Ann Magnuson
Encyclopedia
Ann Magnuson is an American actress, performance artist, and nightclub performer who first gained prominence in the 1985 film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 Desperately Seeking Susan
Desperately Seeking Susan
Desperately Seeking Susan is a 1985 American comedy-drama film directed by Susan Seidelman and starring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna.-Plot:...

. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

 described her as "An endearing theatrical chameleon who has as many characters at her fingertips as Lily Tomlin
Lily Tomlin
Mary Jean "Lily" Tomlin is an American actress, comedienne, writer, and producer. Tomlin has been a major force in American comedy since the late 1960's when she began a career as a stand up comedian and became a featured performer on television's Laugh-in...

 does".

Early life and career

Magnuson was born in Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in Kanawha County. As of the 2010 census, it has a population of 51,400, and its metropolitan area 304,214. It is the county seat of Kanawha County.Early...

 to a journalist mother and a lawyer father. She had a brother, Bobby, who died in 1998 of complications from AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

. She attended Holz Elementary and George Washington High School in Charleston. After graduating from Denison University
Denison University
Denison University is private, coeducational, and residential college of liberal arts and sciences founded in 1831. It is located in Granville, Ohio, United States, approximately 30 miles east of Columbus, the state capital...

 in 1978, she moved to New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 and was a DJ and performer at Club 57
Club 57
Club 57 was a nightclub located at 57 St. Mark's Place in the East Village, New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a hangout and venue for performance- and visual-artists and musicians, including Madonna, Keith Haring, Cyndi Lauper, Charles Busch, Klaus Nomi, The B-52s, Futura...

 and the Mudd Club
Mudd Club
The Mudd Club was a TriBeCa nightclub that was opened in October 1978 by Steve Mass, art curator Diego Cortez and Anya Phillips, a figure in the downtown punk scene...

 in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

 circa 1979 through the early 1980s, while pursuing a performance career on varied fronts. She created such characters as "Anoushka", a Soviet lounge singer, wearing a wig backwards and singing mock-Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...

 lyrics to pop music
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...

 standards, and separately sang in an all-girl percussion group, Pulsallama, whose 1982 single "The Devil Lives In My Husband's Body" was a housewife's lament of a spouse who appears to be possessed. Later, in the 1990s, Magnuson fronted the satirical faux-heavy metal
Heavy metal music
Heavy metal is a genre of rock music that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s, largely in the Midlands of the United Kingdom and the United States...

 band Vulcan Death Grip.

In an interview for the 2002 WETA-TV
WETA-TV
WETA-TV is a Public Broadcasting Service member public televisionstation for the Washington, D.C., area. Its studios are in nearby Arlington, Virginia...

-PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 special Lance Loud
Lance Loud
Alanson Russell "Lance" Loud was an American magazine columnist and new wave rock-n-roll performer. Loud is best known for his 1973 appearance in An American Family, a pioneer reality television series that featured his coming out, leading to his status as an icon in the gay community.-Early...

! A Death in An American Family
, Magnuson credited the idea of Loud — a member of an all-American family filmed day-in/day-out for the landmark PBS documentary An American Family
An American Family
An American Family is an American television documentary filmed from May 30 through December 31, 1971 and first aired in the United States on the Public Broadcasting Service in early 1973. After being edited down from about 300 hours of raw footage, the series ran 12 episodes and one season...

, who came out as gay
Gay
Gay is a word that refers to a homosexual person, especially a homosexual male. For homosexual women the specific term is "lesbian"....

 during the course of that documentary
Documentary film
Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 miniseries
Miniseries
A miniseries , in a serial storytelling medium, is a television show production which tells a story in a limited number of episodes. The exact number is open to interpretation; however, they are usually limited to fewer than a whole season. The term "miniseries" is generally a North American term...

 — with inspiring her to leave West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...

 for New York:

Magnuson made her film debut in the 1982 film Vortex.

