Tim Hunter (director)
Encyclopedia
Tim Hunter is an American television
and film director
. Since the late 1980s he has mostly worked on television, directing episodes for dozens of televisions series including
Breaking Bad
,
Carnivàle
,
Chicago Hope
,
Crossing Jordan
,
Deadwood
,
Falcon Crest
,
Homicide: Life on the Street
,
House M.D.
,
Law & Order
,
Lie to Me
,
Mad Men
,
Twin Peaks
,
Glee
,
and Revenge
. During the early-to-mid 1980s, Hunter directed feature film
s, including 1986's River's Edge
, which won that year's award for best picture at the Independent Spirit Awards
.
made the following comments about Hunter's work on the films River's Edge and Tex
:
Ian McLellan Hunter
. He attended Harvard University
, graduating in 1968.
In 1993, he refused to cede his late father's Academy Award for the 1953 screenplay to Roman Holiday
: when the Hollywood blacklist
was preventing Dalton Trumbo
from selling his work, Trumbo arranged for the elder Hunter to be credited instead. Subsequently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
gave Trumbo's widow a compensatory award.
Television director
A television director directs the activities involved in making a television program and is part of a television crew.-Duties:The duties of a television director vary depending on whether the production is live or recorded to video tape or video server .In both types of productions, the...
and film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
. Since the late 1980s he has mostly worked on television, directing episodes for dozens of televisions series including
Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad
Breaking Bad is an American television drama series created and produced by Vince Gilligan. Set and produced in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Breaking Bad is the story of Walter White , a struggling high school chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with advanced lung cancer at the beginning of the series...
,
Carnivàle
Carnivàle
Carnivàle is an American television series set in the United States during the Great Depression and Dust Bowl. In tracing the lives of two disparate groups of people, its overarching story depicts the battle between good and evil and the struggle between free will and destiny; the storyline mixes...
,
Chicago Hope
Chicago Hope
Chicago Hope is an American medical drama series created by David E. Kelley that ran from September 18, 1994, to May 5, 2000. It takes place in a fictional private charity hospital.-Premise:The show stars Mandy Patinkin as Dr...
,
Crossing Jordan
Crossing Jordan
Crossing Jordan is an American television crime/drama series that aired on NBC from September 24, 2001 to May 16, 2007. It stars Jill Hennessy as Jordan Cavanaugh, M.D., a crime-solving forensic pathologist employed in the Suffolk County, Massachusetts, Medical Examiner's Office...
,
Deadwood
Deadwood (TV series)
Deadwood is an American Western drama television series created, produced and largely written by David Milch. The series aired on the premium cable network HBO from March 21, 2004, to August 27, 2006, spanning three 12-episode seasons. The show is set in the 1870s in Deadwood, South Dakota, before...
,
Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest
Falcon Crest is an American primetime television soap opera which aired on the CBS network for nine seasons, from December 4, 1981 to May 17, 1990. A total of 227 episodes were produced....
,
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...
,
House M.D.
House (TV series)
House is an American television medical drama that debuted on the Fox network on November 16, 2004. The show's central character is Dr. Gregory House , an unconventional and misanthropic medical genius who heads a team of diagnosticians at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in...
,
Law & Order
Law & Order
Law & Order is an American police procedural and legal drama television series, created by Dick Wolf and part of the Law & Order franchise. It aired on NBC, and in syndication on various cable networks. Law & Order premiered on September 13, 1990, and completed its 20th and final season on May 24,...
,
Lie to Me
Lie to Me
Lie to Me is a 2009-2011 American television series.Lie to Me may also refer to:* Lie to Me , a South Korean drama series* "Lie to Me" , an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer...
,
Mad Men
Mad Men
Mad Men is an American dramatic television series created and produced by Matthew Weiner. The series premiered on Sunday evenings on the American cable network AMC and are produced by Lionsgate Television. It premiered on July 19, 2007, and completed its fourth season on October 17, 2010. Each...
,
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks
Twin Peaks is an American television serial drama created by David Lynch and Mark Frost. The series follows the investigation headed by FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper , of the murder of a popular teenager and homecoming queen, Laura Palmer...
,
Glee
Glee (TV series)
Glee is an American musical comedy-drama television series that airs on Fox in the United States, and on GlobalTV in Canada. It focuses on the high school glee club New Directions competing on the show choir competition circuit, while its members deal with relationships, sexuality and social issues...
,
and Revenge
Revenge (TV series)
Revenge is an American television drama inspired by the Alexandre Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo starring Madeleine Stowe and Emily VanCamp. It debuted on ABC on September 21, 2011, and currently airs on Wednesday nights at 10:00 pm Eastern/9:00 pm Central...
. During the early-to-mid 1980s, Hunter directed feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
s, including 1986's River's Edge
River's Edge
River's Edge is a 1986 American drama film written by Neal Jimenez and starring Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck, and Dennis Hopper.It was awarded Best Picture from the Independent Spirit Awards in 1986.- Plot :...
, which won that year's award for best picture at the Independent Spirit Awards
Independent Spirit Awards
The Independent Spirit Awards , founded in 1984, are awards dedicated to independent filmmakers. Winners were typically presented with acrylic glass pyramids containing suspended shoestrings representing the paltry budgets of independent films. In 1986, the event was renamed the Independent Spirit...
.
