RUDOLPH, Alan 1943-

(Gerald Cormier)

PERSONAL: Born December 18, 1943, in Los Angeles, CA; son of Oscar Rudolph (a television director); married; wife's name, Joyce (a photographer).

ADDRESSES: Agent—Bart Walker, International Creative Management, 8942 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211-1934.

CAREER: Director, actor, and screenwriter. Director of films, including (and producer) Premonition, 1972; (under name Gerald Cormier; and producer) Nightmare Circus (also known as Barn of the Naked Dead and Terror Circus), 1973; Welcome to L.A., Lion's Gate, 1977; Return Engagement, The Production Co., 1978; Remember My Name, Columbia, 1978; Roadie, United Artists, 1980; Endangered Species, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, 1982; Return Engagement, 1983; Songwriter, TriStar, 1984; Choose Me, Glenwood, 1984; Trouble in Mind, Alive, 1985; Made in Heaven, Lorimar, 1987; The Moderns, Alive, 1988; Love at Large, Orion, 1990; Mortal Thoughts, Columbia, 1991; Equinox, IRS Releasing, 1993; Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (also known as Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Parker and the Roundtable), Fine Line Features, 1994; Afterglow, Sony Pictures Classics, 1997; Breakfast of Champions, Buena Vista, 1999; Trixie, Sony Pictures Classics, 2000; (and producer) Investigating Sex, Janus Films, 2001; and The Secret Lives of Dentists, 2002. Assistant director of films, including Riot, 1969; The Long Goodbye, United Artists, 1974; California Split, Columbia, 1974; and Nashville, Paramount, 1975. Appeared in films, including Hollywood Mavericks, 1990; The Player, 1992; and Who Is Henry Jaglom?, 1995. Appeared in television movies, including (as himself) The Player, 1992; and (as commentator) Would You Kindly Direct Me to Hell?! The Infamous Dorothy Parker, Arts and Entertainment, 1994.

WRITINGS:

SCREENPLAYS

Premonition, 1972.

(As Gerald Cormier; with Roman Valenti) NightmareCircus (also known as Barn of the Naked Dead and Terror Circus), 1973.

(With Tony Hudz) Alice Cooper: The Nightmare (television special; also known as The Nightmare), 1975.

(With Robert Altman) Buffalo Bill and the Indians; or,Sitting Bull's History Lesson; based on the play Indians by Arthur L. Kopit), United Artists, 1976.

Welcome to L.A., Lion's Gate, 1977.

Remember My Name, Columbia, 1978.

(With Big Boy Medlin, Michael Ventura, and Zalman King) Roadie, United Artists, 1980.

(With Judson Klinger, Richard Woods, and John Binder) Endangered Species, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer/United Artists, 1982.

Choose Me, Glenwood, 1984.

Trouble in Mind, Alive, 1985.

(With Jon Bradshaw) The Moderns, Alive, 1988.

Love at Large, Orion, 1990.

Equinox, IRS Releasing, 1993.

(With Randy Sue Coburn) Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (also known as Mrs. Parker and Mrs. Parker and the Roundtable), Fine Line Features, 1994.

Afterglow, Sony Pictures Classics, 1997.

Breakfast of Champions (based on the novel by Kurt Vonnegut), Buena Vista, 1999.

(With John Binder) Trixie, Sony Pictures Classics, 2000.

(With Michael Henry Wilson) Investigating Sex (based on a book by José Pierre), 2001.

SIDELIGHTS: Director and screenwriter Alan Rudolph has established a reputation for having a "stylish but quirky perspective," as Nancy Robinson described it in MPLS-St. Paul magazine. "Rudolph makes extremely strange films, but they don't have the wilful demonism-by-rote aberrations" of some directors, Jonathan Romney wrote in New Statesman & Society. "Rather, Rudolph uses all the cherished conventional codes of U.S. cinema—romance, noir, mainstream comedy—and scrambles them just enough that they stay the right side of dysfunction."

This scrambling can be seen in Rudolph's early films Choose Me and Trouble in Mind, both of which star Genevieve Bujold and Keith Carradine as would-be lovers who are more than the usual degree of star-crossed. In the former film, Carradine plays a man who is hospitalized as a pathological liar, even though he is telling the truth about his uncommon life, which included stints as a spy, a fighter pilot, and a professor of poetry. The man soon becomes involved in a love triangle with two roommates, one of whom (Bujold) is a call-in radio advice show host and one of whom runs the bar that the man's fiancée used to run, and neither of whom is aware that the other is seeing this man. In the latter film, Carradine's character is also seen as mad and he starts dressing more and more bizarrely as he is sucked further and further into the punk underside of his city. Trouble in Mind is "brilliantly bonkers," Peter Travers wrote in People. Rudolph's "creation is . . . hot-blooded, haunting and howlingly comic."

