True west : Sam Shepard's life, work, and times / Robert Greenfield.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Greenfield, Robert, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Shepard, Sam, 1943-2017.

Shepard, Sam.

Dramatists, American--20th century--Biography.

Dramatists, American.

Actors--United States--Biography.

Actors.

United States.

Genre:

Biographies.

Physical Description:

xii, 432 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 25 cm

Edition:

First edition.

Other Title:

Sam Shepard's life, work, and times

Place of Publication:

New York : Crown, [2023]

Summary:

"An intimate portrait of the iconic playwright, actor, and director Sam Shepard, whose wide-ranging and enduring body of work places him at the center of the American canon, from an award-winning biographer. True West is the story of an American icon, a lasting portrait of Sam Shepard as he really was, revealed by those who knew him best. This sweeping biography charts Shepard's long and complicated journey from a small town in southern California to his standing as an internationally known playwright and movie star. The son of an alcoholic father, Shepard crafted a public persona as an authentic American archetype: the loner, the cowboy, the drifter, a stranger in a strange land. Despite his great critical and financial success, he seemed, like so many of his characters, to remain perpetually dispossessed. Much like Robert Greenfield's biographies of Jerry Garcia and Timothy Leary, this book delves deeply into Shepard's life as well as the ways in which his work illuminates it. True West takes readers through the world of downtown theater in lower Manhattan in the early sixties, the jazz scene at the Village Gate, fringe theatre in London in the seventies, Bob Dylan's legendary Rolling Thunder tour, the making of classic films like Zabriskie Point, Days of Heaven, and The Right Stuff, and Broadway productions of Buried Child, True West, and Fool for Love. For this definitive biography, Greenfield interviewed dozens of people who knew Shepard well, many of whom had never before spoken on the record about him. While exploring his relationships with Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, and Jessica Lange across the long arc of his brilliant career, Greenfield makes the case for Shepard not just as a great American writer but a unique figure who first brought the sensibility of rock 'n' roll to serious theater"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Prologue: New York, New York

Life during wartime

The rose parade

A strange kind of melting pot

The real Gabby Hayes

The village gate

Theatre genesis

La turista

Forensic and the navigators

Zabriskie point

Maxagasm

O-lan

Operation Sidewinder

Cowboy mouth

The tooth of crime

The royal court

Magic theatre

Rolling thunder

Days of Heaven

Curse of the starving class

Buried child

True west

True west redux

When Sam met Jessica

Fool for love

Country matters

See you in my dreams

A lie of the mind

Horse country

Stillwater

The late Henry Moss

Don't come knocking

The feeling of numbness

Shepard and dark

A particle of dread

Spy of the first person

Epilogue: Endgame

Coda: True west, again.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Greenfield, Robert. True west

ISBN:

9780525575955

0525575952

OCLC:

1344545742