Ken Kwapis in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, The (2005)
KEN KWAPIS (Director) is an award-winning director who has moved easily between the worlds of feature filmmaking and television directing.
Kwapis made his debut as a writer-director with Sexual Life, a free adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s La Ronde, which premiered to rave reviews in competition at the Los Angeles Film Festival. Sexual Life, which boasts an ensemble cast including Elizabeth Banks, Anne Heche, Tom Everett Scott and Kerry Washington, premieres on Showtime in July of 2005. Kwapis also directed the romantic comedies The Beautician and the Beast, starring Fran Drescher, and He Said, She Said, starring Kevin Bacon and Elizabeth Perkins. He Said, She Said was conceived and co-directed with Kwapis’ wife Marisa Silver. He also helmed the screwball comedies Dunston Checks In, starring Jason Alexander and Faye Dunaway; and Vibes, starring Jeff Goldblum and Peter Falk. Kwapis’ first feature was Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird, starring Jim Henson’s Muppets.
Kwapis has produced and/or directed the most ambitious television comedies of the past decade, including The Office, NBC’s adaptation of the much-lauded BBC series. Kwapis launched HBO’s groundbreaking series The Larry Sanders Show. He won an Emmy Nomination for his work as a producer-director of Fox’s long-running Malcolm in the Middle. He helmed the pilots for the critically-acclaimed The Bernie Mac Show and the innovative Watching Ellie, starring Julia-Louis Dreyfus. His directorial touch also graced the much-loved (if short-lived) Freaks and Geeks and Bakersfield P.D.
Kwapis’ work has always displayed his love for the classics, both cinematic and musical. His USC thesis film For Heaven’s Sake! was based on Mozart’s one-act opera Der Schauspieldirektor, with backbiting nuns replacing the dueling divas of the original. The film won Kwapis the Student Academy Award in Dramatic Achievement. With The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, Kwapis aimed to create a film that hewed closely to the original novel, both in its unique structure – a quadruple-tiered narrative – and also in its emotional honesty. He hopes that every viewer will come away from Sisterhood feeling as if they’ve made four new best friends.
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