Allison Anders facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Allison Anders
Allison Anders at the 61st Annual Peabody Awards (2002)
Born	Mary Allison Anders (1954-11-16) November 16, 1954 (age 70) Ashland, Kentucky, U.S.
Alma mater	UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television
Occupation	Director, screenwriter
Years active	1987–present
Known for	Gas Food Lodging Mi Vida Loca Grace of My Heart
Children	3

Allison Anders (born November 16, 1954) is an American independent film director and writer. She is known for movies like Gas Food Lodging, Mi Vida Loca, and Grace of My Heart. Allison Anders has worked with Kurt Voss, who also studied at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. She has also directed many TV shows.

Her films have been shown at big events like the Cannes International Film Festival and the Sundance Film Festival. She has won important awards, including a MacArthur Genius Grant and a Peabody Award.

Early Life and Education

Allison Anders was born in Ashland, Kentucky. Her mother was Alberta "Rachel" Anders, and her father was Robert "Bob" Anders. She has four sisters. One of her sisters, Luanna Anders, acted in Allison's first movie, Border Radio.

When Allison was young, her father left the family. Her parents divorced when she was five. Later, her mother moved Allison and her sisters to Los Angeles. When Allison was 15, she had a difficult time and needed to stay in a hospital for a while. After leaving the hospital, she was placed in foster care, but she ran away. She traveled across the country, and at one point, she was even in jail.

After turning 17, Allison left high school in Los Angeles and moved back to Kentucky. She later moved to London with the father of her first child.

Discovering a Passion for Film

In her early 20s, Allison moved back to Los Angeles with her daughter. She went to junior college, Los Angeles Valley College, and worked different jobs. Because her family moved a lot when she was a child, Allison did not have a steady education. She said that growing up, she spent most of her time watching TV and going to movie theaters.

Inspired by films from directors like Wim Wenders, Allison applied to UCLA Film School. While at UCLA, she made her first sound film. Wim Wenders himself attended the screening! Allison has called Wenders' 1974 film Alice in the Cities "one of my very favorite films." She earned her degree in Motion Picture-Television from the University of California Los Angeles in 1986.

Film Career

Early Success and Independent Films

In 1986, Allison Anders won a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for a script she wrote called Lost Highway. This script was about her father. She shared it with him, and it helped them build a relationship again.

Her first movie, Border Radio, was full of punk music. She co-wrote and co-directed it with Kurt Voss and Dean Lent while they were at UCLA. The film was nominated for Best Feature of 1988 by the Independent Feature Project. It told the story of three musicians who stole money they were owed and then ran away to Mexico. The story takes place in the Los Angeles punk-rock scene of the 1980s.

The filmmakers had a very small budget. They used local places for filming and cast people they knew. Allison's sister, Luanna Anders, played a main role, and her daughter, Devon Anders, played Luanna's daughter. In 2007, Border Radio was released on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection. It was praised as a groundbreaking independent film.

Acclaimed Works

Allison Anders' second movie, Gas Food Lodging (1992), brought her a lot of recognition. She won awards for Best New Director from the New York Film Critics Circle Award and National Society of Film Critics. She was also nominated for awards from the Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Director. The actress Fairuza Balk won an Independent Spirit Award for her role in the film. The movie also won an award at the Deauville Film Festival.

Gas Food Lodging is a story about growing up. It follows a truck stop waitress and her two daughters, who are lively and restless women in a quiet Western town. Allison loosely based the script on the book Don't Look and It Won't Hurt by Richard Peck.

Her next film, Mi Vida Loca (which means My Crazy Life), was about girl gangs in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. Allison lived in Echo Park herself. The film first showed at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993 and was widely released in 1994. It showed a female view of growing up in the inner city.

Music and Film

Allison Anders' 1996 film, Grace of My Heart, was a musical drama. Martin Scorsese was one of the executive producers. The movie was about a songwriter (played by Illeana Douglas) and her career over many years. It showed her working in music offices in the early 1960s, similar to the famous Brill Building. The film has parts that are like the career of singer-songwriter Carole King, but it's not a true biography. The movie's soundtrack has new songs written in different styles from that time. Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach worked together for the first time to write a song for the film, "God Give Me Strength." They were nominated for a Grammy Award for it.

In the late 1980s, Allison became friends with members of the pop group Duran Duran. She often put small references to the band in her films, like character names or posters. In 1999, she and Kurt Voss co-wrote and co-directed Sugar Town. This movie was about the film and music industry in Los Angeles. It starred several musicians who were friends with Allison, including John Taylor from Duran Duran, John Doe from the band X, Martin Kemp from Spandau Ballet, and singer/actor Michael Des Barres.