Critical reception
Janet MaslinJanet Maslin
Janet Maslin is an American journalist, best known as a film and literary critic for The New York Times. She served as the Times film critic from 1977–1999.- Biography :...
made the following comments about Hunter's work on the films River's Edge and Tex
Tex (film)
Tex is a 1982 American drama film released by Buena Vista Distribution Company and directed by Tim Hunter based on the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. Tex is about the life of two brothers after their mother dies, and their father walks out on them...
:
- As he demonstrated in TexTex (film)Tex is a 1982 American drama film released by Buena Vista Distribution Company and directed by Tim Hunter based on the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. Tex is about the life of two brothers after their mother dies, and their father walks out on them...
, Mr. Hunter has an extraordinarily clear understanding of teen-age characters, especially those who must find their own paths without much parental supervision. But the S. E. HintonS. E. HintonSusan Eloise Hinton is an American author best known for her young adult novel The Outsiders.While still in her teens, Hinton became a household name as the author of The Outsiders, her first and most popular novel, set in Oklahoma in the 1960s. She began writing it in 1965...
story for that film is a great deal more innocent than this one, and a lot more easily understood. While Mr. Hunter retains his ear for adolescent dialogue (the screenplay is by Neal JimenezNeal JimenezNeal Jimenez is a screenwriter and film director. He is best known for the writing of his macabre 1980's film River's Edge. He was a member of the dramatic jury at the Sundance Film Festival in 1994...
) and his eye for the aimless, restless behavior of these characters, neither he nor we can easily make the necessary leap to understand their casualness about Samson's crime. That Mr. Hunter is brave enough to avoid easy moralizing and easy explanations finally makes his film harder to fathom.
Personal life
Hunter was born in Los Angeles, the son of British screenwriterScreenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
Ian McLellan Hunter
Ian McLellan Hunter
Ian McLellan Hunter was an English screenwriter, most noted for fronting for the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo as the credited writer of Roman Holiday in 1953. Hunter was himself later blacklisted.-Roman Holiday:...
. He attended Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
, graduating in 1968.
In 1993, he refused to cede his late father's Academy Award for the 1953 screenplay to Roman Holiday
Roman Holiday
Roman Holiday is a 1953 romantic comedy directed and produced by William Wyler and starring Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn. It was written by John Dighton and Dalton Trumbo, though with Trumbo on the Hollywood blacklist, he did not receive a credit; instead, Ian McLellan Hunter fronted for him...
: when the Hollywood blacklist
Hollywood blacklist
The Hollywood blacklist—as the broader entertainment industry blacklist is generally known—was the mid-twentieth-century list of screenwriters, actors, directors, musicians, and other U.S. entertainment professionals who were denied employment in the field because of their political beliefs or...
was preventing Dalton Trumbo
Dalton Trumbo
James Dalton Trumbo was an American screenwriter and novelist, and one of the Hollywood Ten, a group of film professionals who refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947 during the committee's investigation of Communist influences in the motion picture industry...
from selling his work, Trumbo arranged for the elder Hunter to be credited instead. Subsequently, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences is a professional honorary organization dedicated to the advancement of the arts and sciences of motion pictures...
gave Trumbo's widow a compensatory award.
Filmography
- TexTex (film)Tex is a 1982 American drama film released by Buena Vista Distribution Company and directed by Tim Hunter based on the novel of the same name by S. E. Hinton. Tex is about the life of two brothers after their mother dies, and their father walks out on them...
(1982) - Sylvester (1985)
- River's EdgeRiver's EdgeRiver's Edge is a 1986 American drama film written by Neal Jimenez and starring Crispin Glover, Keanu Reeves, Ione Skye, Daniel Roebuck, and Dennis Hopper.It was awarded Best Picture from the Independent Spirit Awards in 1986.- Plot :...
(1986) - Paint It Black (1989)
- Lies of the Twins (1991 TV movie)
- The Saint of Fort Washington (1993)
- The ColonyThe Colony (film)- Plot :A man moves his family into a suburbia that at first seems fantastic, but soon turns into a nightmare."Set in a high-price Malibu community, this made-for-TV drama wallows in a multitude of extramarital affairs, corporate intrigue and elegant back-stabbing, with murder the logical extension...
(1996 TV movie) - The People Next Door (1996 TV movie)
- The MakerThe Maker (film)The Maker is a 1997 American drama film written by Rand Ravich and directed by Tim Hunter. The Maker was released on October 17, 1997 in the United States of America and is rated R for strong violence, drug use, language and some sexuality.-Plot:...
(1997) - Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Couples (1998 TV movie)
- Rescuers: Stories of Courage: Two Families (1998 TV movie)
- Mean StreakMean StreakMean Streak is a wooden roller coaster located at Cedar Point in Sandusky, Ohio, United States. Opened in 1991 and constructed using 1.7 million board feet of treated Southern Yellow Pine, it was one of the tallest, fastest and longest wooden roller coasters in the world...
(1999) - Anatomy of a Hate Crime (2001)
- Video Voyeur: The Susan Wilson Story (2002)
- The Failures (2003)
- ControlControl (2004 film)Control is a 2004 direct-to-video movie. It was produced by an American production company, but was filmed in Bulgaria.-Synopsis:Oliver is a death row inmate who is given a lethal injection before a room of witnesses. He awakes in the morgue to find that he had only been administered saline and...
(2004) - Kings of South BeachKings of South BeachKings of South Beach is a film written by Nicholas Pileggi about an infamous operator of nightclubs in the South Beach section of Miami Beach, Florida. The lead character is portrayed by Jason Gedrick and his best friend is portrayed by Donnie Wahlberg...
(2007)