Daryl Haney
Encyclopedia
Daryl Haney also known by the pen name D. R. Haney, is an American actor
, screenwriter
, novelist, and essayist.
and Frank Corsaro
. He made his film debut in a NYU student short directed by Joseph Minion
, who would later write the Golden Globe-nominated Martin Scorsese
film After Hours (1985)
.
Soon after moving to New York, Haney was cast in his first starring role in a feature film, the Canadian thriller Self Defense (1983)
. A few years later, Haney was hired by Joseph Minion to write and star in the Roger Corman
production Daddy's Boys, a period crime drama directed by Minion and made in order to utilize leftover sets from Big Bad Mama 2 (1987). For Haney, this began a six-year association with Corman's Concorde Pictures.
Immediately after completing Daddy's Boys, Haney was asked to write Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
for Paramount Pictures
. As Haney recalls in Peter M. Bracke's book Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2005): "Barbara [Sachs, Associate Producer] was the first person I had contact with. I pitched her a few ideas and she shot them all down. I only had one more. I said, 'I notice that at the end of these movies, there's always a teenage girl who's left to battle Jason by herself
. What if this girl had telekinetic powers?' Barbara immediately said, 'Jason vs. Carrie. Huh. That's an interesting idea.' Then we talked once or twice before I had to go back to New York. The next day I had literally just flown in and walked up the stairs of my old apartment, and the phone rang. It was Barbara saying: 'You got the job.'"
Haney relocated to Los Angeles, working often for Roger Corman
, who continued his tradition of Edgar Allan Poe
adaptations by asking Haney to write a new film version of Masque of the Red Death (1989), in which Haney appeared as an actor. He also wrote the film Dance with Death (1992) for Corman, which was based on a story by Poison Ivy (1992)
creators Andy Ruben and his then-wife Katt Shea, and included an early performance by Lisa Kudrow
. Around the same time, Haney landed a role in Sketch Artist (1992), which starred Drew Barrymore
, Sean Young
, and Jeff Fahey
.
After Haney left Concorde, he was approached by British director-producer Harry Bromley Davenport
to write the third installment of his Xtro
franchise, Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995). This began a working relationship that resulted in Life Among the Cannibals (1996), a black comedy that garnered a cult following upon its release. Cannibals stars Kieran Mulroney
, Juliet Landau
, Mason Adams
, Bette Ford
, Wings Hauser
, and Haney as Troy, a hypersensitive serial killer
. The film was well received on the festival circuit, getting a Special Mention at the 1998 Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema, and nominated for Best Film at Fantasporto
1999 and a Grand Jury Prize at the Florida Film Festival 1997.
Haney and Bromley-Davenport followed Life Among the Cannibals with Erasable You (1998), another black comedy, this one starring Timothy Busfield
, Melora Hardin
from NBC's The Office (2005), and veteran actor M. Emmet Walsh
. Next was Mockingbird Don't Sing
(2001), based on the true story of Genie
, a feral child
who was confined to her bedroom by her mentally unstable father until California authorities discovered her, mute and uncivilized, at the age of thirteen.
In 2000, Haney temporarily relocated to Belgrade
, Serbia
, where he had a starring role in the Serbian film Rat uživo and became a recognizable actor in Belgrade. Back in the U.S., Haney appeared as a drug dealer in Jennifer Lynch
's Surveillance (2008)
, which stars Bill Pullman
and Julia Ormond
. Haney also played a small part in Bromley-Davenport's Frozen Kiss (2008).
, which would take him nine years to complete, and for which he adopted the pen name D. R. Haney. Haney has explained the pen name by saying that he was embarrassed by some of the films on his resume: "I didn’t feel I could put my name on [Banned for Life]. I’d destroyed my name, or so I thought. At the same time, it would’ve killed me to use a pseudonym. How could I use a false name on a work so close to my heart?"
Banned for Life is about the search for a mysteriously vanished punk-rock icon, and the book, published by Vancouver's And/Or Press in May 2009, was praised by underground-music journals such as Maximum RocknRoll
, Razorcake
, and Big Wheel. The Big Wheel review referred to the book as a "thinly disguised memoir," about which Haney later said, "It’s not. I tried to make it read like one, but despite some biographical overlap, the narrator and I have led very different lives."
Following the publication of Banned for Life, Haney began to contribute essays to Brad Listi
's literary website The Nervous Breakdown, quickly becoming one of the site's most popular writers. In October 2010, Subversia
, a collection of Haney's essays for The Nervous Breakdown, was published as the inaugural title of the site's imprint, TNB Books.
