Ben McKenzie (‘Joe Bonham’)
Benjamin McKenzie is a native of Austin, Texas and attended the University of Virginia, where he majored in Foreign Affairs and Economics. McKenzie appeared in “Measure for Measure” and “Zoo Story” while at the University of Virginia. He moved to New York after graduation and appeared off-Broadway in Life is a Dream at the SoHo Rep. Additionally, he performed in several productions at the Williamstown Theatre Festival, including Street Scene and The Blue Bird. He relocated to Los Angeles in 2001, where his early TV appearances included roles on The District, JAG and Mad TV. In 2003, FOX premiered the television series The O.C., about a group of affluent teenagers with stormy personal lives residing in Orange County, California. The show became an overnight success and it put McKenzie on the map as ‘Ryan Atwood’. McKenzie made his feature film debut in Junebug opposite Amy Adams. The film received high praise at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. He also appeared in a pivotal role in the 2007 film 88 Minutes, which starred Al Pacino. McKenzie’s first starring role in a feature film was in the 2008 indie release Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun. The movie garnered excellent reviews for his solo performance. April 9, 2009 NBC replaced the long-running series E.R. after 15 years with a new cop drama, Southland, starring McKenzie as rookie police officer ‘Ben Sherman’. The series subsequently moved from NBC to TNT after the first season. Since 2014, McKenzie has been starring as James Gordon in the television series Gotham, for which he also wrote and directed episodes.
Rowan Joseph (Director)
Rowan Joseph has worked in the entertainment industry for over 30 years. As an actor, he began his career as a member of the prestigious Mirror Repertory Company in New York City alongside Academy Award-winners Anthony Hopkins, Geraldine Page, and F. Murray Abraham. He has appeared in leading roles in over 50 stage productions in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and across the U.S. His TV appearances include roles on Gilmore Girls, Boston Legal, and Arrest & Trial. His film credits include supporting roles in such films as Valentine’s Day, Raising Helen, The Princess Diaries 2, National Lampoon’s Snatched, and Chronic Town at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. As founding Managing Director, Joseph built, opened and operated The Century Center for the Performing Arts in New York City, where he presented Paula Vogel’s Pulitzer Prize winning drama How I Learned to Drive starring Mary Louise Parker and David Morse. He served as the Executive Director of the West Bank Café/Laurie Beechman Theatre, on Theatre Row in Manhattan, for seven seasons, presenting hundreds of both new and established artists, including Holly Hunter, Ben Stiller, Robert Sean Leonard, Julianne Moore, Mark Linn-Baker, Ethan Hawke, Lewis Black, and the early work of such acclaimed writers such as Aaron Sorkin, Alan Ball, Donald Margulies, and Peter Hedges. He produced Tapestry: The Music of Carole King: Off-Broadway (Union Square Theatre), Cincinnati (Playhouse in the Park), Cleveland (Playhouse Square); BENT, Los Angeles (Coast Playhouse); One Slight Hitch, Charlotte, NC (Charlotte Rep), Kansas City, MO (Waldorf Astoria DT). He produced and directed The Queen of Bingo:Off-Broadway (Greenwich House Theatre), Chicago (Buckingham Theatre). Relocating to Los Angeles in 2001, he became Producing Director of the Falcon Theatre. He create and launch the theatre’s successful 5-play subscription series; in addition to overseeing the highly-acclaimed children’s theatre programming. Under his management the Falcon established itself as one of the premiere, award-winning, professional theatres in Southern California. Joseph left the Falcon at the end of the 2005-2006 season, having produced over 50 different productions. Joseph continues to co-own and operate Theatre A Go-Go, Inc., a nationally recognized commercial theatrical production company. Founded in Chicago in 1993, Theatre A Go-Go has presented such national tours as An Evening with Jack Klugman and an all-male production of The Queen of Bingo. In the summer of 2007, Joseph formed the film production company Greenwood Hill Productions. The company’s first feature film, Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, was released and distributed theatrically in 2008 by Mark Cuban & Todd Wagner’s Truly Indie. Joseph directed the film, based on the 1982 Off-Broadway play of the same title. The movie also marked actor Ben McKenzie’s (Southland, The O.C., Junebug) first starring role in a feature film. Joseph has worked with eight Academy Award-winning Best Actors: Holly Hunter, Anthony Hopkins, Kevin Spacey, Geraldine Page, F. Murray Abraham, Helen Mirren, Julie Andrews, and the legendary Katharine Hepburn during the course of his diverse career.
Dalton Trumbo (Writer)
Dalton Trumbo was arguably the most talented and most famous of the blacklisted film professionals known to history as the Hollywood 10. Born in Montrose, Colorado, Trumbo got his start working for Vogue magazine. He started in movies in 1937; by the 1940s he was one of Hollywood’s highest paid screenwriters for work on such films as 1940’s Kitty Foyle, for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), and Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945). After his blacklisting, he moved to Mexico with Hugo Butler and his wife Jean Rouverol, who had also been blacklisted. There, Trumbo wrote thirty scripts under pseudonyms, such as the co-written Gun Crazy (1950) written under the pseudonym Millard Kaufman. He won Oscars for Roman Holiday (1953) and The Brave One (1956), both written under fictitious names. In December 1992 the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences decided to change the records and to credit Mr. Trumbo with the achievement. In 1960 he received full credit (due in part to the efforts of actor Kirk Douglas) for the motion-picture epics Exodus and Spartacus, much to the chagrin of many conservatives/right wingers in the film industry, and thereafter on all subsequent scripts, and he was reinstated as a member of the Writers Guild of America. Trumbo’s vivid anti-war novel, Johnny Got His Gun, won a National Book Award (then known as an American Book Sellers Award) in 1939. The inspiration for the novel came to Trumbo when he read an article about a British officer who was horribly disfigured during World War I. Shortly after the 1941 German invasion of the Soviet Union, Trumbo ordered all copies of Johnny Got His Gun to be recalled and he stopped any further publication of the book until 1946. Since that time the book has sold 100 million copies, having been printed in 40 separate editions in 30 different languages; the most recent in July 2007 with a new forward written by Cindy Sheehan, whose solider son died in Iraq on April 4, 2004. In 1971 Trumbo directed his own film adaptation of the novel, which starred Timothy Bottoms, Diane Varsi and Jason Robards. Footage and dialogue from the movie were licensed for use in the music video for the rock band Metallica’s 1989 song, “One”. Dalton Trumbo died from a heart attack in California on September 10, 1976.
Bradley Rand Smith (Playwright)
Bradley Rand Smith is author of the adaptation of Dalton Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, which opened Off-Broadway at Circle Repertory Theatre and received an Obie Award for actor Jeff Daniels, as well as several N.Y. Drama Desk nominations and a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Adaptation. Smith co-wrote the musical, Exmass, with The Daily Show regular and Emmy Award-winning comedian, Lewis Black, which opened in New York and Los Angeles. A third play, NOCTURNE, opened in Chicago and was selected for inclusion in the Skirball/Kennis Theatre Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library. A fourth play, Theatricals, about Charles Dickens, was optioned for Broadway. His latest play, Daughter, a controversial retelling of the life of Jesus, is slated to tour Europe. He has also written a theater piece, Jazz Lives, for renowned bassist John B. Williams and his equally renowned wife, singer Jessica Williams. Lyrics Smith wrote for Mr. Williams can be heard on the jazz CD “The Maupin/Williams Project.” He is the author of several teleplays and screenplays, including In A Workmanlike Manner for CBS.