In the late '70s and early '80s, Magnuson ran Club 57
Club 57
Club 57 was a nightclub located at 57 St. Mark's Place in the East Village, New York City during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was a hangout and venue for performance- and visual-artists and musicians, including Madonna, Keith Haring, Cyndi Lauper, Charles Busch, Klaus Nomi, The B-52s, Futura...

, in New York City's East Village. The club was located in the basement of the Polish National church. It became a center of a world that included Keith Haring
Keith Haring
Keith Haring was an artist and social activist whose work responded to the New York City street culture of the 1980s.-Early life:...

, Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf
Kenny Scharf is an American painter who lives in Brooklyn, New York. The artist received his B.F.A in 1980 at the School of Visual Arts located in New York City. Scharf's works consist of popular culture based shows with made up science-related backgrounds...

, and many others from New York's budding graffiti and downtown scenes. Club 57 was known for its theme nights such as Reggae Miniature Golf, or Model World of Glue Night.

Prominence

A fixture of the Manhattan downtown club scene of the 1980s, Magnuson gained attention with her role as a snarky cigarette girl
Cigarette girl
Cigarette girl or Cigarette Girl may refer to:*Cigarette girl , someone who sells or provides cigarettes in a casino*Cigarette Girl, a 2009 film*Cigarette Girl *The Cigarette Girl from the Future, an album by Beauty Pill...

 in director Susan Seidelman
Susan Seidelman
Susan Seidelman is an American director, producer, writer, and actress.-Career:Susan Seidelman belongs to the first wave of female independent film makers in the American cinema of the 1980s. She graduated Abington Senior High School in 1969 , and went on to study fashion and arts at Drexel...

's low-budget independent film
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...

 hit Desperately Seeking Susan, set in that milieu and which also helped launch the acting career of singer Madonna. Magnuson went on to star in Seidelman's Making Mr. Right
Making Mr. Right
Making Mr. Right is a science fiction/comedy film, directed by Susan Seidelman and starring John Malkovich as Jeff Peters/Ulysses and Ann Magnuson as Frankie Stone.This film is primarily about an android and a woman's misadventures.-Plot:...

(1987), a poorly received science-fiction romance about an android played by John Malkovich
John Malkovich
John Gavin Malkovich is an American actor, producer, director and fashion designer with his label Technobohemian. Over the last 25 years of his career, Malkovich has appeared in more than 70 motion pictures. For his roles in Places in the Heart and In the Line of Fire, he received Academy Award...

, leading to a film career as a character actor
Character actor
A character actor is one who predominantly plays unusual or eccentric characters. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a character actor as "an actor who specializes in character parts", defining character part in turn as "an acting role displaying pronounced or unusual characteristics or...

, often playing the funky, spunky, cute but smart and smart-mouthed friend or career woman.

Concurrently, Magnuson developed an underground following as lead vocalist of the band Bongwater
Bongwater (band)
Bongwater was a psych rock band formed in 1985 and dissolved in 1992. The group was founded by Ann Magnuson and Mark Kramer , who had worked together previously in Pulsallama. The group also featured drummer Dave Licht and guitarists [Dave Rick] and later Randolph A. Hudson III...

, formed in 1985 with producer-musician
Musician
A musician is an artist who plays a musical instrument. It may or may not be the person's profession. Musicians can be classified by their roles in performing music and writing music.Also....* A person who makes music a profession....

 Mark Kramer
Mark Kramer
Mark Kramer , known professionally as Kramer, is a musician, composer, record producer and founder of the New York City record label Shimmy-Disc...

, a.k.a. Kramer. Bongwater released four avant garde albums and a debut EP
Extended play
An EP is a musical recording which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as a full album or LP. The term EP originally referred only to specific types of vinyl records other than 78 rpm standard play records and LP records, but it is now applied to mid-length Compact...

 before breaking up in 1992 with a contentious legal battle between Magnuson and Kramer that lasted through at least 1996 and ended with the bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....

 of Kramer's independent-music label Shimmy-Disc.

