Allison Anders

American independent film director

Allison Anders (born November 16, 1954) is an American independent film director whose films include Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca and Grace of My Heart. Anders has collaborated with fellow UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television graduate Kurt Voss and has also worked as a television director. Anders' films have been shown at the Cannes International Film Festival and at the Sundance Film Festival. She has been awarded a MacArthur Genius Grant as well as a Peabody Award.

Anders was born in Ashland, Kentucky, to mother Alberta "Rachel" Anders (née Steed) and father Robert "Bob" Anders. She has two sisters, one of whom, Luanna Anders, starred in her first film, Border Radio. Her paternal side has ancestry that traces back to the Southern Hatfield family and, more distantly, to George Washington's spy, Caleb Brewster, while her maternal side includes another Washington spy, Abraham Woodhull. After her mother moved her and her sisters to Los Angeles, Anders suffered a mental breakdown at the age of 15 and was hospitalized. When she came out of the psychiatric ward, she was placed into foster care but ran away. She hitchhiked across the country, at one point ending up in jail. After turning 17, Anders dropped out of her Los Angeles high school and moved back to Kentucky. She later moved to London with the man who fathered her first child. In her early 20s, Anders moved back to Los Angeles with her daughter and attended junior college, Los Angeles Valley College, while working odd jobs. Due to constant relocation as a child, Anders had not had a steady education. She said that growing up, most of her time was spent watching TV and going to movie theaters. Inspired by the films of Wim Wenders and other filmmakers, Anders applied to UCLA Film School. During her time at UCLA, Anders produced her first sound film. Wenders attended the screening. In 1986, Anders got her B. A. in Motion Picture Television from the University of California Los Angeles. She said that after writing the script she shared it with her father, and was able to have a relationship with him again. The film told the story of three musicians who stole money owed to them from a job and then fled to Mexico. The story is set amid the Los Angeles punk rock scene of the 1980s. Anders' second feature, the 1992 film Gas Food Lodging, earned her a New York Film Critics Circle Award and National Society of Film Critics honors for Best New Director; and nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Director. Actress Fairuza Balk won a Spirit Award for her role in the film. The film also won the Deauville Film Festival Critics Award and was also nominated for the Golden Bear at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival. Gas Food Lodging is a coming of age story about a truck stop waitress and her two daughters, three vibrant, restless women in an isolated Western town. The screenplay was loosely adapted by Anders from the novel Don't Look and It Won't Hurt by Richard Peck. Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach had their first collaboration composing a song for the film, "God Give Me Strength," and were nominated for a Grammy Award. In the late 1980s, Anders had become friends with members of pop group Duran Duran, and frequently inserted small references to the band in her films (character names, posters on walls, and so on). In 1999, after bassist John Taylor had left Duran Duran and was beginning to launch an acting career, she and Voss co wrote and co directed Sugar Town, about the Los Angeles film and music industry. The film starred several musical friends of Anders', including Taylor, X singer John Doe, Spandau Ballet bassist Martin Kemp, and singer/actor Michael Des Barres. Sugar Town followed the interconnected lives of a handful of power brokers, wanna bes and has beens. Gwen (played by Jade Gordon), a self centered would be rock star, is working as an assistant to production designer Liz (Ally Sheedy); when Gwen discovers Liz has a date with a music producer (Larry Klein), any loyalty she has to her boss disappears. The film received two Independent Spirit Award nominations, for Best Film and Best Newcomer (Jade Gordon). The film also won Anders and Voss the Fantasporto award for Best Screenplay. Her 2001 autobiographical film, Things Behind the Sun, deals with the long term aftermath of rape. It was released on the Showtime cable TV network. The film earned an Emmy nomination for actor Don Cheadle as Best Supporting Actor; and three Independent Spirit Award nominations: Cheadle for Best Supporting Actor, Kim Dickens for Best Actress, and Best Film. Anders and co writer Kurt Voss also received a nomination for an Edgar Award. The film was awarded the SHINE Award as well as the Peabody Award. Things Behind the Sun was inspired by an experience Anders had in 1967 when she was raped by a group of boys. Anders actually shot some of the film in the same location in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where the gang rape occurred. The film was funded by a Kickstarter campaign. In 2013, Anders released the Lifetime produced TV movie Ring of Fire, a June Carter Cash biopic that featured the musician Jewel. The film was inspired by John Carter Cash's book, Anchored in Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash.

Anders counts filmmaker Wim Wenders as a mentor. She started as a fan, sending him letters and music, and Wenders eventually responded. Anders said that she created a faux grant that she "won" so that she and at least one other friend could study under Wenders on location for his film Paris, Texas. They have been friends for over 30 years.

Anders has three children. Her two daughters are Tiffany Anders, a musician and music supervisor, and Devon Anders. Her son, Ruben Goodbear Anders, was fostered (and eventually adopted) by the Anders family for three years after the death of his mother, Nica Rogers, who appeared in Mi Vida Loca. Tiffany was named after the film Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Anders, Allison. "On Claudia Weill's film 'Girlfriends.'" Sight & Sound. Vol. 25 (10). London: British Film Institute, October 2015.

Anders, Allison, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino. "Strange Brew." Four Rooms: Four Friends Telling Four Stories Making One Film. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Roman, Shari. "Allison Anders." Digital Babylon: Hollywood, Indiewood & Dogme 95. Hollywood: Lone Eagle, 2001. pp. 142–144. White Stanley, Debra. 2003. ""God Give Me Strength": The Melodramatic Sound Tracks of Director Allison Anders". Velvet Light Trap. 51, no. 1: pp. 54–66. Murphy, J. J. "Shifting Goals and Plotlines in Gas Food Lodging." Me and You and Memento and Fargo How Independent Screenplays Work. New York: Continuum, 2007. Campbell, Neil. "The Idioms of Living: Donna Deitch and Allison Anders." Post Westerns Cinema, Region, West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. pp. 272–304. Silverstein, Melissa. "On 'Gas Food Lodging.'" Sight & Sound. Vol. 25 (10). London: British Film Institute, October 2015.

Mori, Mark, and Alec Baldwin. "Allison Anders; David O Russell." Raw Footage. Pt. 6. Santa Monica, CA: Direct Cinema Ltd, 2008. Video. Original air date: 1996. Calabrese, Peter, Tamara Gould, Jack Walsh, Xandra Castleton, Alexis Lezin, Danny L. McGuire, Gregory Nava, Allison Anders, and Michael Fox. Independent View. San Francisco, CA: KQED, 2001. Video. DiPersio, Vince, Adam Bardach, Alan Smithee, Tony Kahn, William Hooke, Michael H. Amundson, Steve Audette, and Michael Bloecher. "The Monster That Ate Hollywood." Frontline. PBS. Season 19, Episode 18. 2015. Video. Original air date: November 22, 2001. Maslin, Janet, John Waters, Allison Anders, Hal Hartley, David O. Russell. Four Independents That Turned the Tide. 2006. Video. Videotaped at the BAMcafe, Brooklyn, NY, as part of the Sundance Institute at BAM season, May 21, 2006.