Biography
This page uses content from the David S. Ward biography page on the English version of Wikipedia and is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. This list of authors can be seen in the page history. Rotten Tomatoes disclaims any and all warranties as to the accuracy or reliability of the content.
David S. Ward is an American film director and award winning screen writer.
Ward has degrees from both U.C.L.A. and U.S.C., and was employed at an educational film production company when he managed to sell his screenplay for The Sting (1974), which lead to an Oscar win in that category. After this initial success, his follow up projects were less critically and commercially well received, including Ward's maiden directorial effort, Cannery Row (1982), and a sequel The Sting II (1983). Efforts made by Ward to sell a script based on the frontier days of California were scuttled by an industry-wide "ban" on Westerns after the failure of Michael Cimino's Heaven's Gate (1980).
In 1986, Ward was contracted by Sting star Robert Redford, who hired the screenwriter to work on the Redford-directed The Milagro Beanfield War. The response to this project enabled Ward to sell Morgan Creek and Mirage Productions to bankroll Major League (1988), a baseball comedy that he'd been pitching to producers without success since 1982. Perhaps autobiographically, Major League and Ward's subsequent efforts as a writer and director, King Ralph (1991) and Major League II (1993), were about underdogs who triumphed over the gadflies and nay-sayers of the world.
Ward later scored a box-office coup with his screenplay (in collaboration with Nora Ephron) for 1993's Sleepless in Seattle. He went back to the well directing the sequel Major League 2, and then moved onto the Navy comedy Down Periscope starring Kelsey Grammer. Another ten years would pass before Ward was credited on another film, Flyboys, a 2006 World War I-drama starring James Franco directed by Tony Bill.
Ward also currently is a professor at Chapman University, in Southern California, where he teaches screenwriting and directing, and acts as a Filmmaker in Residence for the campus.
External links
fr:David S. Ward
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