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...
, screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
, novelist, and essayist.
Film career
Born to a Virginia farming family, Haney relocated to New York City at age eighteen and studied acting with Mira RostovaMira Rostova
Mira Rostova was a Russian-born American acting teacher, best known for her own variation of method acting that she used in coaching of Montgomery Clift...
and Frank Corsaro
Frank Corsaro
Frank Corsaro is one of America's foremost stage directors of opera and theatre. His Broadway productions include The Night of the Iguana ....
. He made his film debut in a NYU student short directed by Joseph Minion
Joseph Minion
Joseph Minion is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for Martin Scorsese's After Hours .Born in New Jersey in 1957, Minion briefly attended NYU Film School before finishing his studies at Columbia University, then renowned for its screenwriting program...
, who would later write the Golden Globe-nominated Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
film After Hours (1985)
After Hours (film)
After Hours is a 1985 American black comedy film, written by Joseph Minion and directed by Martin Scorsese. Paul Hackett , a New Yorker, experiences a series of adventures and perils in trying to make his way home from SoHo.-Plot:...
.
Soon after moving to New York, Haney was cast in his first starring role in a feature film, the Canadian thriller Self Defense (1983)
Self Defense (1983 film)
Self Defense is a 1983 action-thriller-film directed by Paul Donovan and starring Tom Nardini, Brenda Bazinet, Darel Haeny and Terry-David Després.-Plot:...
. A few years later, Haney was hired by Joseph Minion to write and star in the Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
production Daddy's Boys, a period crime drama directed by Minion and made in order to utilize leftover sets from Big Bad Mama 2 (1987). For Haney, this began a six-year association with Corman's Concorde Pictures.
Immediately after completing Daddy's Boys, Haney was asked to write Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood
Friday the 13th Part VII: The New Blood is the seventh installment in the original Friday the 13th series, released in 1988. It also marked the first appearance of Kane Hodder in the role of Jason Voorhees.-Plot:...
for Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
. As Haney recalls in Peter M. Bracke's book Crystal Lake Memories: The Complete History of Friday the 13th (2005): "Barbara [Sachs, Associate Producer] was the first person I had contact with. I pitched her a few ideas and she shot them all down. I only had one more. I said, 'I notice that at the end of these movies, there's always a teenage girl who's left to battle Jason by herself
Final girl
The final girl is a trope in thriller and horror films that specifically refers to the last woman or girl alive to confront the killer, ostensibly the one left to tell the story...
. What if this girl had telekinetic powers?' Barbara immediately said, 'Jason vs. Carrie. Huh. That's an interesting idea.' Then we talked once or twice before I had to go back to New York. The next day I had literally just flown in and walked up the stairs of my old apartment, and the phone rang. It was Barbara saying: 'You got the job.'"
Haney relocated to Los Angeles, working often for Roger Corman
Roger Corman
Roger William Corman is an American film producer, director and actor. He has mostly worked on low-budget B movies. Some of Corman's work has an established critical reputation, such as his cycle of films adapted from the tales of Edgar Allan Poe, and in 2009 he won an Honorary Academy Award for...
, who continued his tradition of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
adaptations by asking Haney to write a new film version of Masque of the Red Death (1989), in which Haney appeared as an actor. He also wrote the film Dance with Death (1992) for Corman, which was based on a story by Poison Ivy (1992)
Poison Ivy (film)
Poison Ivy is a 1992 thriller and drama film directed by Katt Shea. Andy Ruben transformed Melissa Goddard's story into the screenplay. It stars Drew Barrymore, Sara Gilbert, Tom Skerritt and Cheryl Ladd. The original music score is composed by David Michael Frank. The film was shot in Los...
creators Andy Ruben and his then-wife Katt Shea, and included an early performance by Lisa Kudrow
Lisa Kudrow
Lisa Valerie Kudrow is an American actress, best known for her role as Phoebe Buffay in the television sitcom Friends, for which she received many accolades including an Emmy Award and two Screen Actors Guild Awards...
. Around the same time, Haney landed a role in Sketch Artist (1992), which starred Drew Barrymore
Drew Barrymore
Drew Blyth Barrymore is an American actress, film director, screenwriter, producer and model. She is a member of the Barrymore family of American actors and granddaughter of John Barrymore. She first appeared in an advertisement when she was 11 months old. Barrymore made her film debut in Altered...