Sugar Town followed the connected lives of different people in the music world. The film received two Independent Spirit Award nominations. Allison and Voss also won an award for Best Screenplay at the Fantasporto festival.

Allison's 2012 film, Strutter, which she co-directed with Voss, was the last in a series of three films about musicians in Southern California. The other two were Border Radio and Sugar Town. Strutter was a black-and-white road trip movie. It featured Luanna Anders from Border Radio and had music by Ariel Pink and J Mascis. The film was funded by a Kickstarter campaign.

In 2013, Allison released the TV movie Ring of Fire for the Lifetime channel. This movie was about June Carter Cash, a famous musician, and starred the singer Jewel. The film was inspired by John Carter Cash's book about his mother.

Television Work

Allison Anders started directing TV shows in 1999. She directed several episodes of Sex and the City, and also episodes of shows like Grosse Pointe, Cold Case, The L Word, Men In Trees, The Mentalist, and What About Brian?

In 2011, she directed an episode of Southland, which included a car chase scene. Allison also directed an episode of Turn: Washington's Spies. This was especially interesting to her because she has distant relatives on both sides of her family who were spies for George Washington during the American Revolution!

Other Projects

In 2013, Allison interviewed the famous actress Marge Champion, who was 94 years old. This interview was included in the special features of a Blu-ray/DVD release of the 1968 film The Swimmer.

Allison and her daughter, Tiffany Anders, who is a musician, started the Don't Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival in Los Angeles in 2003.

In 2006, Allison appeared in a documentary called Wanderlust. She has also contributed to the web series Trailers from Hell.

In 2013, Allison bought a collection of rock and roll records that used to belong to the famous actress Greta Garbo. She created a website called "Greta's Records" to share this unique collection of 50 records.

Mentorship and Teaching

Allison Anders considers filmmaker Wim Wenders to be a mentor. She started as a fan, sending him letters and music, and Wenders eventually replied. Allison even created a fake grant that she "won" so she and a friend could learn from Wenders while he was filming Paris, Texas. They have been friends for over 30 years.

Since 2003, Allison has been a special professor at the University of California Santa Barbara. She teaches in the Film And Media Studies Department for one quarter each year. She has taught classes on topics like writing about your own life, rock and roll films, and choosing music for movies.

Awards and Recognition

• 1986: Nicholl Fellowships in Screenwriting – Lost Highway
• 1986: Samuel Goldwyn Writing Awards – Lost Highway
• 1992: New York Film Critics Circle for Best New Director – Gas Food Lodging
• 1992: National Society of Film Critics for Best New Director – Gas Food Lodging
• 1995: MacArthur Fellows Program (often called the "Genius Grant")
• 2002: Spirit of Silver Lake Award from the Silver Lake Film Festival
• 2002: Peabody Award for distinguished achievement – Things Behind the Sun
• 2013: Nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Directing of a Drama – Ring of Fire

Personal Life

Allison Anders has three children. Her two daughters are Tiffany Anders, who is a musician and chooses music for films, and Devon Anders. Her son, Ruben Goodbear Anders, was fostered and later adopted by the Anders family after his mother, Nica Rogers, passed away. Nica Rogers had appeared in Allison's film Mi Vida Loca. Tiffany was named after the famous film Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Filmography

Film

Television

• 1999: Sex and the City – director, 4 episodes
• 2000: Grosse Pointe – director, 2 episodes
• 2004: Cold Case – director, 1 episode
• 2006: The L Word – director, 1 episode
• 2006: Men in Trees – director, 1 episode
• 2006: What About Brian – director, 2 episodes
• 2011: Southland – director, 2 episodes
• 2013: The Mentalist – director, 1 episode
• 2014: Orange Is the New Black – director, 1 episode
• 2014: Gang Related – director, 1 episode
• 2014: The Divide – director, 1 episode
• 2014–2015: Murder in the First – director, 4 episodes
• 2015: Turn: Washington's Spies – director, 1 episode
• 2015: Proof – director, 1 episode
• 2017: Time After Time – director, 1 episode
• 2017: Riverdale – director, 2 episodes
• 2017: Graves – director, 1 episode
• 2018: Sorry for Your Loss – director, 1 episode
• 2019–2023: Mayans MC – director, 2 episodes

See Also

In Spanish: Allison Anders para niños