Subway Stories

Robert Elmer "Bob" Balaban is an American actor, author and director. Balaban was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Eleanor and Elmer Balaban, who owned several movie theatres and later was a pioneer in cable television. His family was a dominant force in the theatre business; his uncles... founded the Balaban and Katz Theatre circuit in Chicago, a chain which included the Chicago and Uptown Theatres. Balaban and Katz operated some of the most beautiful movie palaces in the United States beginning in the 1920s. Bob Balaban's father and his uncle Harry founded the H & E Balaban Corporation in Chicago. H & E Balaban Corporation operated their own movie palaces including the Esquire Theatre in Chicago. They later owned a powerful group of television stations and cable television franchises. His uncle Barney Balaban was president of Paramount Pictures for nearly 30 years from 1936 to 1964. His grandmother's second husband, Sam Katz, was a vice president at MGM beginning in 1936. Sam had early partnered with Bob's uncles Abe, Barney, John and Max to form Balaban and Katz.
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Julie Dash is a United States filmmaker. She directed Daughters of the Dust, which in 1991 became the first full-length film with general theatrical release in the United States by an African American woman. In 2004, Daughters of the Dust was included in the National Film Registry. Julie Dash... initially was rejected by Hollywood executives when she pitched her first full-length film, Daughters of the Dust. Dash stated in an interview with the Boston Globe that she was turned down in a very similar systematic fashion of excluding black women from Hollywood. She was told that her film was "too different." However, remaining confident in an interview with the Detroit Free Press, Dash states "I'm a very hopeful person and I think we can accomplish a lot through film in the '90s. We're going to see a lot of film work done by black women who have different concerns than our brothers who make films [] We have strong statements to make because we've been silenced for so long." "Daughters of the Dust" opened to critical acclaim.
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Alison Maclean is a Canadian film director of music videos, short films, television , commercials and feature films. Her works include the music video Torn , the short film Kitchen Sink and the feature films Jesus' Son and Crush . Alison Maclean was born in Ottawa, Canada, in 1958, to New... Zealand-born parents. Her first short film, Kitchen Sink, a surreal suburban nightmare, debuted in Cannes in 1989 and won eight international awards. Maclean moved to New York in 1992. Her film Crush was entered into the 1992 Cannes Film Festival. After several years developing projects she got her second feature, Jesus' Son , starring Billy Crudup and Samantha Morton . The film is based on the short stories by cult US writer Denis Johnson. She is represented by Park Pictures in New York.
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Robert Jonathan Demme is an American filmmaker, producer and screenwriter. Best known for directing The Silence of the Lambs, which won him the Academy Award for Best Director, he has also directed the acclaimed movies Philadelphia, Rachel Getting Married, the Talking Heads concert movie Stop... Making Sense and a trilogy of Neil Young documentary/concert movies. Demme broke into feature film working for exploitation film producer Roger Corman from 1971 to 1976, co-writing and producing Angels Hard as They Come and The Hot Box. He then moved on to directing, with three films for Corman's studio New World Pictures. After Fighting Mad, Demme directed the comedy film Handle with Care for Paramount Pictures in 1977. The film was well-reviewed by critics, but received little promotion, and performed poorly at the box office. Demme's next film, 1980's Melvin and Howard, did not get a wide release, but received a groundswell of critical acclaim, and led to the signing of Demme to direct the Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell star vehicle Swing Shift. Intended as a prestige picture for Warner Bros.
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Edward K. "Ted" Demme was an American film director and producer. Born in New York City, Demme grew up in Rockville Centre on Long Island, New York and attended South Side Senior High School. He graduated from SUNY-Cortland in 1985. His media career likely began with a radio show at WSUC-FM in... Cortland, NY. His show was a mix of comedy and talk radio with the usual sidekick, as well as some music and was widely listened to on and off campus. He was the nephew of movie producer and director Jonathan Demme. His career had modest beginnings — starting as a production assistant at MTV, he later became a producer in the On-Air Promotions Department and created the cable network's seminal hip-hop show Yo! MTV Raps and directed other projects for them, including the infamous black-and-white rants starring then-unknown chain-smoking comedian Denis Leary. Over the course of his career, he established a group of actors that he chose to work with on more than one occasion. The most frequently used of these was Denis Leary, who he directed as a lead or star in No Cure for Cancer, The Ref, Denis Leary: Lock 'n Load, and Monument Ave..
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Abel Ferrara is an American film screenwriter and director. He is best known as an independent filmmaker of such films as The Driller Killer , Ms. 45 , King of New York , Bad Lieutenant and The Funeral . Ferrara was born in the Bronx of Italian and Irish descent. He was raised Catholic, which had... a later effect on much of his work. At 15, he moved to Peekskill in Westchester, New York where he attended high school with Nicholas St. John, who has written most of his films. He attended the film conservatory at SUNY Purchase, where he directed several movies, which are all available on "The Short Films of Abel Ferrara" collection. Soon finding himself out of work, he directed a pornographic film titled 9 Lives of a Wet Pussy in 1976, which starred his then-girlfriend. Interviewed by the Guardian in 2010, he recalled having to step in front of the camera: "It's bad enough paying a guy $200 to fuck your girlfriend, then he can't get it up.
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