Todd Field
Todd Field | |
---|---|
![]() Field in Deauville Film Festival 2006 | |
Born | William Todd Field February 24, 1964 Pomona, California, U.S. |
Education | |
Occupations | |
Years active | 1985–present |
Spouse |
Serena Rathbun (m. 1986) |
Children | 4 |
Awards | National Board of Review Award for Best Director (2001) National Board of Review Award for Best Adapted Screenplay (2001) |
William Todd Field (born February 24, 1964) is an American actor and filmmaker. He is known for directing three feature films: In the Bedroom (2001), Little Children (2006), and Tár (2022). He has received three Academy Award nominations.[1]
Early life
Field was born in Pomona, California, where his family ran a poultry farm.[2] When Field turned two, his family moved to Portland, Oregon, where his father went to work as a salesman, and his mother became a school librarian. At an early age, he became interested in performing sleight-of-hand and later music.[3]
As a child in Portland, Field was a batboy for the Portland Mavericks, a single A independent minor league baseball team owned by Hollywood actor Bing Russell. Kurt Russell, Bing's son and later an actor in his own right, also played for the Portland Mavericks during this time.[4] Field and Maverick pitching coach Rob Nelson created the first batch of Big League Chew in the Field family kitchen. In 1980, Nelson and former New York Yankees all-star Jim Bouton sold the idea to the Wrigley Company. Since that time over 800 million pouches have been sold worldwide.[5][6][7]
Education
A budding jazz musician, at the age of sixteen Field became a member of the Big Band at Mount Hood Community College in Gresham, Oregon. Headed by Larry McVey, the band had become a proving-ground and regular stop for Stan Kenton and Mel Tormé when they were looking for new players. It was here Field played trombone along with his friend, trumpeter and future Grammy Award Winner Chris Botti. During this same time he also worked as a non-union projectionist at a second-run movie theater. Field graduated with his class from Centennial High School on Portland's east side and briefly attended Southern Oregon State College (now Southern Oregon University) in Ashland on a music scholarship, but left after his freshman year favoring a move to New York to study acting with Robert X. Modica at his renowned Carnegie Hall Studio.[8] Soon after, Field began performing with the Ark Theatre Company as both an actor and musician.[9] He received his Master of Fine Arts from the AFI Conservatory.
Career
Field has worked in varying capacities as an actor, director, producer, composer, and screenwriter,[10] and began making motion pictures after Woody Allen cast him in Radio Days (1987). He went on to work with some of America's greatest filmmakers, including Stanley Kubrick, Victor Nuñez, and Carl Franklin. Franklin and Nuñez, both AFI alumni, encouraged Field to enroll as a Directing Fellow at the AFI, which he did in 1992. Since then, he has received the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Award from the AFI, the Satyajit Ray Award from the British Film Institute, and a Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival. His short films have been exhibited at various venues overseas and domestically at the Museum of Modern Art.
In the Bedroom
Field became one of Hollywood's hottest new writer/directors with the release of In the Bedroom, a film based on Andre Dubus's short story "Killings". (Kubrick and Dubus were among Field's mentors; both died right before the production of In the Bedroom.) In the Bedroom was nominated for five Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Tom Wilkinson, his first nomination), Best Actress (Sissy Spacek, her sixth), Supporting Actress (Marisa Tomei, her second), and Best Adapted Screenplay. The film was shot in Rockland, Maine, a New England town where Field resides. The house where he, his wife (Serena Rathbun), and their four children live was even used as the setting for one sequence.[11] Rathbun and Spacek did some of the set design and Field handled the camera himself on many of the shots.