Her 15-minute video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...

 performance piece "Made for Television", self-produced in 1981, ran on the WNET
WNET
WNET, channel 13 is a non-commercial educational public television station licensed to Newark, New Jersey. With its signal covering the New York metropolitan area, WNET is a primary station of the Public Broadcasting Service and a primary provider of PBS programming...

-PBS
Public Broadcasting Service
The Public Broadcasting Service is an American non-profit public broadcasting television network with 354 member TV stations in the United States which hold collective ownership. Its headquarters is in Arlington, Virginia....

 avant garde series Alive from Off-Center. Her satiric
Satire
Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 featurette found her playing close to 50 roles in a "channel-hopping" series of visual bites parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...

ing television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 programming game shows to TV-films to televangelists. As Art critic
Art critic
An art critic is a person who specializes in evaluating art. Their written critiques, or reviews, are published in newspapers, magazines, books and on web sites...

 Sarah Valdez described it, "a bewigged Ann Magnuson consecutively inhabits, at a rate faster than any channel surfer could keep up with, an outlandish, uproariously unfortunate range of female stereotypes". It was later released by HBO Home Video together with the Cinemax
Cinemax
Cinemax, sometimes abbreviated as simply "Max", is a collection of premium television networks that broadcasts primarily feature films, along with softcore erotica, original action series, documentaries and special behind-the-scenes features. Cinemax is operated by Home Box Office, Inc., a...

 cable-TV special Vandemonium Plus (1987), in which Magnuson starred in a mostly solo stage piece with appearances by actor-singer Meat Loaf
Meat Loaf
Michael Lee Aday , better known by his stage name, Meat Loaf, is an American hard rock musician and actor...

 and actor-monologist Eric Bogosian
Eric Bogosian
Eric Bogosian is an American actor, playwright, monologist, and novelist of Armenian descent.-Personal life:Bogosian, an Armenian-American, was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, the son of Edwina, a hairdresser and instructor, and Henry Bogosian, an accountant. After graduating from Oberlin College,...

. Her 1995 CD The Luv Show (Geffen Records
Geffen Records
Geffen Records is an American record label, owned by Universal Music Group, and operated as one third of UMG's Interscope-Geffen-A&M label group.-Beginnings:...

/MCA
Music Corporation of America
MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...

), her major-label debut, was commercially unsuccessful, but musically adventurous; one critic described it "an MGM musical as directed by Russ Meyer
Russ Meyer
Russell Albion "Russ" Meyer was a U.S. motion picture director, producer, screenwriter, cinematographer, editor, actor and photographer....

 (which means the mambo 'Sex With The Devil'" and 'Miss Pussy Pants' sit comfortably next to Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman
Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

 references in the same work)".

As Salon writer John Paczowski described her in 1997:

Later career

From 1989 to 1992, Magnuson played Catherine Hughes, the comically hip editor-in-chief of a Chicago magazine in the television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 sitcom Anything But Love
Anything but Love
Anything But Love was an American television sitcom, which aired on ABC from March 7, 1989 to June 3, 1992, spanning four seasons and 56 episodes. The show starred Richard Lewis as Marty Gold and Jamie Lee Curtis as Hannah Miller, coworkers at a Chicago magazine with a mutual romantic attraction to...

, opposite Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis
Jamie Lee Curtis is an American actress and author. Although she was initially known as a "scream queen" because of her starring roles in several horror films early in her career, such as Halloween, The Fog, Prom Night and Terror Train, Curtis has since compiled a body of work that spans many...

 and comedian
Comedian
A comedian or comic is a person who seeks to entertain an audience, primarily by making them laugh. This might be through jokes or amusing situations, or acting a fool, as in slapstick, or employing prop comedy...

 Richard Lewis
Richard Lewis (comedian)
-Early life:Lewis was born in Brooklyn, New York City and was raised in Englewood, New Jersey. His father worked as a caterer and his mother was an actress. Lewis is Jewish. He later attended Ohio State University and was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi Fraternity....

