shepard)
• THE RIGHT STUFF, 1983 (as Col. Chuck Yeager, Academy Award nomination, dir. by Philip Kaufman, starring Sam Shepard, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward)
• MOTEL CHRONICLES, 1984
• PARIS, TEXAS, 1984 (co-script from his story Motel Chronicles, dir. by Wim Wenders, starring Nastassja Kinski, Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell, Aurore Clement) - award: the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival
• COUNTRY, 1984 (co-starring with Jessica Lange, dir. by Richard Pearce)
• FOOL FOR LOVE, 1985 (also script, from his own play, starring Kim Basinger, Sam Shepard, Randy Quaid)
• CRIMES OF THE HEART, 1985 (dir. by Bruce Beresford, starring Diane Keaton, Jessica Lange, Sissy Spacek)
• BABY BOOM, 1987 (dir. by Charles Shyer, starring Diane Keaton, Harold Ramis, Sam Wanamaker)
• FAR NORTH, 1988 (dir., script),
• STEEL MAGNOLIAS, 1989 (dir. by Herbert Ross, starring Sally Field, Dolly Parton, play by Robert Harling)
• BRIGHT ANGEL, 1990
• PASSAGIER FABER/VOYAGER, 1990 (dir. by Volker Schlöndorff, based on Max Frisch's novel Homo Faber)
• DEFENSELESS, 1991
• THUNDERHEART, 1992 (dir. by Michael Apted, starring Val Kilmer, Sam Shepard)
• THE PELICAN BRIEF, 1993 (dir. by Alan J. Pakula, based on John Grisham's novel, starring Julia Roberts, Denzel Washington, Sam Shepard)
• SILENT TONGUE, 1994 (dir. script)
• SAFE PASSAGE, 1994 (dir. by Robert Allan Ackerman, starring Susan Sarandon, Sam Shepard, based on the novel by Ellyn Bache)
• THE GOOD OLD BOYS, 1995 (TV)
• LILY DALE, 1996 (TV)

COWBOYS, (1964)
ROCK GARDEN, (1964)
LA TURISTA, (1966)
FIVE PLAYS, (1967)
OPERATION SIDEWINDER, (1970)
THE UNSEEN HAND AND OTHER PLAYS, (1970)
THE TOOTH OF CRIME, (1972)
MAD DOG BLUES AND OTHER PLAYS, (1972)
GEOGRAPHY OF A HORSE DREAMER, (1974)
KILLER'S HEAD, (1975)
ANGEL CITY, (1976)
SUICIDE IN B-FLAT, (1976)
BURIED CHILD, (1979)
SEVEN PLAYS, (1981)
TRUE WEST, (1981)
FOOL FOR LOVE, (1983)
PARIS, TEXAS, (1984)
A LIE OF THE MIND, (1986)
THE UNSEEN HAND AND OTHER PLAYS, (1986)
SIMPATICO, (1994)
CRUISING PARADISE, (1996)
THE LATE HENRY MOSS, (2000)
ME AND MY BROTHER, (1969)