{"id":109182,"date":"2017-07-31T23:50:29","date_gmt":"2017-08-01T03:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=109182"},"modified":"2017-07-31T23:52:32","modified_gmt":"2017-08-01T03:52:32","slug":"sam-shepard-pulitzer-winning-playwright-is-dead-at-73","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/07\/31\/sam-shepard-pulitzer-winning-playwright-is-dead-at-73\/","title":{"rendered":"Sam Shepard, Pulitzer winning playwright, is dead at 73"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Sam<\/a>
Sam Shepard. Cropped from File:Sam Shepard Stealth.jpg (Photo by Soerfm, CC BY-SA 3.0)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NEW YORK \u2014 Sam Shepard, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, Oscar-nominated actor and celebrated author whose plays chronicled the explosive fault lines of family and masculinity in the American West, has died. He was 73.<\/p>\n

Family spokesman Chris Boneau said Monday that Shepard died Thursday at his home in Kentucky from complications related to Lou Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.<\/p>\n

The taciturn Shepard, who grew up on a California ranch, was a man of few words who nevertheless produced 44 plays and numerous books, memoirs and short stories. He was one of the most influential playwrights of his generation: a plain-spoken poet of the modern frontier, both lyrical and rugged.<\/p>\n

In his 1971 one-act \u201cCowboy Mouth, which he wrote with his then-girlfriend, musician and poet Patti Smith, one character says, \u201cPeople want a street angel. They want a saint but with a cowboy mouth\u201d \u2014 a role the tall and handsome Shepard fulfilled for many. But in soul-searching plays, his portrait of the West was a disillusioned one, peopled by broken characters whose realities fell far short of the American Dream.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was writing basically for actors,\u201d Shepard told The Associated Press in a 2011 interview. \u201cAnd actors immediately seemed to have a handle on it, on the rhythm of it, the sound of it, the characters. I started to understand there was this possibility of conversation between actors and that’s how it all started.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepard’s Western drawl and laconic presence made him a reluctant\u00a0movie\u00a0star, too. He appeared in dozens of films \u2014 many of them Westerns \u2014 including Terrence Malick’s \u201cDays of Heaven,\u201d \u201cSteel Magnolias,\u201d \u201cThe Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford\u201d and 2012’s \u201cMud.\u201d He was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as pilot Chuck Yeager in 1983’s \u201cThe Right Stuff.\u201d Among his most recent roles was the Florida Keys patriarch of the Netflix series \u201cBloodline.\u201d<\/p>\n

But Shepard was best remembered for his influential plays and his prominent role in the Off-Off-Broadway movement. His 1979 play \u201cBuried Child,\u201d about the breaking down of an Illinois family, won the Pulitzer for drama. Two other plays \u2014 \u201cTrue West,\u201d about two warring brothers, and \u201cFool for Love,\u201d about a man who fears he’s turning into his father \u2014 were nominated for the Pulitzers as well. All are frequently revived.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always felt like playwriting was the thread through all of it,\u201d Shepard said in 2011. \u201cTheater really when you think about it contains everything. It can contain film. Film can’t contain theatre. Music. Dance. Painting. Acting. It’s the whole deal. And it’s the most ancient. It goes back to the Druids. It was way pre-Christ. It’s the form that I feel most at home in, because of that, because of its ability to usurp everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Samuel Shepard Rogers VII was born in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, in 1943. He grew up on an avocado ranch in Duarte, California. His father was an alcoholic schoolteacher and former Army pilot. Shepard would later write frequently of the damage done by drunks. He had his own struggles, too. Long stretches of sobriety were interrupted by drunk driving arrests, in 2009 and 2015.<\/p>\n

Shepard arrived in New York in 1963 with no connections, little money and vague aspirations to act, write or make music. \u201cI just dropped in out of nowhere,\u201d he told the New Yorker in 2010. But Shepard quickly became part of the off-off-Broadway movement at downtown hangouts like Caffe Cino and La MaMa. \u201cAs far as I’m concerned, Broadway just does not exist,\u201d Shepard told Playboy in 1970 \u2014 though many of his later plays would end up there.<\/p>\n

His early plays \u2014 fiery, surreal verbal assaults \u2014 pushed American theatre in an energized, frenzied direction that matched the times. A drummer himself, Shepard found his own rock ‘n roll rhythm. Seeking spontaneity, he initially refused to rewrite his drafts, a strategy he later dismissed as \u201cjust plain stupid.\u201d<\/p>\n

As Shepard matured as a playwright, he returned again and again to meditations on violence, masculinity and family. His collection \u201cSeven Plays,\u201d which includes many of his best plays, including \u201cBuried Child\u201d and \u201cThe Tooth of Crime,\u201d was dedicated to his father.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s some hidden, deeply rooted thing in the Anglo male American that has to do with inferiority, that has to do with not being a man, and always, continually having to act out some idea of manhood that invariably is violent,\u201d he told The New York Times in 1984. \u201cThis sense of failure runs very deep \u2014 maybe it has to do with the frontier being systematically taken away, with the guilt of having gotten this country by wiping out a native race of people, with the whole Protestant work ethic. I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s the source of a lot of intrigue for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepard was married from 1969 to 1984 to actress O-Lan Jones, with whom he had son Jesse Mojo Shepard.<\/p>\n

His connection to music was constant. He joined Bob Dylan on the 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour of 1975, and co-wrote the song \u201cBrownsville Girl\u201d with him. Shepard and Patti Smith were one-time lovers but lifetime friends. \u201cWe’re just the same,\u201d Smith once said. \u201cWhen Sam and I are together, it’s like no particular time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepard’s\u00a0<\/em>movie\u00a0career began in the late ’70s. While making the 1982 Frances Farmer biopic \u201cFrances,\u201d he met Jessica Lange and the two remained together for nearly 30 years. They had two children, Hannah Jane and Samuel Walker. They separated in 2009. Lange once said of Shepard: \u201cNo man I’ve ever met compares to Sam in terms of maleness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepard worked occasionally in movies (among other things, he wrote Wim Wenders’ 1984 Texas brothers drama \u201cParis, Texas\u201d) but took acting gigs more frequently as he grew older. One\u00a0movie, he said, could pay for 16 plays.<\/p>\n

Besides his plays, Shepard wrote short stories and a full-length work of fiction, \u201cThe One Inside,\u201d which came out earlier this year. \u201cThe One Inside\u201d is a highly personal narrative about a man looking back on his life and taking in what has been lost, including control over his own body as the symptoms of ALS advance.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething in the body refuses to get up. Something in the lower back. He stares at the walls,\u201d Shepard writes. \u201cThe appendages don’t seem connected to the motor \u2014 whatever that is \u2014 driving this thing. They won’t take direction \u2014 won’t be dictated to \u2014 the arms, legs, feet, hands. Nothing moves. Nothing even wants to.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shepard’s longtime editor at Alfred A. Knopf, LuAnn Walther, said Shepard’s language was \u201cquite poetic, and very intimate, but also very direct and plainspoken.\u201d She said that when people asked her what Shepard was really like, she would respond, \u201cJust read the fiction.\u201d<\/p>\n

The playwright is survived by his three children and two sisters: Sandy and Roxanne Rogers.<\/p>\n

In Shepard’s 1982 book \u201cMotel Chronicles,\u201d he said that he felt like he never had a home. That feeling, he later, acknowledged, always remained.<\/p>\n

\u201cI basically live out of my truck,\u201d Shepard said in 2011. \u201cI feel more at home in my truck than just about anywhere, which is a sad thing to say. But it’s true.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Associated Press Entertainment Writer Mark Kennedy and National Writer Hillel Italie contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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