, and played a liberal political commentator on comedian Wanda Sykes
Wanda Sykes
Wanda Sykes is an American writer, stand-up comedian, actress, and voice artist. She earned the 1999 Emmy Award for her writing on The Chris Rock Show. In 2004 Entertainment Weekly named Sykes as one of the 25 funniest people in America...

' 2003 Fox Broadcasting sitcom Wanda at Large
Wanda at Large
Wanda at Large is an American sitcom that ran for two seasons on the Fox network in 2003. The series was created by and stars comedian Wanda Sykes.-Synopsis:...

.

Magnuson's film roles have included a snarly real estate agent in Panic Room
Panic Room
Panic Room is a 2002 American thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by David Koepp. The film stars Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, Kristen Stewart, and Patrick Bauchau...

, a madam in Tank Girl
Tank Girl
Tank Girl is a British comic created by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin. Originally drawn by Jamie Hewlett, it has also been drawn by Rufus Dayglo, Ashley Wood, and Mike McMahon.The eponymous character Tank Girl drives a tank, which is also her home...

, Mel Gibson's "money junkie" ex-wife in Tequila Sunrise
Tequila Sunrise (film)
Tequila Sunrise is an American crime thriller film written and directed by Robert Towne, and starring Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, with support from Raúl Juliá, J. T...

, Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger
Tom Berenger is an American actor known mainly for his roles in action films.-Early life:Berenger was born as Thomas Michael Moore in Chicago to an Irish Catholic family. Berenger's father was a printer for the Chicago Sun-Times. Berenger has a sister, Susan...

's estranged but horny ex-girlfriend in Love at Large
Love at Large
Love at Large is a 1990 romance and mystery film directed by Alan Rudolph and starring Tom Berenger.-Plot:Set in a present that feels more like the past, Harry Dobbs is a private detective surrounded by mysterious and dangerous dames...

, and a sexy victim of David Bowie
David Bowie
David Bowie is an English musician, actor, record producer and arranger. A major figure for over four decades in the world of popular music, Bowie is widely regarded as an innovator, particularly for his work in the 1970s...

's vampire
Vampire
Vampires are mythological or folkloric beings who subsist by feeding on the life essence of living creatures, regardless of whether they are undead or a living person...

 in The Hunger. She also played a secretary in Clear and Present Danger
Clear and Present Danger (film)
Clear and Present Danger is a 1994 film directed by Phillip Noyce, based on the book of the same name by Tom Clancy. It is a subsequent release to the 1992 film Patriot Games, which in itself is a subsequent release to the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October.It is the last film to feature Harrison...

and had a cameo in Cabin Boy
Cabin Boy
Cabin Boy is a 1994 fantasy comedy film directed by Adam Resnick and produced by Tim Burton, which starred comedian Chris Elliott. Elliott co-wrote the film with Adam Resnick...

.

Her TV guest appearances include an episode each of the Lifetime
Lifetime Television
Lifetime Television, often referred to as Lifetime TV, or most commonly, Lifetime, is an American cable television specialty channel devoted to movies, sitcoms and dramas, all of which are either geared toward women or feature women in lead roles. The cable network is owned by A&E Television Networks...

 cable-network fiction
Horror fiction
Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...

-suspense anthology The Hidden Room; the cult-hit, surrealistic comedy-drama
Comedy-drama
Comedy-drama is a genre of theatre, film and television programs which combines humorous and serious content.-Theatre:Traditional western theatre, beginning with the ancient Greeks, was divided into comedy and tragedy...

 The Adventures of Pete and Pete and Salute Your Shorts
Salute Your Shorts
Salute Your Shorts is an American comedy television series that aired on Nickelodeon from 1991–1992 and in reruns until early 1999. It was last rerun on Nickelodeon GaS from July through September of 2003....

on the children's cable television
Cable television
Cable television is a system of providing television programs to consumers via radio frequency signals transmitted to televisions through coaxial cables or digital light pulses through fixed optical fibers located on the subscriber's property, much like the over-the-air method used in traditional...

 network Nickelodeon
Nickelodeon (TV channel)
Nickelodeon, often simply called Nick and originally named Pinwheel, is an American children's channel owned by MTV Networks, a subsidiary of Viacom International. The channel is primarily aimed at children ages 7–17, with the exception of their weekday morning program block aimed at preschoolers...

