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Peter Lindsay Weir AM (/wɪər/ WEER; born August 21, 1944) is a retired Australian film director.

This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. (May 2022)

Peter Weir AM
Weir in April 2011
Born	Peter Lindsay Weir (1944-08-21) 21 August 1944 (age 78) Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1967–2010
Known for	Picnic at Hanging Rock Witness Dead Poets Society The Truman Show Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
Spouse	Wendy Stites ​ (m. 1966)​
Children	2
Signature

Early in his career as a director, Weir was a leading figure in the Australian New Wave cinema movement (1970–1990), with films such as the mystery drama Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), the supernatural thriller The Last Wave (1977) and the historical drama Gallipoli (1981). The climax of Weir's early career was the $6 million multinational production The Year of Living Dangerously (1982).

After the success of The Year of Living Dangerously, Weir directed a diverse group of American and international films covering most genres–many of them major box office hits–including Academy Award-nominated films such as the thriller Witness (1985), the drama Dead Poets Society (1989), the romantic comedy Green Card (1990), the social science fiction comedy-drama The Truman Show (1998) and the epic historical drama Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (2003). For his work on these five films, Weir personally accrued six Academy Award nominations as either a director, writer or producer.

Since 2003, Weir has made only one feature, the well-received The Way Back (2010), which failed at the box office. In 2022, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced that it would give Weir an honorary Oscar in November of the same year at the Governors Awards.[1]

Early life and education

Peter Lindsay Weir was born in Sydney, New South Wales, in 1944, the son of Peggy (née Barnsley Sutton) and Lindsay Weir, a real estate agent.[2] Weir attended The Scots College and Vaucluse Boys' High School before studying arts and law at the University of Sydney. His interest in film was sparked by his meeting with fellow students, including Phillip Noyce and the future members of the Sydney filmmaking collective Ubu Films.^{[citation needed]}

Television

After leaving university in the mid-1960s, he joined Sydney television station ATN-7, where he worked as a production assistant on the groundbreaking satirical comedy program The Mavis Bramston Show. During this period, using station facilities, Weir made his first two experimental short films, Count Vim's Last Exercise and The Life and Flight of Reverend Buckshotte.^{[citation needed]}

In 1969, the founders of Producers Authors Composers and Talent (now PACT Centre for Emerging Artists) attended a Sydney University Architecture Revue, with sets by Geoffrey Atherden and Grahame Bond. They invited Bond, Atherden, Weir, and Weir's friend, composer Peter Best, a chance to do a show at the National Art School. Sir Robert Helpmann saw the show and took it to the Adelaide Festival. Soon afterward Weir and Best were commissioned to write a Christmas special TV show for ABC Television, called Man on a Green Bike.[3]

Film career

Early films

Weir took a position with the Commonwealth Film Unit (later renamed Film Australia),[4] for which he made several documentaries, including a short documentary about an underprivileged outer Sydney suburb, Whatever Happened to Green Valley, in which residents were invited to make their own film segments.[5] Another notable film in this period was the short rock music performance film Three Directions in Australian Pop Music (1972), which featured in-concert colour footage of three of the most significant Melbourne rock acts of the period, Spectrum, The Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band, and Wendy Saddington. He also directed one section of the three-part, three-director feature film Three To Go (1970), which won an AFI award.^{[citation needed]}

After leaving the CFU, Weir made his first major independent film, the short feature Homesdale (1971), an offbeat black comedy. It co-starred rising young actress Kate Fitzpatrick and musician and comedian Grahame Bond, who came to fame in 1972 as the star of The Aunty Jack Show; Weir also played a small role, but this was to be his last significant screen appearance. Homesdale and Weir's two aforementioned CFU shorts have been released on DVD.

Weir's first full-length feature film was the underground cult classic, The Cars That Ate Paris (1974), a low-budget black comedy about the inhabitants of a small country town who deliberately cause fatal car crashes and live off the proceeds. It was a minor success in cinemas but proved very popular on the then-thriving drive-in circuit.^{[citation needed]} The plot of "Cars" had been inspired by a press report Weir had read about two young English women who had vanished while on a driving holiday in France. With this film, along with the earlier Homesdale, Weir set the basic thematic pattern which has persisted throughout his career: nearly all his feature films deal with people who face some form of crisis after finding themselves isolated from society in some way – either physically (Witness, Mosquito Coast, The Truman Show, Master and Commander), socially/culturally (Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Last Wave, Dead Poets Society, Green Card), or psychologically (Fearless).^{[citation needed]}

Weir's major breakthrough in Australia and internationally was the lush, atmospheric period mystery Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), made with substantial backing from the state-funded South Australian Film Corporation and filmed on location in South Australia and rural Victoria. Based on the novel by Joan Lindsay and set at the turn of the 20th century, the film relates the purportedly "true" story of a group of students from an exclusive girls' school who mysteriously vanish from a school picnic on Valentine's Day 1900. Widely credited as a key work in the "Australian film renaissance" of the mid-1970s, Picnic was the first Australian film of its era to gain both critical praise and be given substantial international theatrical releases. It also helped launch the career of internationally renowned Australian cinematographer Russell Boyd. It was widely acclaimed by critics, many of whom praised it as a welcome antidote to the so-called "ocker film" genre, typified by The Adventures of Barry McKenzie and Alvin Purple.^{[citation needed]}