Rudolph is also the author of the screenplay for Trixie, a spoof of noir detective films that features Trixie Zurbo, an airheaded private security guard who speaks only in malapropisms and who dreams of being a real detective. "More than any character he's created, Trixie mirrors Rudolph's outsiderness, his quirky defiance of traditional modes of conduct," Dave McCoy commented in the Seattle Times. "Both possess skewed points of view and idiosyncratic approaches to their respective professions."

Rudolph's most widely praised film may be Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, a biography of American writer Dorothy Parker and her group of literary friends, who were accustomed to lunch together at the Algonquin Hotel in Manhattan. Parker—an accomplished poet and a notorious wit—left plenty of material for a scriptwriter to work with in her published writings, and in her friendships and love life. The script's "intelligent transposition of famous Parker one-liners, as well as passages and situations from Parker's fiction, is always amazingly clever," Cynthia Lucia wrote in Cineaste, while Brian D. Johnson, writing in Maclean's, appreciated the way Rudolph "conjures up the literary thickets of the Algonquin Round Table with exquisite detail."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers, Volume 2: Directors, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1996.

PERIODICALS

Artforum International, January, 1993, Rosetta Brooks, interview with Rudolph, pp. 56-62.

Boston Herald, January 16, 1998, James Verniere, review of Afterglow, p. 6; October 15, 1999, Paul Sherman, review of Breakfast of Champions, p. 17; July 7, 2000, Stephen Schaefer, review of Trixie, p. 19; July 9, 2000, Stephen Schaefer, interview with Rudolph, p. 51.

Christian Century, September 21, 1994, James M. Wall, review of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, p. 844.

Christian Science Monitor, June 30, 2000, review of Trixie, p. 15.

Cineaste, fall, 1995, Cynthia Lucia, review of Mrs.Parker and the Vicious Circle, pp. 50-51.

Detroit News, July 21, 2000, Tom Long, review of Trixie, p. 9.

Entertainment Weekly, December 24, 1993, Ty Burr, review of Equinox, p. 66; December 9, 1994, Owen Gleiberman, review of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, pp. 46-48; December 23, 1994, Tim Appelo, interview with Rudolph, p. 24; May 12, 1995, Caren Weiner, review of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, p. 71; July 14, 2000, Lisa Schwarzbaum, review of Trixie, p. 54.

Guardian (London, England), July 7, 2000, Danny Leigh, interview with Rudolph, p. 6.

Independent (London, England), May 29, 1998, James Mottram, review of Afterglow, p. 8; July 14, 2000, review of Breakfast of Champions, p. 10.

Interview, July, 2000, Graham Fuller, review of Trixie,
p. 30.

Los Angeles, April, 1993, Rod Lurie, review of Equinox, p. 107.

Los Angeles Times, December 26, 1997, Kevin Thomas, review of Afterglow, p. 6; September 17, 1999, Kevin Thomas, review of Breakfast of Champions, p. 6; June 28, 2000, Kevin Thomas, review of Trixie, p. F-4.

Maclean's, January 2, 1995, Brian D. Johnson, review of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, pp. 50-51.

MPLS-St. Paul, June, 1993, Nancy Robinson, review of Equinox, p. 141.

New Republic, May 9, 1988, Stanley Kauffmann, review of The Moderns, pp. 24-26.

New Statesman & Society, July 9, 1993, Jonathan Romney, review of Equinox, pp. 28-29.

People, March 24, 1986, Peter Travers, review of Trouble in Mind, p. 10; May 16, 1988, Ralph Novak, review of The Moderns, p. 18; April 2, 1990, Ralph Novak, review of Love at Large, p. 14.

San Francisco Chronicle, February 6, 1998, Ruthe Stein, review of Afterglow, p. C3; December 10, 1999, Peter Stack, review of Breakfast of Champions, p. C3.

San Francisco Examiner, July 7, 2000, review of Trixie, p. C3.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer, February 2, 1998, Paula Nechak, "Maverick Director Touts Superiority of Independents," p. D1; February 6, 1998, Paula Nechak, review of Afterglow, p. 25; July 7, 2000, Sean Axmaker, review of Trixie, p. 32.

Seattle Times, February 1, 1998, interview with Rudolph, p. M10; February 6, 1998, review of Afterglow, p. G1; December 17, 1999, John Hartl, review of Breakfast of Champions, p. J7; July 7, 2000, Dave McCoy, review of Trixie, p. I6.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), January 30, 1998, Jeff Strickler, review of Afterglow, p. 10E; June 7, 1998, Jeff Strickler and Bill Ward, review of Afterglow, p. 18F.

Time, February 4, 1985, Richard Schickel, review of Choose Me, p. 83; April 14, 1986, Richard Schickel, review of Trouble in Mind, p. 105; December 12, 1994, Richard Schickel, review of Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle, p. 90; July 3, 2000, Richard Corliss, review of Trixie, p. 63.

Variety, March 6, 2000, Emanuel Levy, review of Trixie, p. 41; June 25, 2001, Ken Eisner, review of Investigating Sex, p. 22.

ONLINE

Internet Movie Database,http://www.imdb.com/ (May 25, 2003), "Alan Rudolph."*