Sam Shepard
Born Samuel Shepard Rogers III 5 November 1943 Fort Sheridan, Illinois, USA
Occupation Actor, author, playwright
Years active 1960s-present
Spouse(s) O-Lan Johnson Jones (1969-1984)
I. Introduction to Sam Shepard
Samuel Shepard Rogers III (born 5 November 1943) is an
American playwright, and actor, director of stage and screen. He
is author of several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs,
and received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play,
Buried Child.
Early Years
Shepard was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois and worked on a ranch as a
teenager. His father, Samuel Shepard Rogers II, was a teacher, farmer, and
served in the Air Force as a bomber pilot during World War II; his mother, Jane
Elaine Schook was a teacher and a native of Chicago. After high school
Shepard briefly attended college, but dropped out to join a travelling theater
group. He avoided the draft during the Vietnam era by claiming to be a heroin
addict. The year 1963 found him working as a busboy in Greenwich Village.
During this time Shepard was using illicit drugs. He was also a drummer for
the eccentric late 1960s rock band Holy Modal Rounders, featured in the
movie Easy Rider.
Career
Shepard became very much involved in New York's off-off-Broadway
theater scene, beginning at the age of nineteen. Although his plays were
staged at several off-off-Broadway venues, he was most closely connected
with Theatre Genesis, housed at St. Mark's Church in the East Village.
He acted occasionally in those days, but his interests were almost strictly
confined to writing, up until the late 1970s. Most of his writing was for
the stage, but he had early screen-writing credits for Me and My Brother
(1968) and Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (1970). His early science-fiction
play, The Unseen Hand, influenced Richard O'Brien's Rocky Horror
Show. After three years of living in England, in 1976 Shepard relocated to
the San Francisco Bay Area and was named playwright in residence at
the Magic Theatre where many of his works received their premier
productions. Notable work includes Buried Child, Curse of the Starving
Class in 1978, True West in 1980 and A Lie of the Mind in 1985. He also
continued with his collaboration with Bob Dylan that started with the
surrealist film Renaldo and Clara and co-wrote with Dylan an epic, 11
minute song entitled "Brownsville Girl", included on the 1986 Knocked
Out Loaded album and later compilations.
Career
Shepard began his acting career in earnest when he was cast as
the handsome land baron in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven
(1978), opposite Richard Gere and Brooke Adams. This led to
other important films and roles, most notably his portrayal of
Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff, earning him an Oscar
nomination in 1984. By 1986, one of his plays, Fool for Love,
was being made into a film directed by Robert Altman; his play A
Lie of the Mind was on Broadway with an all-star cast including
Harvey Keitel and Geraldine Page; he was living with Jessica
Lange; and he was working steadily as a film actor -- all of which
put him on the cover of Newsweek magazine. Earlier in his life,
during the rebellion of the 1960s, Shepard had vowed famously,
"I never want to be on the cover of Newsweek." Things had
changed.
Career
Throughout the years, Shepard has done a considerable amount of teaching
on playwriting and other aspects of theatre. His classes and seminars have
occurred at various theatre workshops, festivals, and universities. During the
1970s he served a stint as a Regents Professor at the University of California,
Davis.
In 1986, Shepard was elected to The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
In 2000, Shepard decided to repay a debt of gratitude to the Magic Theatre
by staging his play The Late Henry Moss as a benefit in San Francisco. The
cast included Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Woody Harrelson, and Cheech Marin.
The limited, three-month run was sold out.
In 2006, Shepard performed Spalding Gray's final monologue Life
Interrupted for its audio release through Macmillan Audio.
In 2007, Shepard was featured playing banjo on Patti Smith's cover of
Nirvana's song, "Smells Like Teen Spirit", on her album Twelve.
Although many artists have had an influence on Shepard's work, one of the
most significant has been actor-director Joseph Chaikin, a veteran of the
Living Theatre and founder of a group called the Open Theatre. The two
have often worked together on various projects, and Shepard acknowledges
that Chaikin has been a valuable mentor.