In the Bedroom made its debut at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival. Dennis Lim wrote in the Village Voice:
Todd Field’s debut feature, In the Bedroom, alighted on the snowy peaks of Sundance last January as if from another universe. Here was a small miracle of patience and composure, so starkly removed from everything the festival had come to represent that it seemed almost to herald the overdue coming-of-age of American independent film.[12]
Upon the film's release David Ansen of Newsweek wrote:
Todd Field exhibits a mastery of his craft many filmmakers never acquire in a lifetime. With one film he’s guaranteed his future as a director. He has the magnificent obsession of the natural-born filmmaker[13][14]
Anthony Quinn of The Independent wrote, "Field has pulled off something here I thought no American filmmaker would ever manage again: he makes violence feel genuinely shocking."[15]
For his work on In the Bedroom, Field was named Director of the Year by the National Board of Review, and his script was awarded Best Original Screenplay. The film was named Best Picture of the Year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the New York Film Critics Circle awarded Field Best First Film. In the Bedroom received six American Film Institute Awards, including Best Picture, Director, and Screenplay, three Golden Globe nominations, and five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Supporting Actress, and two individually for Field as screenwriter and producer. The American Film Institute honored Field with the Franklin Schaffner Alumni Medal.
The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine lists In the Bedroom alongside Citizen Kane, Sunset Boulevard, Dr. Strangelove, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Conversation, Nashville, Taxi Driver, The Elephant Man, Pulp Fiction, There Will Be Blood, and Roma as "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."[16]
Little Children
Field followed In the Bedroom with Little Children, which was nominated for three Academy Awards, including two for the actors: Kate Winslet (her fifth nomination, and with it a record for the youngest actor to be nominated for five Academy Awards) and Jackie Earle Haley (his first nomination and first leading role in over 15 years). After having written, directed and produced just two feature films, Field had garnered five Academy Award nominations for his actors and three for himself. The film, based on Tom Perrotta's novel of the same name, premiered at the 2006 New York Film Festival. In his roundup "Best of 2006", A.O. Scott of The New York Times wrote:
The first time you see Todd Field's adaptation of Tom Perrotta's novel, you may remark on the director's impressive control over the unruly source material and the emotional agility of the cast, Kate Winslet in particular. The second time, the film's lurid, crazy side is more apparent, and the intensity of the supporting performances—Noah Emmerich, Jackie Earle Haley, Phyllis Somerville—creep into the foreground. This movie, Mr. Field's second feature...is a complicated blend of gothic, melodrama and sexual comedy, unerringly attuned to the varieties of human failure.[17]
International Cinephile Society's Matt Mazur called the film "subversive" and designed to disorient the viewer with "seemingly non-connected imagery to suggest a tone and a mood of disquiet." Mazur compared Field's technique with that of Sergei Eisenstein, D. W. Griffith, Georges Méliès, and Edwin S. Porter.[18]
Many members of Field's creative team on In the Bedroom returned to work with him on the film, including Serena Rathbun. In a 2006 interview with The Hollywood Reporter's Anne Thompson, Field said he quit acting and began making his own films after Rathbun told him, "Do what you want to do. Don't get distracted."[19] Later that year, Field spoke extensively about the importance of Rathbun as his creative partner, describing a conversation he had with her where she gave him the most pivotal scene: "for me, the film is unthinkable without it."[20]
2006–2021: Unrealized projects
After Little Children, Field went fifteen years without directing anything, which various film journalists lamented.[21] In his 2015 Ioncinema piece "Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action", Nicholas Bell wrote, "It is definitely time for Field to throw one down the middle. In the meantime, we'll just have to watch In the Bedroom for the umpteenth time."[22]
During that time, Field was attached to a number of film projects, including a film adaptation of the 2009 Boston Teran novel The Creed of Violence, set during the Mexican Revolution, which at different times was set to star Leonardo DiCaprio,[23] Christian Bale[24] and Daniel Craig;[25] a coming-of-age Minor League Baseball story set in the 1970s Northwest;[26][27] an adaptation of the 1985 Cormac McCarthy novel Blood Meridian;[28][29] a political thriller called As It Happens, co-written by Joan Didion;[30] an adaptation of Jess Walter's novel Beautiful Ruins;[31] and a film about U.S. soldier Bowe Bergdahl.[32]
