MICHAEL CRISTOFER (Director/Writer) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright, screenwriter, actor, stage director and film director. His screen directorial debut (HBO's Gia) earned him the Directors Guild of America Award. Gia also earned six Emmy nominations, and its star Angelina Jolie won both the Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild awards.
Cristofer won a Pulitzer Prize and an Antoinette Perry "Tony" Award for the Broadway production of his play, 'The Shadow Box." Subsequent to New York, the play was produced in every major American city and worldwide from Europe to the Far East. The success of "The Shadow Box" resulted in numerous requests for Cristofer to write for the screen. He chose first to adapt The Shadow Box for television in 1980, which Paul Newman directed and in which Joanne Woodward starred. The film received an Emmy nomination for "Outstanding Drama Special" and won the Golden Globe Award for Best Miniseries or Motion Picture Made for Television.
Cristofer subsequently wrote an original screenplay entitled Falling in Love, which Ulu Grosbard directed and in which Meryl Streep and Robert De Niro starred. He next adapted John Updike's best-selling novel The Witches of Eastwick for director George Miller and stars Jack Nicholson, Michelle Pfeiffer, Susan Sarandon and Cher. He was then asked to adapt Tom Wolfe's bestseller The Bonfire of the Vanities, the most talked about novel of the time. It was also, perhaps, one of the most noteworthy screen disappointments of the decade. Although he continued to be in demand to write and rewrite screenplays — such as Boys on the Side, starring Whoopi Goldberg, and the screen version of the play Breaking Up, starring Russell Crowe and Salma Hayek — Cristofer decided it was time to pursue screen directing, having previously directed many stage productions.
Cristofer was then offered the opportunity to direct Gia, the HBO film about famed model Gia Marie Carangi which he co-wrote with Jay McInerny. Its success quickly won him numerous directing offers, including Body Shots, released in October 1999.
Cristofer's New York stageplay writing credits include "Breaking Up," produced by Primary Stages; "Ice," produced by the Manhattan Theatre Club; "Black Angel," produced by Circle Repertory Company; and "The Lady and the Clarinet," produced by the Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theatre, off-Broadway and on the London Fringe. His latest play "Amazing Grace" had its world premiere in the fall of 1995 starring Marsha Mason.
For eight years Cristofer worked as artistic advisor and, finally, co-artistic director of River Arts Repertory, a company which produced new plays, including the American premiere of Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women," a production which later moved to off-Broadway. At River Arts he also wrote stage adaptations of the films Love Me or Leave Me and the legendary Casablanca, and he directed Joanne Woodward in his own adaptation of Ibsen's "Ghosts."
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