; the sitcoms The John Larroquette Show
The John Larroquette Show
The John Larroquette Show is a situation comedy that ran on the NBC network from 1993 to 1996. The show, created by Don Reo, was a vehicle for John Larroquette following his run as Dan Fielding on Night Court. The series took place in a seedy bus terminal in St. Louis, Missouri and focused on the...

, The Drew Carey Show
The Drew Carey Show
The Drew Carey Show is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1995 to 2004. The show was set in Cleveland, Ohio, and revolved around the retail office and home life of "everyman" Drew Carey, a fictionalized version of the actor....

, Caroline in the City
Caroline in the City
Caroline in the City is an American situation comedy that ran from September 21, 1995 to April 26, 1999 on the NBC television network. It starred Lea Thompson as cartoonist Caroline Duffy. The series premiered in the two-hour Thursday night block led by Friends.-Premise:Caroline Duffy is a...

, and Frasier
Frasier
Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...

; and the police procedural
Police procedural
The police procedural is a subgenre of detective fiction which attempts to convincingly depict the activities of a police force as they investigate crimes. While traditional detective novels usually concentrate on a single crime, police procedurals frequently depict investigations into several...

 drama CSI: Miami
CSI: Miami
CSI: Miami is an American police procedural television series, which premiered on September 23, 2002 on CBS. The series is a spin-off of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation....

. In the 1996 telefilm The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas
The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas
The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas is a television movie featuring characters from the 1960s American television sitcom The Munsters. It featured an entirely different cast from the series and the previous movie Here Come The Munsters. The movie is set around Christmas time and was met with mixed...

, Magnuson inherited Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo
Yvonne De Carlo was a Canadian-born American actress of film and television. During her six-decade career, her most frequent appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known film roles, such as of Anna Marie in Salome Where She Danced ; Anna in Criss Cross ; Sephora the...

's role of Lily Munster
Lily Munster
Lily Munster, Countess of Shroudshire , is a fictional character in the CBS sitcom The Munsters, originally played by Yvonne De Carlo. The matriarch of the Munster household, Lily is an undead vampire. Her character resembles Vampira...

 from the original 1960s TV series The Munsters
The Munsters
The Munsters is a 1960s American family television sitcom depicting the home life of a family of monsters. It starred Fred Gwynne as Herman Munster and Yvonne De Carlo as his wife, Lily Munster. The series was a satire of both traditional monster movies and popular family entertainment of the era,...

. She appeared in the 1990 Redd Kross
Redd Kross
Redd Kross, a rock band from Hawthorne, California had their roots in 1978 in a band called The Tourists begun by Jeff and Steve McDonald while the brothers were still in middle school...

 music video for the song "Annie's Gone", written about her. As Toronto, Canada writer Jason Anderson summarized her work through 1996, "She's been appearing in various states of undress for artistic purposes since her performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 daze in late-'70s New York [where s]he was indie rock's thinking vixen...."

In 2003, Magnuson began touring a one-woman stage show, Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories
Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories
Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories is the second solo album by Ann Magnuson which was originally released in December 2006 on Asphodel Records. It was produced, co-written, and arranged by Ann's long time collaborator and musical director, Kristian Hoffman. Some of the musical guests include Rufus...

, that she mounted through at least July 2006. She played Sister Elizabeth Donderstock in the play The Book of Liz, written by Amy Sedaris
Amy Sedaris
Amy Louise Sedaris is an American actress, author, and comedian. She is known for playing the character Jerri Blank in the Comedy Central television series Strangers with Candy. Sedaris regularly collaborates with her older brother, humorist and author David Sedaris...

 and David Sedaris
David Sedaris
David Sedaris is a Grammy Award-nominated American humorist, writer, comedian, bestselling author, and radio contributor....