In 2016, Field worked on a planned television adaptation of the 2015 Jonathan Franzen novel Purity, which was to be a 20-hour limited series for Showtime.[33] The series was to be co-written by Field, Franzen and playwright David Hare. It would have starred Daniel Craig as Andreas Wolf and be executive produced by Field, Franzen, Craig, Hare and Scott Rudin.[34] In 2016 Franzen said on The Diane Rehm Show that he was learning the art of adaptation from Field, whom he considered a "master" of the form.[35] But in a February 2018 interview with The Times, Hare said that, given the budget for the adaptation ($170 million), he doubted it would ever be made. "It was one of the richest and most interesting six weeks of my life, sitting in a room with Todd Field, Jonathan Franzen and Daniel Craig bashing out the story. They're extremely interesting people", Hare added.[36]
Speaking publicly for the first time in 16 years, Field told the New York Times in 2022, "I set my sights in a very particular way on certain material that was probably very tough to get made."[37]
Tár
Field's latest film project is Tár, which he wrote and directed, and which stars Cate Blanchett as the title character, fictional classical music conductor and composer Lydia Tár. Production began in August 2021. The film is set in Berlin.[38] It premiered in September 2022 at the Venice International Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Lion and Queer Lion, with Cate Blanchett winning the Volpi Cup for Best Actress.[39] Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 91 out of 100 based on 43 critics, indicating a Metascore "Must-See" film and "Universal Acclaim" from critics.[40]
Filmography
Actor
Film | ||||
---|---|---|---|---|
Year | Title | Role | Director | Ref. |
1986 | He Shoots, He Scores | Anders Johansson | Jean-Claude Lord | |
1987 | Radio Days | Crooner | Woody Allen | |
The Allnighter | Bellhop | Tamar Simon Hoffs | ||
1988 | Eye of the Eagle 2: Inside the Enemy | Private Anthony Glenn | Carl Franklin | |
Back to Back | Todd Brand | John Kincaide | ||
The End of Innocence | Richard | Dyan Cannon | ||
1989 | Fat Man and Little Boy | Robert Rathbun Wilson | Roland Joffe | |
Gross Anatomy | David Schreiner | Thom Eberhardt | ||
1990 | Full Fathom Five | Johnson | Carl Franklin | |
1991 | Queens Logic | Cecil | Steve Rash | |
1993 | Ruby in Paradise | Mike McCaslin | Victor Nuñez | |
357 Marina del Rey | Rake Rowe | Penelope Spheeris | ||
1994 | Sleep with Me | Duane | Rory Kelly | |
1996 | Twister | Tim 'Beltzer' Lewis | Jan de Bont | |
Walking and Talking | Frank | Nicole Holofcener | ||
1999 | Broken Vessels | Jimmy Warzniack | Scott Ziehl | |
Eyes Wide Shut | Nick Nightingale | Stanley Kubrick | ||
The Haunting | Todd Hackett | Jan de Bont | ||
2000 | Stranger than Fiction | Austin Walker / Donovan Miller |
Eric Bross | [41] |
2001 | New Port South | Walsh | Kyle Cooper | |
Net Worth | Thad Davis | Kenny Griswold | ||
Television | ||||
Year | Title | Role | Notes | Ref. |
1986 | Lance et compte | Anders Johansson | 5 episodes | |
1987 | Gimme a Break! | Eric | 2 episodes | |
1987 | Hard Knocks | Chad | Episode: "Captain Justice" | |
1987 | Brothers | Walter | Episode: "Penny and the Hard Hat" | |
1987 | Student Exchange | Neil Barton / Adriano Fabrizzi |
Television movie | |
1987 | Take Five | Kevin Davis | 6 episodes | |
1988 | Roseanne | Charles | Episode: "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" | |
1990 | Tales from the Crypt | Eugene | Episode: "Judy, You're Not Yourself Today" | |
1991 | Lookwell | Jason | Television movie | |
1993 | Danger Theatre | Ray Monroe | Episode: "Searcher in the Mist/Sex, Lies & Decaf" | |
1993 | Bakersfield P.D. | Lewis | Episode: "The Poker Game" | |
1995 | Chicago Hope | Josh Taubler | Episode: "Heartbreak" | |
1998 | Cupid | Sam | Episode: "Pick-Up Schticks" | |
1999–2001 | Once and Again | David Cassilli | 28 episodes | |
2002–03 | Aqua Teen Hunger Force | Ol' Drippy | Voice; 2 episodes |
Filmmaker
Year | Title | Director | Writer | Producer | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Feature films | |||||
2001 | In the Bedroom | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
2006 | Little Children | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
2022 | Tár | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
Short films | |||||
1992 | Too Romantic | Yes | Yes | No | AFI First Year Cycle Project |
1993 | When I Was a Boy | Yes | No | No | Co-director with Alex Vlacos & Matthew Modine |
The Dog | Yes | No | No | Co-director with Alex Vlacos | |
The Tree | Yes | Yes | No | AFI First Year Cycle Project | |
Delivering | Yes | Yes | No | AFI First Year Cycle Project | |
1995 | Nonnie & Alex | Yes | No | No | AFI Second Year Thesis Project |
Accolades
References
- ^ "'In the Bedroom,' 'Little Children' Director Todd Field Sets First Film in 15 Years, Starring Cate Blanchett". IndieWire. April 12, 2021. Retrieved September 5, 2022.