Weir's next film, The Last Wave (1977), was a supernatural thriller about a man who begins to experience terrifying visions of an impending natural disaster. It starred American actor Richard Chamberlain, who was well known to Australian and world audiences as the eponymous physician in the popular Dr. Kildare TV series. He later starred in the major series The Thorn Birds, set in Australia. The Last Wave was a pensive, ambivalent work that expanded on themes from Picnic, exploring the interactions between the native Aboriginal and European cultures. It co-starred the Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil, whose performance won the Golden Ibex (Oscar equivalent) at the Tehran International Festival in 1977, but it was only a moderate commercial success at the time.^{[citation needed]}

Between The Last Wave and his next feature, Weir wrote and directed the offbeat low-budget telemovie The Plumber (1979).[6] It starred Australian actors Judy Morris and Ivar Kants and was filmed in three weeks.[7] Inspired by an account told to him by friends, it is a black comedy about a woman whose life is disrupted by a subtly menacing plumber. Weir scored a major Australian hit and further international praise with his next film, the historical adventure-drama Gallipoli (1981). Scripted by the Australian playwright David Williamson, it is regarded as classic Australian cinema. Gallipoli was instrumental in making Mel Gibson (Mad Max) into a major star, although his co-star Mark Lee, who also received high praise for his role, has made relatively few screen appearances since.^{[citation needed]}

The climax of Weir's early career was the $6 million multi-national production The Year of Living Dangerously (1982), again starring Gibson, playing opposite top Hollywood female lead Sigourney Weaver in a story about journalistic loyalty, idealism, love and ambition in the turmoil of Sukarno's Indonesia of 1965. It was an adaptation of the novel by Christopher Koch, which was based in part on the experiences of Koch's journalist brother Philip, the ABC's Jakarta correspondent and one of the few western journalists in the city during the 1965 attempted coup. The film also won Linda Hunt (who played a man in the film) an Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The film was produced by Jim McElroy, who with his brother Hal McElroy had also (co-)produced Weir's first three films, The Cars That Ate Paris, Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Last Wave.^{[citation needed]}

American films

Weir's first American film was the successful thriller Witness (1985), the first of two films he made with Harrison Ford, about a boy who sees the murder of an undercover police officer by corrupt coworkers and has to be hidden in his Amish community to protect him. Weir directed Ford in his only performance to receive an Academy Award nomination, while child star Lukas Haas also received wide praise for his debut film performance. Witness also earned Weir his first Academy Award nomination as Best Director, and was his first of several films to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture, it later won 2 for Best Film Editing & Best Original Screenplay.^{[citation needed]}

It was followed by the darker, less commercial The Mosquito Coast (1986), Paul Schrader's adaptation of Paul Theroux's novel. Ford played a man obsessively pursuing his dream to start a new life in the Central American jungle with his family. These dramatic parts provided Harrison Ford with important opportunities to break the typecasting of his career-making roles in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. Both films showed off his ability to play more subtle and substantial characters and he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his work in Witness, the only Academy Awards recognition in his career. The Mosquito Coast is also notable for a performance by the young River Phoenix.^{[citation needed]}

Weir's next film, Dead Poets Society, was a major international success, with Weir again receiving credit for expanding the acting range of its Hollywood star. Robin Williams was mainly known for his anarchic stand-up comedy and his popular TV role as the wisecracking alien in Mork & Mindy; in this film he played an inspirational teacher in a dramatic story about conformity and rebellion at an exclusive New England prep school in the 1950s. The film was nominated for four Oscars, including Best Picture and Best Director for Weir, it later won for Best Original Screenplay and launched the acting careers of young actors Ethan Hawke and Robert Sean Leonard. It became a major box-office hit and is one of Weir's best-known films to mainstream audiences.^{[citation needed]}

Weir's first romantic comedy Green Card (1990) was another casting risk. Weir chose French screen icon Gérard Depardieu in the lead—Depardieu's first English-language role—and paired him with American actress Andie MacDowell. Green Card was a box-office hit but was regarded as less of a critical success, although it helped Depardieu's path to international fame. Weir received an Oscar nomination for his original screenplay.^{[citation needed]}

Fearless (1993) returned to darker themes and starred Jeff Bridges as a man who believes he has become invincible after surviving a catastrophic air crash. Though well reviewed, particularly the performances of Bridges and Rosie Perez—who received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress—the film was less commercially successful than Weir's two preceding films. It was entered into the 44th Berlin International Film Festival.[8]

After five years, Weir returned to direct his biggest success to date, The Truman Show (1998), a fantasy-satire of the media's control of life. The Truman Show was both a box office and a critical success, receiving positive reviews and numerous awards, including three Academy Award nominations: Andrew Niccol for Best Original Screenplay, Ed Harris for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Weir himself for Best Director.[9] In addition to the Academy Award nominations, the film won the 1999 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.[10]

