Allison Anders

In 1986, Anders won a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for a script called Lost Highway that she wrote about her father.[12] She said that after writing the script she shared it with her father, and was able to have a relationship with him again.[9]

Anders' first film, the punk music-heavy Border Radio, was co-written and co-directed with Kurt Voss and Dean Lent and was made while they were at UCLA. It was nominated for Best Feature of 1988 by the Independent Feature Project for Best First Feature.[13] The film told the story of three musicians who stole money owed to them from a job and then fled to Mexico. The story is set amid the Los Angeles punk-rock scene of the 1980s.[13] With a $2,000 contribution from actor Vic Tayback and loans from Voss's parents to fund the film, the filmmakers made up for the small budget by using local locations and casting performers they knew. For the starring role, they cast Anders' sister, Luanna Anders, and musician Chris D., as the leading man, as well as Anders' daughter, Devon Anders, who played Luanna's daughter in the film. Violating UCLA policy, the filmmakers cut the film at night in the school's editing bays, while Anders' two young daughters slept on the floor.[13] In 2007, Border Radio was given a special release on DVD as part of the Criterion Collection[13] and was lauded as groundbreaking independent cinema.[14]

Anders' second feature, the 1992 film Gas Food Lodging, earned her a New York Film Critics Circle Award and National Society of Film Critics honors for Best New Director; and nominations from the Independent Spirit Awards for Best Screenplay and Best Director. Actress Fairuza Balk won a Spirit Award for her role in the film. The film also won the Deauville Film Festival Critics Award and was also nominated for the Golden Bear at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival.[15] Gas Food Lodging is a coming-of-age story about a truck stop waitress and her two daughters, three vibrant, restless women in an isolated Western town.[16] The screenplay was loosely adapted by Anders from the novel Don't Look and It Won't Hurt by Richard Peck.[9]

Her next film, Mi Vida Loca (My Crazy Life), was about girl gangs in the poor Hispanic Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, where Anders lived. It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1993, and saw wide release in 1994. The story features a female perspective on growing up in the inner city.

Anders' 1996 film, Grace of My Heart, was a musical drama executive produced by Martin Scorsese, about a songwriter (played by Illeana Douglas) and her career over several years, including work in the early 1960s in music publishing and production offices, a setting based on the Brill Building. This marriage to a songwriting partner and her emergence as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s are among elements paralleling the career of Carole King, but the film is neither a biography nor entirely fiction. The original soundtrack features new songs written in various styles of the era.[10][17] Elvis Costello and Burt Bacharach had their first collaboration composing a song for the film, "God Give Me Strength," and were nominated for a Grammy Award.

In the late 1980s, Anders had become friends with members of pop group Duran Duran, and frequently inserted small references to the band in her films (character names, posters on walls, and so on). In 1999, after bassist John Taylor had left Duran Duran and was beginning to launch an acting career, she and Voss co-wrote and co-directed Sugar Town, about the Los Angeles film and music industry. The film starred several musical friends of Anders', including Taylor, X singer John Doe, Spandau Ballet bassist Martin Kemp, and singer/actor Michael Des Barres. Sugar Town followed the interconnected lives of a handful of power brokers, wanna-bes and has-beens. Gwen (played by Jade Gordon), a self-centered would-be rock star, is working as an assistant to production designer Liz (Ally Sheedy); when Gwen discovers Liz has a date with a music producer (Larry Klein), any loyalty she has to her boss disappears.[18] The film received two Independent Spirit Award nominations, for Best Film and Best Newcomer (Jade Gordon). The film also won Anders and Voss the Fantasporto award for Best Screenplay.

Her 2001 autobiographical film, Things Behind the Sun,[19] deals with the long-term aftermath of rape.[20] It was released on the Showtime cable TV network. The film earned an Emmy nomination for actor Don Cheadle as Best Supporting Actor; and three Independent Spirit Award nominations: Cheadle for Best Supporting Actor, Kim Dickens for Best Actress, and Best Film. Anders and co-writer Kurt Voss also received a nomination for an Edgar Award. The film was awarded the SHINE Award as well as the Peabody Award. Things Behind the Sun was inspired by an experience Anders had in 1967 when she was raped by a group of boys.[21] Anders actually shot some of the film in the same location in Cocoa Beach, Florida, where the gang rape occurred.[20]

Anders' 2012 film, Strutter, co-directed with Voss, completed a loose trilogy of films about Southern California musicians that began with Border Radio and Sugar Town. A black-and-white road picture, the film featured Luanna Anders from Border Radio, a scene in the motel room where Gram Parsons died, and a score with music by Ariel Pink and J Mascis.[22] The film was funded by a Kickstarter campaign.[23]

In 2013, Anders released the Lifetime-produced TV movie Ring of Fire, a June Carter Cash biopic that featured the musician Jewel. The film was inspired by John Carter Cash's book, Anchored in Love: A Tribute to June Carter Cash.[24]

Anders began directing shows for broadcast and cable television in 1999, including several episodes in the second and third seasons of Sex and the City, as well as episodes of Grosse Pointe, Cold Case, The L Word, Men In Trees, The Mentalist, and What About Brian?