- ^ "Todd Field Biography -Movies@Piczo".
- ^ "Todd Field Biography – Yahoo! Movies".
- ^ Calcaterra, Craig (January 27, 2014). ""The Battered Bastards of Baseball" impresses Sundance". NBC Sports. Retrieved July 14, 2014.
- ^ "Big League Chew: An Oral History".
- ^ "Sundance 2014: Todd Field looks back on the 'Battered Bastards of Baseball'". Entertainment Weekly.
- ^ Notarianni, John (April 14, 2019). "The Birth Of A Bubblegum Empire: Big League Chew's Unlikely Portland Origin". OPB. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
- ^ "Carnegie Artist Studios : About the Artists".
- ^ Levy, Shawn. You couldn't write a better script. The Oregonian, March 23, 2002.
- ^ "Todd Field Biography". The New York Times. December 3, 2009.
- ^ Gale, Thomas (December 16, 2007). "Todd Field Biography". Contemporary Authors.
- ^ Lim, Dennis (November 20, 2001). "Scenes From a Marriage". Village Voice. Retrieved July 24, 2022.
- ^ Ansen, David (December 3, 2001). "Their House Torn Asunder". Newsweek.
- ^ Ansen, David. (January 21, 2002). "Break On Through To The Oscar Side". Newsweek.
- ^ Quinn, Anthony (January 25, 2002). "The Big Picture: In the Bedroom". The Independent.
- ^ Phipps, Keith. "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars". New York Magazine. Retrieved February 24, 2020.
- ^ Scott, A.O. (December 24, 2006). "Best of 2006: Here's to the Ambitious and the Altmans". The New York Times.
- ^ Mazur, Matt (June 10, 2010). "Todd Field's Little Children in Relation to the History of Cinema". International Cinephile Society. Retrieved July 1, 2010.
- ^ Thompson, Anne (September 15, 2006). "Field a father figure to his 'Little Children'". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved September 15, 2006.
- ^ "Charlie Rose – John Burns & Hilary Swank / Todd Field". YouTube. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved January 3, 2007.
- ^ Jagernauth, Kevin (March 19, 2010). "Todd Field to direct Hubris next". The Playlist. Retrieved March 19, 2010.
- ^ Bell, Nicholas (October 26, 2015). "Top 10 American Indie Filmmakers Missing in Action". Ioncinema. Retrieved October 25, 2015.
- ^ Zeitchik, Steven (July 29, 2011). "A Western With Leonardo DiCaprio?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 5, 2011.
- ^ Sneider, Jeff (August 3, 2012). "Christian Bale in talks for 'Creed of Violence'". Variety.
- ^ Sneider, Jeff (February 20, 2019). "Exclusive: Daniel Craig to Star in Todd Field's 'The Creed of Violence'". Collider.
- ^ Labrecque, Jeff (January 22, 2014). "Sundance 2014: Todd Field looks back on the 'Battered Bastards of Baseball'". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^ Siegel, Tatiana; Kit, Borys (January 29, 2014). "Sundance Deal Wrap". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved March 14, 2014.
