Tony Kaye is a British director of films, music videos, advertisements, and documentaries. He is best known as the director of American History X.
Life and career
Kaye was born to an Haredi Jewish family in Stamford Hill, London, United Kingdom. He has made several well-known music videos, including the video for "Runaway Train" by Soul Asylum, which won a Grammy Award, "Dani California" by Red Hot Chili Peppers, "What God Wants" by Roger Waters, and "Help Me" and "God's Gonna Cut You Down" by Johnny Cash. Kaye is a six time Grammy nominated music video director. His feature film debut was American History X, a drama about racism starring Edward Norton and Edward Furlong. Kaye disowned the final cut of the film and unsuccessfully attempted to have his name removed from the credits. The film was critically lauded and Norton was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the film. The battle over artistic control of the film, which has become part of Hollywood folklore, all but destroyed Kaye's career. He delivered his original cut on time and within budget – but when the producer, New Line Cinema, insisted on changes, the arguments began. The debate quickly escalated. Kaye spent $100,000 of his own money to take out 35 full-page ads in the Hollywood trade press denouncing Norton and the producer, using quotations from a variety of people from John Lennon to Abraham Lincoln. He attended a meeting at New Line to which he brought a Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi and a Tibetan monk. When the company offered him an additional eight weeks to re-cut the film, he said he'd discovered a new vision and needed a year to remake it, and flew to the Caribbean to have the script rewritten by the Nobel Prize-winning poet Derek Walcott. Finally, when the Directors Guild refused to let him remove his name from the New Line version of the film, he demanded it to be credited to 'Humpty Dumpty' instead, and filed a $200 million lawsuit when the company refused. Kaye's second feature, a documentary called Lake of Fire, was about the abortion debate in the United States. It opened in Toronto in September 2006. The movie was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature, and was nominated for Best Documentary Film at the Independent Spirit Awards, the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards, and the Satellite Awards. Lake of Fire took Kaye 18 years to make. Kaye's third feature film was a crime drama titled Black Water Transit starring Laurence Fishburne, Karl Urban, Evan Ross, Brittany Snow, and Stephen Dorff. The film was shot in New Orleans during the summer of 2007. A rough cut was reportedly screened at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival but the film was never released to cinemas. As of 2017 the film is considered unfinished due to the production company's bankruptcy and the ensuing litigation. Kaye's fourth feature film, Detachment, starring Adrien Brody, as well as featuring Kaye's daughter Betty, is a drama about the decline of the education system in American high schools. It premiered in April 2011 at the Tribeca Film Festival On 9 September 2011, Detachment screened in competition at the 37th Deauville American Film Festival in France. It won both the Revelations Prize and the International Critics' Award. On 18 September, Detachment was announced as the Closing Night Film at the Woodstock Film Festival, where Kaye was the recipient of the Honorary Maverick Award. On 12 October 2011, Detachment screened in competition at the Valenciennes International Festival of Action and Adventure Films in France, where it won the Grand Prize and the Audience Award. Later, on 26 October, the film screened in competition at the 24th Tokyo International Film Festival. It received the award for Best Artistic Contribution, sharing honors with the film Kora. Detachment also screened in competition at the 35th São Paulo International Film Festival and won the Audience Award for Best Foreign Language Film. On 16 November, Detachment screened at the 53rd Muestra Internacional de Cine in Mexico. In January 2012, Detachment won Best Picture at the Ramdam Film Festival in Tournai, Belgium. On 24 January 2016, Kaye announced on his Facebook page that he will be directing Joe Vinciguerra's screenplay titled Stranger Than the Wheel. The upcoming film features Shia LaBeouf and potentially Alec Baldwin about a young man who revisits his past, and his relationship with this abusive father. Kaye also began filming a documentary in 2016 called The Hell of Compromise which he is making about the struggle over American History X, composed chiefly of videos he shot of himself at the time. Kaye said that it is meant to be a personal portrait of the process and the trauma that he encountered in his first experience as a Hollywood filmmaker. He also pointed out that the point of the movie was to help creative people to not get in their own way.
Personal life
Kaye has been married twice. His first wife was a Romanian woman named Eugenia Volosonovici. They have two daughters. His second wife is Chinese-American artist Yan Lin Kaye. They have two daughters: Shanghai and Eema Emet Kaye. Kaye enjoys singing, songwriting and playing guitar. He is frequently found at various open mic nights around London, most notably Redrock Jam at Dublin Castle, Camden and Ant Henson's Open Mic London in Clerkenwell.