, Sean Young
Sean Young
Sean Young is an American actress, best known for her performance in films from the 1980s such as Blade Runner, Dune, and No Way Out.-Early life:...
, and Jeff Fahey
Jeff Fahey
Jeffrey David "Jeff" Fahey is an American film and television actor. He has portrayed Captain Frank Lapidus on the ABC series Lost and the title role of Deputy Marshal Winston MacBride on The Marshal.-Early life:...
.
After Haney left Concorde, he was approached by British director-producer Harry Bromley Davenport
Harry Bromley Davenport
Harry Bromley Davenport is an English director, producer as well as in the beginning of his career a film screenwriter...
to write the third installment of his Xtro
Xtro
Xtro is a low-budget British science fiction horror film made in 1982 and directed by Harry Bromley Davenport and co-produced by Bob Shaye.-Plot:...
franchise, Xtro 3: Watch the Skies (1995). This began a working relationship that resulted in Life Among the Cannibals (1996), a black comedy that garnered a cult following upon its release. Cannibals stars Kieran Mulroney
Kieran Mulroney
Kieran Mulroney is an American actor known for his numerous television appearances. He is also a musician and screenwriter, along with his wife, Michele. He was born in Alexandria, Virginia, where he graduated from T. C. Williams High School. His brother is actor Dermot Mulroney.-Television:* NCIS...
, Juliet Landau
Juliet Landau
Juliet Rose Landau is an American actress best known for her role as Drusilla on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff show Angel, the latter appearance earning her a Saturn Award nomination. She is also known for co-starring as Loretta King Hadler in Tim Burton's Ed Wood.She has appeared in a...
, Mason Adams
Mason Adams
Mason Adams was an American character actor and voice-over artist.-Early life:Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York. He earned an MA degree from the University of Michigan in Theatre Arts and Speech and also attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, studying theater arts...
, Bette Ford
Bette Ford
Bette Ford, , is an actress and former model and professional bullfighter...
, Wings Hauser
Wings Hauser
Wings Hauser is an American actor, director and film writer.-Life and career:Hauser was born Gerald Dwight Hauser in Hollywood, California, the son of Geraldine and Academy Award-winning director and producer Dwight Hauser...
, and Haney as Troy, a hypersensitive serial killer
Serial killer
A serial killer, as typically defined, is an individual who has murdered three or more people over a period of more than a month, with down time between the murders, and whose motivation for killing is usually based on psychological gratification...
. The film was well received on the festival circuit, getting a Special Mention at the 1998 Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema, and nominated for Best Film at Fantasporto
Fantasporto
Fantasporto, also known as Fantas, is an international film festival, annually organized since 1981 in Porto, Portugal. Giving screen space to commercial feature films, auteur films and experimental projects from all over the world, Fantasporto has created enthusiastic audiences, ranging from...
1999 and a Grand Jury Prize at the Florida Film Festival 1997.
Haney and Bromley-Davenport followed Life Among the Cannibals with Erasable You (1998), another black comedy, this one starring Timothy Busfield
Timothy Busfield
Timothy "Timmy B" Busfield is an American actor and director best known for his role as Eliot Weston on the television series Thirtysomething and his recurring role as Danny Concannon on the television series The West Wing...
, Melora Hardin
Melora Hardin
Melora Diane Hardin is an American actress, best known for her roles as Jan Levinson on NBC's The Office and Trudy Monk on USA's Monk.-Early life:...
from NBC's The Office (2005), and veteran actor M. Emmet Walsh
M. Emmet Walsh
Michael Emmet Walsh is an American actor who has appeared in over 100 film and television productions.-Life and career:Walsh was born in Ogdensburg, New York, the son of Agnes Kathrine and Harry Maurice Walsh, Sr., a customs agent...
. Next was Mockingbird Don't Sing
Mockingbird Don't Sing
Mockingbird Don't Sing is a 2001 American independent film based on the true story of Genie, a modern-day feral child. The film is told from the point of view of Dr. Susan Curtiss , a professor of linguistics at University of California, Los Angeles. Although the film is based on a true story, all...
(2001), based on the true story of Genie
Genie (feral child)
Genie is the pseudonym for a feral child who spent nearly all of the first thirteen years of her life locked inside a bedroom strapped to a potty chair. She was a victim of one of the most severe cases of social isolation ever documented...
, a feral child
Feral child
A feral child is a human child who has lived isolated from human contact from a very young age, and has no experience of human care, loving or social behavior, and, crucially, of human language...
who was confined to her bedroom by her mentally unstable father until California authorities discovered her, mute and uncivilized, at the age of thirteen.