In 2003, Weir returned to period drama with Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, starring Russell Crowe. A screen adaptation from various episodes in Patrick O'Brian's blockbuster adventure series set during the Napoleonic Wars, it was well received by critics, but only mildly successful with mainstream audiences. Despite another nomination for Best Picture and winning two Oscars—for frequent collaborator Russell Boyd's cinematography and for sound effects editing—the film's box office success was moderate ($93 million at the North American box office). The film grossed slightly better overseas, gleaning an additional $114 million.^{[citation needed]}

Weir wrote and directed his next film, The Way Back (2010),[11] a historical epic about escapees from a Soviet gulag, which was generally well received critically but not a financial success.[12][13]

Following The Way Back, Weir did not work on any more projects. As years passed, without an official announcement, he started to be described as "retired". Speaking in 2022, speculating about Weir's unannounced retirement, Ethan Hawke said, "I think [Weir] lost interest in movies. He really enjoyed that work when he didn't have actors giving him a hard time. Russell Crowe and Johnny Depp broke him."[14]

Personal life

On 14 June 1982, Weir was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his service to the film industry.[15]

Filmography

Directed features

Year	Title	Distributor
1974	The Cars That Ate Paris	British Empire Films
1975	Picnic at Hanging Rock
1977	The Last Wave	United Artists
1981	Gallipoli	Village Roadshow / Paramount Pictures
1982	The Year of Living Dangerously	United International Pictures / MGM/UA Entertainment Company
1985	Witness	Paramount Pictures
1986	The Mosquito Coast	Warner Bros.
1989	Dead Poets Society	Buena Vista Pictures
1990	Green Card
1993	Fearless	Warner Bros.
1998	The Truman Show	Paramount Pictures
2003	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	20th Century Fox
2010	The Way Back	Newmarket Films / Exclusive Film Distribution / Meteor Pictures

Awards and nominations

Year	Title	Academy Awards		BAFTA Awards		Golden Globe Awards
		Nominations	Wins	Nominations	Wins	Nominations	Wins
1975	Picnic at Hanging Rock			3	1
1981	Gallipoli					1
1982	The Year of Living Dangerously	1	1			1
1985	Witness	8	2	7	1	6
1986	The Mosquito Coast					2
1989	Dead Poets Society	4	1	6	2	4
1990	Green Card	1		1		3	2
1993	Fearless	1				1
1998	The Truman Show	3		7	3	6	3
2003	Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	10	2	8	4	3
2010	The Way Back	1
Total		29	6	32	11	27	5

References

Further reading

• Peter Weir Pays Witness to the Amish – 27 January 1985
• Peter Weir: In a Class by Himself – 4 June 1989
• Poetry Man – Premiere magazine Interview – July 1989
• A Director Asks for Odd and Gets It – 13 October 1993
• Staring Death in the Face – 17 October 1993
• Weir'd Tales – An interview with Peter Weir – 1994
• A Weir'd Experience – 20 April 1998
• Director Tries a Fantasy As He Questions Reality – 21 May 1998
• Interview – Peter Weir – 3 June 1998
• More to Digest than Popcorn: An Interview with Peter Weir – 4 June 1998
• Peter Weir: The Hollywood Interview – 15 March 2008
• Uncommon Man – The DGA Quarterly Interview – Summer 2010

External links

• Peter Weir at IMDb
• Peter Weir's 2010 David Lean lecture at BAFTA
• Senses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database
• Peter Weir at the National Film and Sound Archive^{[permanent dead link]}

Awards and achievements
Preceded by Baz Luhrmann for Romeo + Juliet	BAFTA Award for Best Direction 1998 for The Truman Show	Succeeded by Pedro Almodóvar for All About My Mother
Preceded by Roman Polanski for The Pianist	BAFTA Award for Best Direction 2003 for Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World	Succeeded by Mike Leigh for Vera Drake

На других языках

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[de] Peter Weir

Peter Lindsay Weir [.mw-parser-output .IPA a{text-decoration:none}wɪə] (* 21. August 1944 in Sydney, New South Wales) ist ein australischer Regisseur. Zu seinen bekanntesten Filmen zählen Picknick am Valentinstag, Der Club der toten Dichter, Die Truman Show und Master & Commander. Im Jahr 2022 wurde ihm der Ehrenoscar für sein Lebenswerk zuerkannt.

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- [en] Peter Weir

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[es] Peter Weir

Peter Lindsay Weir (Sídney, Nueva Gales del Sur; 21 de agosto de 1944) es un director de cine australiano. Es reconocido por ser el director de películas como Witness, Dead Poets Society, Fearless Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, Gallipoli, The Truman Show y The Way Back, entre otras.

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[ru] Уир, Питер

Пи́тер Уир (англ. Peter Weir, род. 21 августа 1944 (1944-08-21)) — австралийский кинорежиссёр. Сыграл ведущую роль в австралийской новой волне (1970—1990)[4]. Лауреат почётной премии «Оскар», а так же шестикратный номинант, трёхкратный лауреат премии BAFTA. Наиболее известен благодаря режиссуре таких фильмов, как «Шоу Трумана», «Общество мёртвых поэтов» и «Хозяин морей: На краю земли»

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