Sam Shepard is an actor, screenwriter, director and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright for his 1979 three-act play Buried Child. Shepard’s numerous other plays have included Angel City, Curse of the Starving Class, Killer’s Head, Action, The Mad Dog Blues, Cowboy Mouth and The Rock Garden. In 1984 he gained an Oscar nomination for his part as Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff. His screenplay for Paris, Texas won the Golden Palm Award at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival. In 1986 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 1992 he received the Gold Medal for Drama from the Academy. In 1994 he was inducted into the Theatre Hall of Fame.
Kerouac was one of Sam’s early idols. We filmed him in New York City one afternoon for a series of readings from Big Sur as well as excerpts from Kerouac’s poem, Sea.