In 2000, Haney temporarily relocated to Belgrade
Belgrade
Belgrade is the capital and largest city of Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers, where the Pannonian Plain meets the Balkans. According to official results of Census 2011, the city has a population of 1,639,121. It is one of the 15 largest cities in Europe...
, Serbia
Serbia
Serbia , officially the Republic of Serbia , is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeast Europe, covering the southern part of the Carpathian basin and the central part of the Balkans...
, where he had a starring role in the Serbian film Rat uživo and became a recognizable actor in Belgrade. Back in the U.S., Haney appeared as a drug dealer in Jennifer Lynch
Jennifer Lynch
Jennifer Chambers Lynch is an American film director and screenwriter, best known for writing the book The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer and for being Hollywood's youngest female writer and director with her 1993 feature film Boxing Helena. -Early life:Lynch was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,...
's Surveillance (2008)
Surveillance (2008 film)
Surveillance is an independent thriller set in the Nebraska plains directed by Jennifer Lynch and starring Julia Ormond, Bill Pullman, Michael Ironside, and French Stewart. The film premiered out of competition and at a midnight slot at 2008 Cannes Film Festival...
, which stars Bill Pullman
Bill Pullman
William James "Bill" Pullman is an American film, television, and stage actor. Pullman made his film debut in the supporting role of Earl Mott in the 1986 film Ruthless People. He has since gone on to star in other films, including Spaceballs, Independence Day, Lost Highway, Casper and Scary Movie 4...
and Julia Ormond
Julia Ormond
Julia Karin Ormond is an English actress who has appeared in film and television and on stage.-Early life and education:...
. Haney also played a small part in Bromley-Davenport's Frozen Kiss (2008).
Literary career
While living in Belgrade, Haney began work on a novel, Banned for LifeBanned for Life
Banned for Life is a novel by American writer D. R. Haney, published by And/Or Press in 2009. Primarily set in New York City and Los Angeles, the book is a first-person account of a musician-turned-filmmaker's immersion in the punk-rock scene of the 1980s and his subsequent struggles in...
, which would take him nine years to complete, and for which he adopted the pen name D. R. Haney. Haney has explained the pen name by saying that he was embarrassed by some of the films on his resume: "I didn’t feel I could put my name on [Banned for Life]. I’d destroyed my name, or so I thought. At the same time, it would’ve killed me to use a pseudonym. How could I use a false name on a work so close to my heart?"
Banned for Life is about the search for a mysteriously vanished punk-rock icon, and the book, published by Vancouver's And/Or Press in May 2009, was praised by underground-music journals such as Maximum RocknRoll
Maximum RocknRoll
Maximum rocknroll is a widely distributed, monthly not-for-profit fanzine based in San Francisco, USA. It features interviews, columns, and reviews from international contributors...
, Razorcake
Razorcake
Razorcake is a 501 non-profit organization that publishes the Razorcake fanzine, a DIY punk rock fanzine published bi-monthly out of Los Angeles, California...
, and Big Wheel. The Big Wheel review referred to the book as a "thinly disguised memoir," about which Haney later said, "It’s not. I tried to make it read like one, but despite some biographical overlap, the narrator and I have led very different lives."
Following the publication of Banned for Life, Haney began to contribute essays to Brad Listi
Brad Listi
Brad Listi is an American author. His first novel, Attention. Deficit. Disorder., was published by Simon & Schuster in February 2006, and went on to become a Los Angeles Times Bestseller....
's literary website The Nervous Breakdown, quickly becoming one of the site's most popular writers. In October 2010, Subversia
Subversia
Subversia is a collection of autobiographical nonfiction by American novelist D. R. Haney, published in 2010 by TNB Books.The collection, comprising thirty short essays, none longer than 2500 words, is divided into five sections...
, a collection of Haney's essays for The Nervous Breakdown, was published as the inaugural title of the site's imprint, TNB Books.
Awards
| Rhode Island International Film Festival Rhode Island International Film Festival Flickers' Rhode Island International Film Festival takes place every year in Providence and Newport, Rhode Island as well as satellite locations throughout the state. Started in 1997, the Festival is produced by Flickers, the Newport Film/Video Society & Arts Collaborative, a 501 non-profit... |
|||
|---|---|---|---|
| Year | Nominated work | Category | Result |
| 2001 | Mockingbird Don't Sing | Best Screenplay | |