Everything about Paul Greengrass totally explained
Paul Greengrass (b.
August 13,
1955 in
Cheam,
Surrey) is an
Academy Award-nominated,
BAFTA Award-winning
English writer and
film director. He specialises in dramatisations of real-life events and is known for his signature use of hand-held cameras.
Biography
Greengrass was educated at
Sevenoaks School and
Queens' College,
Cambridge University. He first worked as a director in the 1980s, for the
ITV current affairs programme
World in Action. At the same time he co-authored the notorious book
Spycatcher with
Peter Wright, former assistant director of
MI5, which contained enough sensitive information that the
British Government attempted (unsuccessfully) to ban it.
He then moved into drama, directing made-for-television films such as
The One That Got Away, based on
Chris Ryan's book about
SAS actions in the
Gulf War, and
The Fix, a fictional story of corruption in
football.
His 1998 film
The Theory of Flight starred Kenneth Branagh and Helena Bonham Carter, who played a woman with motor neurone disease. The film dealt with the difficult issue of the sexuality of people with disabilities.
Greengrass co-wrote the screenplay for
Omagh, which depicted the
1998 bombing of
Omagh, and directed
The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (1999), which told the story of
Stephen Lawrence, a black youth whose murder wasn't properly investigated by the
Metropolitan Police and his mother's investigations, which led to revelations about
institutional racism in the police.
Bloody Sunday (2002), depicted the 1972
Bloody Sunday shootings of
Northern Irish anti-
internment activists by British soldiers in an almost documentary style; it shared First Prize at the 2002
Berlin Film Festival with
Hayao Miyazaki's
Spirited Away.
Based on that film, Greengrass was hired to direct 2004's
The Bourne Supremacy, a sequel to the 2002 film
The Bourne Identity, after the first film's director,
Doug Liman left the project. The film starred
Matt Damon as
Jason Bourne, an amnesiac who realizes he was once a top
CIA assassin and is now being pursued by his former employers. It proved to be an unexpectedly enormous financial and critical success, and secured Greengrass's reputation and ability to get his smaller, more personal films made.
In 2006, Greengrass directed
United 93, a film based on the
September 11th hijacking of
United Airlines Flight 93. The film received immense critical acclaim, particularly for Greengrass' again quasi-documentary-style directing. After receiving many Best Director awards and nominations from critics circles (including the
Broadcast Film Critics Association), Greengrass won the
BAFTA award for
Best Director at the
60th British Academy Film Awards and received an
Oscar nomination for
Achievement in Directing at the
79th Academy Awards. For his role in writing the film, he earned
Writers Guild of America Award and BAFTA nominations for Best Original Screenplay.
He followed this with a return to the Bourne franchise.
The Bourne Ultimatum, released in 2007, was an even bigger success than the previous two films and provided him with yet another BAFTA nomination for
Best Director at the
61st British Academy Film Awards.
He is currently directing
Green Zone, a film of
Imperial Life in the Emerald City, the bestselling, award-winning book by the
Washington Post's Baghdad bureau chief,
Rajiv Chandrasekaran. It details the mistakes made in
post-war Iraq. It is filming in Spain and Morocco with
Matt Damon and
Greg Kinnear.
Greengrass was initially attached to direct
Watchmen, but the production was shut down a few weeks before filming was due to start and the
Watchmen film was directed by
Zack Snyder instead.
Greengrass's future plans include directing
They Marched into Sunlight, a book by
David Maraniss which revolves around the controversy surrounding the
Vietnam conflict, focusing on one day, when a major battle was occurring in Vietnam and a major protest was simultaneously happening in the US. Greengrass is also slated to direct a
fourth Bourne film alongside star
Matt Damon, although a release date has yet to be announced.
Filmography
Further Information
Get more info on 'Paul Greengrass'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://paul_greengrass.totallyexplained.com">Paul Greengrass Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
