Todd Field

For the airport known by this name, see Long Prairie Municipal Airport.

Todd Field
Born	William Todd Field (1964-02-24) February 24, 1964 Pomona, California, U.S.
Occupation(s)	Actor Film director Producer Screenwriter
Years active	1985–present
Spouse	Serena Rathbun (1986 – )
Children	4
Awards	NBR Award for Best Director

William Todd Field, known professionally as Todd Field (born February 24, 1964) is a U.S. actor and writer/director. He has received three Academy Award nominations from the films In the Bedroom and Little Children which he both wrote and directed.

Early life

Field was born in Pomona, California, where his family ran a poultry farm. 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. A budding jazz musician, at the age of sixteen years 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-nominee, Chris Botti. 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. Once there, he began performing with the Ark Theatre Company as both an actor and musician. Field received his Master of Fine Arts from the AFI Conservatory.

Career

One of the film industry's more multifaceted members, having worked in varying capacities as an actor, director, producer, composer, and screenwriter, Field began making motion pictures in 1985 when he was cast by Woody Allen in Radio Days. He went on to work with some of America's greatest film makers including Stanley Kubrick, Victor Nuñez, and Carl Franklin. It was Franklin and Nunez (both AFI alumnists) who encouraged Field to enroll as a Directing Fellow at the AFI, which he did in the fall of 1992. Since that time he has received the Franklin J. Schaffner Fellow Award from the AFI, the Satyajit Ray Award from the British Film Institute, a Jury Prize from the Sundance Film Festival, and his short films have been exhibited at various venues overseas and domestically at the Museum of Modern Art. To date, unadjusted box office receipts for the films in which Field has participated exceed a billion dollars worldwide.

In the Bedroom

Main article: In the Bedroom

Field became one of Hollywood's hottest new writer/directors with the release of In the Bedroom, a film based on the short story Killings by author Andre Dubus. (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 nomination), Supporting Actress (Marisa Tomei, her second nomination), and Best Screenplay (Adapted). The film was shot in Rockland, Maine, a New England town in which Field resides—the house where he, his wife (Serena Rathbun), and their four children live was even used as the setting for one sequence. Rathbun and Sissy Spacek did a portion of the set designing and Field handled the camera himself on many of the shots. The result, critics said, was stunning: 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." Anthony Quinn of The Independent also praised the director: "Field has pulled off something here I thought no American filmmaker would ever manage again: he makes violence feel genuinely shocking."

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 went on to win Best Picture of the Year by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and the New York Film Critics Circle awarded Best First Film to Field. In the Bedroom received six AFI nominations 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 both as Screenwriter and Producer. The American Film Institute honored Field with the Franklin Schaffner Alumni Medal. With the exception of the AFI Life Achievement Award, the Schaffner Award is the highest honor an individual can achieve.

Little Children

Main article: Little Children (film)

Tom Perrotta and Field working on the script for Little Children. (2005)

Field followed In the Bedroom with Little Children, which was nominated for three Academy Awards including two for his 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 fifteen 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, personally. The film, based on the novel of the same name by Tom Perrotta, premiered at the 2006 New York Film Festival. In his end-of-year roundup "Best of 2006", journalist 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."

Future work

According to the Los Angeles Times, Field is currently in the process of adapting a film version of Cormac McCarthy's novel Blood Meridian. During the process, Field took over the directing position of Ridley Scott, who was originally scheduled to direct. Scott himself stated that the film would be a tricky film and should be left as a novel. Although director James Franco had taken interest in adapting the novel, there has been no recent information regarding the project.

According to the Los Angeles Times, Field is currently in the process of preparing his next film, an adaptation of the Boston Teran novel The Creed of Violence with Leonardo DiCaprio in the lead role. The film is slated to be released in 2012.

Filmography

Writer/Director/Producer

Feature films

Year	Film	Oscars		BAFTA		Golden Globe
		Nominations	Wins	Nominations	Wins	Nominations	Wins
2001	In the Bedroom	5	0	2	0	3	1
2006	Little Children	3	0	1	0	3	0

Short films

Year	Film	Duties	Notes and Awards
1992	The Dog	Co-Director with Alex Vlacos	Short experimental film
	Too Romantic	Writer/Director	AFI First Year Cycle Project
1993	When I Was a Boy	Co-Director with Alex Vlacos & Matthew Modine	Premiered at Sundance Film Festival in front of Victor Nuñez's Grand Jury Prize winning Ruby in Paradise in which Field also starred. Exhibited at MoMA as part of the New Directors/New Films Series
	The Tree	Writer/Director	AFI First Year Cycle Project
	Delivering	Writer/Director	AFI First Year Cycle Project
1995	Nonnie & Alex	Director	AFI Second Year Thesis Project Winner Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award, Winner College Emmy Best Film Award, Winner Aspen Short Fest Grand Prize

"Field has a deceptive facade of all-American clean-cut looks that allows him to suggest a wide range of emotions and thoughts behind such a regular-guy appearance; in "Ruby in Paradise" he expressed such uncommon decency and intelligence you had to wonder how Ashley Judd's hardscrabble Ruby could ever have considered letting him get away. In "Eyes Wide Shut" he's the likable med school dropout turned saloon piano player, and here he's an increasingly raging sociopath. In all these roles Field has the precious gift of being able to surprise you and to command your attention on screen."

Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times review of Broken Vessels.

Actor

Year	Film	Role	Director
1987	Radio Days	Crooner	Woody Allen
	The Allnighter	Bellhop	Tamar Hoffs
	Student Exchange	Neil Barton/Adriano Fabrizzi	Molly Miller
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
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 Wazniack	Scott Ziehl
	Eyes Wide Shut	Nick Nightingale	Stanley Kubrick
	The Haunting	Todd Hackett	Jan de Bont
1999-2001	Once and Again	David Cassilli
2002, 2003	Aqua Teen Hunger Force	Ol' Drippy	Matt Maiellaro and Dave Willis

Awards and other distinctions

References

External links

Web

• Todd Field at IMDb
• Todd Field at the TCM Movie Database
• Todd Field at AllMovie

Publications

• Delicately Dissecting the Quiet Life – 18 November 2001, The New York Times
• 'In the Bedroom' Without Frills – 9 August 2002, The New York Times
• The Best DVD's of 2002 – 3 January 2003, The New York Times
• Acting all grown up in a land of `Children’ – 21 January 2007, Los Angeles Times
• Field on Bergman – 1 August 2007, Los Angeles Times

Academic Papers

• International Psychoanalysis, I Know Not Seems by Harvey Roy Greenberg 30 April 2009

Audio

• Chicago Public Radio's Film Spotting Interview (mp3) 28 October 2006
• Elvis Mitchell's The Treatment KCRW 11 October 2006
• Renee Montagne NPR Morning Edition - DVD Commentaries, 26 February 2003
• Scott Horsley NPR Morning Edition - DVD Sales Challenge Video-Rental Business, 25 February 2003
• Warren Olney Interview KCRW 15 March 2002

Video

• Charlie Rose: A conversation with director Todd Field, 3 January 2007