Personal Life
When Shepard first arrived in New York, he roomed with Charlie
Mingus, Jr., a friend of his from high school and son of the famous jazz
musician. Then he lived with actress Joyce Aaron. He later married
actress (born O-Lan Johnson, alias O-Lan Johnson Dark, alias O-Lan
Barna) from 1969 to 1984, with whom he has one son, Jesse Mojo
Shepard (born 1970). After the end of his relationship with the singer
and musician Patti Smith, Shepard met Oscar-winning actress Jessica
Lange on the set of a movie they both starred in, Frances. He moved in
with her in 1983, and they have been together ever since. They have
two children, Hannah Jane (born 1985) and Walker Samuel Shepard
(born 1987). In 2005 Jesse Shepard wrote a book of short stories which
was published in San Francisco, and his father appeared together with
him at a reading to introduce the book.
Although he played the legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager in The
Right Stuff, and went through an airliner crash in the film Voyager
(1992), Shepard is known for his aversion to flying. According to one
account, he vowed never to fly again after a very rocky trip on an
airliner coming back from Mexico in the 1960s. However, he allowed
the real Chuck Yeager to take him up in a jet plane in 1982, when he
was preparing for his role as Yeager in The Right Stuff.
In the early morning hours of January 3, 2009, Shepard was
arrested and charged with speeding and drunken driving in Normal,
Illinois; his blood alcohol content was allegedly 0.175. Shepard was
taken to the McLean County Jail, in Bloomington, IL, and posted bond
Awards and honors
• Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play, Buried
Child.
• For his portrayal of test pilot Chuck Yeager in the film The Right Stuff,
Shepard was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in
1983.
• His screenplay for the 1984 Wim Wenders film Paris, Texas garnered him a
nomination for a BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
• In 1986, Shepard was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
He received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy in 1992.
• In 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame. Of his more than fortyfive plays, eleven of them have won Obie Awards. He was nominated for two
Tony Awards for Buried Child in 1996, and for True West in 2000.
• For his performance as Dashiell Hammett in the 1999 TV movie Dash and
Lilly he received Emmy and Golden Globe nominations for "Best Actor in a
Miniseries or Movie".
• He has also won a Drama Desk Award for his play A Lie of the Mind.
• His most recent accolade was a 2008 SAG nomination for "Outstanding
Performance by a Male Actor in a Television Movie or Miniseries" for his
performance as Frank Whiteley in Ruffian.
Bibliography
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1964 Cowboys
1964 the Rock Garden
1965 Chicago
1965 Icarus's Mother
1965 4-H Club
1966 Red Cross
1967 La Turista
1967 Cowboys #2
1967 Forensic & the
Navigators
1969 The Unseen
Hand
1969 Oh! Calcutta!
(contributed sketches)
1970 The Holy Ghostly
1970 Operation
Sidewinder
• 1971 Mad Dog Blues
• 1971 Back Bog
Beast Bait
• 1971 Cowboy Mouth
(with Patti Smith)
• 1972 The Tooth of
Crime
• 1975 Action
• 1976 Suicide in B
Flat
• 1976 Angel City
• 1977 Inacoma
• 1978 Buried Child
• 1978 Curse of the
Starving Class
• 1978 Tongues (with
Joseph Chaikin)
• 1980 True West
1981 Savage/Love (with
Joseph Chaikin)
1983 Fool for Love
1985 A Lie of the Mind
1987 A Short Life of
Trouble
1991 States of Shock
1993 Simpatico
1995 Buried Child
(Revised )
1998 Eyes for Consuela
2000 The Late Henry
Moss
2004 The Notebook
2004 The God of Hell
2007 Kicking a Dead
Horse
2009 Ages of the Moon
II. Analysis of Buried Child
Buried Child is a play by Sam Shepard that
won the 1979 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and
launched Shepard to national fame as a
playwright. Buried Child is a piece of theatre
which depicts the fragmentation of the
American nuclear family in a context of
disappointment and disillusionment with
American mythology and the American
dream, the 1970s rural economic slowdown
and the breakdown of traditional family
structures and values.
Characters
• Dodge - in his seventies
• Halie - Dodge's wife; midsixties
• Tilden - Their oldest son
• Bradley - Their next-oldest
son, an amputee
• Vince - Tilden's son
• Shelly - Vince's girlfriend
• Father Dewis - a Protestant
minister
Themes
1. Disappointment and disillusionment
Mythology and the American Dream:
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with American
The character of Ansel; he is the son which Halie idolizes as an All-American hero, yet
he died under suspicious circumstances in a motel room. Halie fantasises about his
potential to be a Hero, to be an All-American star basketball player, reflecting the
American hope in the youth. Yet his death and subsequent denouncement reflects the
disappointment and disillusionment which many people experienced when they realised
the actuality of the American circumstance.