- ^ Medina, Jeremy (August 28, 2008). "Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian film changes directors". Los Angeles Times.
- ^ "Todd Field still working hard on Blood Meridian". January 14, 2010. Retrieved April 3, 2010.
- ^ Sarah Bennett (August 11, 2012). "Joan Didion and Todd Field Are Co-writing a Screenplay". New York Magazine. Archived from the original on December 22, 2016. Retrieved December 16, 2016.
- ^ Kroll, Justin (November 19, 2013). "Imogen Poots to Star in Todd Field's 'Beautiful Ruins' (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety. Retrieved November 30, 2015.
- ^ Duke, Alan (June 19, 2014). "Second Bowe Bergdahl film project revealed: 'America's Last Prisoner of War'". CNN.
- ^ Busis, Hillary (June 1, 2016). "Showtime Bets Big on Daniel Craig-Starring Jonathan Franzen Adaptation Purity". Vanity Fair. Retrieved June 1, 2016.
- ^ Wagmeister, Elizabeth (2016). "Showtime Lands Daniel Craig, Scott Rudin Limited Series 'Purity'". Daily Variety.
- ^ Rehm, Diane (August 2, 2016). "A Conversation With Author Jonathan Franzen". The Diane Rehm Show. Retrieved August 2, 2016.
- ^ Maxwell, Dominic (2018). "David Hare: 'I am sick to death of hearing about the need for strong women as protagonists'". The Times.
- ^ Buchanan, Kyle (August 30, 2022). "With 'Tár,' Todd Field Returns to Directing. Where Has He Been?". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
- ^ Fleming, Mike Jr. (April 12, 2021). "Cate Blanchett, Todd Field Team On 'TAR' For Focus Features". Deadline. Retrieved April 27, 2021.
- ^ Tartaglione, Nancy (September 10, 2022). "Venice Film Festival Winners: Golden Lion Goes To 'All The Beauty And The Bloodshed'; Luca Guadagnino Best Director, Martin McDonagh Best Screenplay; Cate Blanchett, Colin Farrell Take Acting Prizes". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved September 10, 2022.
- ^ "TÁR (2022) Reviews". Retrieved October 18, 2022.
- ^ "Todd Field". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
- ^ "74th Academy Awards". Oscars.org. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
- ^ "79th Academy Awards". Oscars.org. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
- ^ "AFI AWARDS 2001". American Film Institute. Archived from the original on December 1, 2017. Retrieved April 19, 2016.
- ^ "'Banquet,' 'Ruby' Lead '93 Spirit Nominees". Los Angeles Times. January 14, 1994. Retrieved August 15, 2012.
- ^ "Spirit Awards Tilt Toward True Independence". Los Angeles Times. January 9, 2002. Retrieved August 19, 2012.
- ^ "64th Golden Globe Award Winners". Golden Globe Awards. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
- ^ "2006 Winners and nominees". Gotham Independent Film Awards. Archived from the original on February 19, 2017. Retrieved November 9, 2017.
- ^ "National Board of Review Winners 2001". NBR Awards. Archived from the original on September 27, 2011. Retrieved September 4, 2022.
- ^ "Critics Group Names 'Mulholland' Best Film". The New York Times. December 14, 2001. Retrieved December 25, 2017.
External links
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/4/4a/Commons-logo.svg/30px-Commons-logo.svg.png)
- Todd Field at IMDb
- Todd Field at the TCM Movie Database
- Todd Field at AllMovie
- 1964 births
- American male screenwriters
- Film producers from California
- American male film actors
- AFI Conservatory alumni
- Living people
- People from Pomona, California
- Male actors from Portland, Oregon
- People from Rockland, Maine
- Southern Oregon University alumni
- Film directors from California
- Film directors from Oregon
- Mt. Hood Community College alumni
- Screenwriters from Oregon
- Film directors from Maine
- Screenwriters from California
- Screenwriters from Maine
- Film producers from Oregon