Ken Kwapis
From Freepedia
Ken Kwapis (born August 17, 1958 in Belleville, Illinois) is an American film director. He studied film at Northwestern University and then on the graduate level at USC School of Cinema-Television.
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Career history
His thesis film For Heaven's Sake, a variation on a Mozart opera, won a Student Academy Award. He started making teen-oriented TV movies before working on acclaimed series such as The Larry Sanders Show. Since then he's mixed theatrical features with TV work.
Aesthetics
Kwapis helped define the single-camera sitcom in the 1990s and 2000s.
Influences
Kwapis ran a film society while in college and his knowledge of film history is evident in his work. For example, Dunston Checks In is virtually an homage to Ernst Lubitsch and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants features a clip from Frank Borzage's Three Comrades. (In Sisterhood's DVD commentary Kwapis remarks on Borzage's influence on his work.)
Trivia
- Kwapis has a cameo in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants as a piano player at a ballet recital.
Select TV Work
- The Office (US) (2005)
- Watching Ellie (2002)
- The Bernie Mac Show (2001)
- Grounded for Life (2001)
- Malcolm in the Middle (2000)
- Freaks and Geeks (1999)
- The Larry Sanders Show (1992)
Theatrical Film Work
- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants (2005)
- Sexual Life (2005)
- The Beautician and the Beast (1997)
- Dunston Checks In (1996)
- He Said, She Said (1991, co-directed with Marisa Silver, whom he married soon after)
- Vibes (1988)
- Sesame Street Presents: Follow that Bird (1985)
- The Beniker Gang (1985)