In 2011, she directed an episode of the John Wells production, Southland, which involved a car chase scene.[25] Anders directed an episode of Turn: Washington's Spies, which was especially interesting to her because she has distant relatives on both sides of her family who were spies for George Washington.[5]

In 2013, Anders interviewed 94-year-old actress and Hollywood legend Marge Champion, who appeared at a 2013 Hollywood film festival screening of 1968 cult film The Swimmer, which starred Burt Lancaster. The interview was featured among behind-the-scenes supplementary material on a 2014 Blu-ray/DVD release of the film by Grindhouse Releasing/Box Office Spectaculars Blu-ray/DVD restoration of the film.[26]

Anders and her musician daughter, Tiffany Anders, started the Don't Knock the Rock Film and Music Festival in 2003 in Los Angeles.[27]

In 2006, she appeared in the road-trip documentary Wanderlust. Anders has also contributed to the web series Trailers from Hell.

In 2013, Anders bid on and won a rock and roll record collection formerly owned by the actress Greta Garbo. She created a website called "Greta's Records" to curate and share the collection of 50 records.[28]

• Quanah Parker project at AMC Networks with writer Terry Graham[29][30]

Anders counts filmmaker Wim Wenders as a mentor. She started as a fan, sending him letters and music, and Wenders eventually responded. Anders said that she created a faux grant that she "won" so that she and at least one other friend could study under Wenders on location for his film Paris, Texas. They have been friends for over 30 years.[31]

• 1999: Sex and the City – Director, 4 episodes: "The Caste System," "La Donleur Exquise," "Drama Queen," "The Big Time"
• 2000: Grosse Pointe – Director, 2 episodes: "Boys on the Side," "Star Wars"
• 2004: Cold Case – Director, 1 episode: "Volunteers"
• 2006: The L Word – Director, 1 episode: "Last Dance"
• 2006: Men in Trees – Director, 1 episode: "Power Shift"
• 2006: What About Brian – Director, 2 episodes: "What About First Steps," "What About the True Confessions?"
• 2011: SouthLAnd – Director, 2 episodes: "Sideways," "Fallout"
• 2013: The Mentalist – Director, 1 episode: "The Red Barn"
• 2014: Orange Is the New Black – Director, 1 episode: "You Also Have a Pizza"
• 2014: Gang Related – Director, 1 episode: "Invierno Cayó"
• 2014: The Divide – Director, 1 episode: "Facts Are the Enemy"
• 2014–2015: Murder in the First – Director, 4 episodes: "Pants on Fire," "Blue on Blue," "The McCormack Mulligan," "Nothing But the Truth"
• 2015: TURN: Washington's Spies – Director, 1 episode: "False Flag"
• 2015: Proof – Director, 1 episode: "Memento Vivere"
• 2017: Time After Time – Director, 1 episode: "Suitcases of Memories"
• 2017: Riverdale – Director, 2 episodes: "Chapter Seven: In a Lonely Place", "Chapter Fifteen: Nighthawks"
• 2017: Graves – Director, 1 episode "The Opposite of People"
• 2018: Sorry for Your Loss – Director, 1 episode: "Visitor"
• 2019-2023: Mayans MC – Director, 2 episodes: "Kukuklan" and "My Eyes Closed And Then Filled On The Last of Childhood Tears"

• Anders, Allison, Alexandre Rockwell, Robert Rodriguez, Quentin Tarantino. "Strange Brew." Four Rooms: Four Friends Telling Four Stories Making One Film. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. ISBN 978-0-571-17684-7 OCLC 797629367
• Roman, Shari. "Allison Anders." Digital Babylon: Hollywood, Indiewood & Dogme 95. Hollywood: Lone Eagle, 2001. pp. 142–144. ISBN 978-1-580-65036-6 OCLC 464743610
• White-Stanley, Debra. 2003. ""God Give Me Strength": The Melodramatic Sound Tracks of Director Allison Anders". Velvet Light Trap. 51, no. 1: pp. 54–66. ISSN 0149-1830 doi:10.1353/vlt.2003.0012 OCLC 704028308
• Murphy, J. J. "Shifting Goals and Plotlines in Gas Food Lodging." Me and You and Memento and Fargo How Independent Screenplays Work. New York: Continuum, 2007. ISBN 978-0-826-42804-2 OCLC 651772634
• Campbell, Neil. "The Idioms of Living: Donna Deitch and Allison Anders." Post-Westerns Cinema, Region, West. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2013. pp. 272–304. ISBN 978-1-461-93720-3 OCLC 856584709
• Silverstein, Melissa. "On 'Gas Food Lodging.'" Sight & Sound. Vol. 25 (10). London: British Film Institute, October 2015. ISSN 0037-4806

• Mori, Mark, and Alec Baldwin. "Allison Anders; David O Russell." Raw Footage. Pt. 6. Santa Monica, CA: Direct Cinema Ltd, 2008. Video. Original air date: 1996. ISBN 978-1-559-74798-1 OCLC 651047709
• Calabrese, Peter, Tamara Gould, Jack Walsh, Xandra Castleton, Alexis Lezin, Danny L. McGuire, Gregory Nava, Allison Anders, and Michael Fox. Independent View. San Francisco, CA: KQED, 2001. Video. OCLC 55072014
• DiPersio, Vince, Adam Bardach, Alan Smithee, Tony Kahn, William Hooke, Michael H. Amundson, Steve Audette, and Michael Bloecher. "The Monster That Ate Hollywood." Frontline. PBS. Season 19, Episode 18. 2015. Video. Original air date: November 22, 2001. OCLC 891699575
• Maslin, Janet, John Waters, Allison Anders, Hal Hartley, David O. Russell. Four Independents That Turned the Tide. 2006. Video. Videotaped at the BAMcafe, Brooklyn, NY, as part of the Sundance Institute at BAM season, May 21, 2006. OCLC 123421251