The two sons (Tilden and Bradley) both failed their parents' expectation; they were
expected to take over the farm or at least care for the parents in their old age, thus
fulfilling the American mythology of the next generation taking over from the last.
However both sons are handicapped – Tilden emotionally and Bradley physically. They
are unable to care for their parents and thus unable to carry out the American Dream.
The failure of the farm and the family as whole. In failing to make the farm successful
(Dodge has not planted anything for a number of years) Dodge has failed to fulfill his
American Dream. He thus sits and decays in the living room, manifesting his
disappointment and disillusionment through his physical immobility.
When Shelley arrives she outlines what the ideal American farm house should be, the
reality which greets her is very different. This reflects the disparity between reality and
the fantasy, embodied in the American Dream, of American life.
2. 1970s economic slowdown
• The house itself is run down, reflecting the poverty of American
farms.
• Nothing has been planted in the fields.
3. Breakdown of traditional family structures and
values
• Dodge the ineffectual patriarch is meant to be the breadwinner and
ethical guardian of the family. Instead he takes on the role of a
sardonic alcoholic who is bullied by his wife and children, and is
furthermore disempowered through their actions. His character
reflects the failed patriarchs in America who have failed to create the
family environments idealized in the American Dream.
• The act of incest and the resultant murder are indicative of a
breakdown in the ethical rigidity which characterizes the typical
American family.
• The character of Father Dewis, adulterous and unauthoritative, fails
to fulfill the role of moral guardian assigned to him by society and
thus reflects the breakdown of morality and ethics within America.
Style
Buried Child is postmodern. It incorporates many
postmodern elements such as the mixing of genres, the
deconstruction of a grand narrative, and the use of pastiche
and layering. In addition the use of humor is also an
essential postmodern element.
Mixing of genres
Buried Child is laid in the framework of realism; the play is
essentially a family drama. However, added into the realistic
framework are distinct elements of surrealism and
symbolism. The three-act structure, the immediate time
frame and the setting of the play in reality give it an overall
realistic appearance. Yet the use of symbols such as the corn
and the rain give the play a symbolist element while the
fragmented characterization and actions like the multiple
burials of Dodge are somewhat surreal or dreamlike. The
humor is also an essential element of the style, giving the
play sardonic, black and even at times slapstick elements.
All these stylistic elements combine to give the play an
overall postmodern feel.
Character Summaries
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Dodge:
Aging dysfunctional patriarch of
the family
Is an alcoholic
Is dying
Has been emasculated by his son
and the infertility of his fields
Is ashamed of Halie's conceiving
the child and is ashamed of killing
it
Sits and watches television and
drinks
Tilden:
Lost son, he has no purpose, no
direction in his life
Had sex with his mother
Is
confused/ashamed/embarrassed
about the child and its death
Is bullied by the other characters
Brings into house crops from the
field in the backyard
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Bradley:
Aggressive brother
Lost his leg in a chainsaw
accident
Is emasculated by the removal of
his leg
Halie:
The wife and mother in the family
Nags Dodge
Has sex with her son and gives
birth to her grandson/son
Abandons the family to socialise
with Dewis and revel in past
Hero-worships the images of her
lost son
Vince:
Tilden's son
Reclaims possession of the house
No one recognises him when he
arrives
III. Introduction to Paris, Texas (film)
Paris, Texas is a 1984 film directed by Wim Wenders. The
screenplay is by L.M. Kit Carson and Sam Shepard, and the
distinctive musical score was composed by Ry Cooder. The
cinematography is by Robby Müller.
The film stars character actor Harry Dean Stanton as Travis,
who has been lost for four years and is taken in by his brother
(played by Dean Stockwell). He later tries to put his life back
together and understand what happened between him, his wife Jane
(Nastassja Kinski), and his son Hunter (Hunter Carson).
The film was a co-production between companies in France
and West Germany, but was filmed in the United States.
The film is named after the
Texas town of Paris, but no
footage was shot there. Instead,
Paris is referred to as the location
of a vacant lot owned by Travis
that is seen in a photograph.
The photograph shows a
desert landscape, but in fact the
real Paris rests on the edge of the
forests of East Texas, far from any
desert.
The film won the 1984 Palme
d'Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes
Film Festival. It was screened at
the Sundance Film Festival in
1985 and again in 2006 as part of
the Sundance Collection category.