, in May 2005 at the 2nd Stage Theatre in Hollywood, California.
Other theater work has included playwright
Playwright
A playwright, also called a dramatist, is a person who writes plays.The term is not a variant spelling of "playwrite", but something quite distinct: the word wright is an archaic English term for a craftsman or builder...

 John Patrick Shanley
John Patrick Shanley
John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright, screenwriter, and director. He also contributed articles on the performing arts to The New York Times among other publications.-Life and career:...

's Four Dogs and a Bone at the Lucille Lortel
Lucille Lortel
Lucille Lortel was an American actress and theater producer who is remembered as the namesake of an off-Broadway playhouse and theatrical award....

 Theater in New York City, the one-woman shows You Could Be Home Now (which opened the 1990 Serious Fun festival at New York City's Lincoln Center), and Rave Mom (opened in New York City October 2001), and in a neo-burlesque
American burlesque
American Burlesque is a genre of variety show. Derived from elements of Victorian burlesque, music hall and minstrel shows, burlesque shows in America became popular in the 1860s and evolved to feature ribald comedy and female striptease...

 show The Velvet Hammer.

A Village Voice review described the autobiographical Rave Mom as Magnuson's "travels through 1999 — a year of Ecstasy-popping, bad romance-chasing and searching for escapism and meaning after her brother's death from AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

. Magnuson has a thoroughly charming presence [but] her stories of celebrity-studded Oscar
Academy Awards
An Academy Award, also known as an Oscar, is an accolade bestowed by the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize excellence of professionals in the film industry, including directors, actors, and writers...

 parties, kid-filled raves, a wealthy dotcom
Dot-com company
A dot-com company, or simply a dot-com , is a company that does most of its business on the Internet, usually through a website that uses the popular top-level domain, ".com" .While the term can refer to present-day companies, it is also used specifically to refer to companies with...

 suitor, and so on, come off as utterly self-absorbed and trivial...."

She has performed at the Revlon
Revlon
Revlon is an American cosmetics, skin care, fragrance, and personal care company founded in 1932.-History:Revlon was founded in the midst of the Great Depression, 1932, by Charles Revson and his brother Joseph, along with a chemist, Charles Lachman, who contributed the "L" in the Revlon name...

/UCLA Breast Center benefit-show series What A Pair! in 2005, performing with Elaine Hendrix
Elaine Hendrix
Elaine Hendrix is an American actress, producer, singer, dancer, and activist. She is best known for her roles in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, Inspector Gadget 2, and the 2004 documentary What the Bleep Do We Know!?....

 "Tips" from the musical Pump Boys & Dinettes, and 2006, performing with Samantha Shelton
Samantha Shelton
Samantha Sky Shelton is an American actress and singer.-Early life:Samantha Shelton was born in Los Angeles, California, to director Christopher and Carol Stromme. She has three older sisters, Koren, Erin and fellow actress Marley Shelton...

. She appeared in What's My Line? Live on Stage in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

 on Sept 14, 2006.

For eight years Magnuson wrote a monthly column, "LA Woman", in the magazine Paper
Paper (magazine)
Paper magazine is a New York City–based independent magazine covering and discovering cultural movements with a focus on fashion, design, pop-culture, nightlife, music, art and film. The magazine covers trends, new creative talent, urban American lifestyle as well as international lifestyles and...

, as well as an accompanying blog
Blog
A blog is a type of website or part of a website supposed to be updated with new content from time to time. Blogs are usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in...

.

In late 2006, Ann Magnuson released her second solo album, "Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories
Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories
Pretty Songs & Ugly Stories is the second solo album by Ann Magnuson which was originally released in December 2006 on Asphodel Records. It was produced, co-written, and arranged by Ann's long time collaborator and musical director, Kristian Hoffman. Some of the musical guests include Rufus...

" on Asphodel Records. It was produced and cowritten by long-time musical director and accompanist, Kristian Hoffman
Kristian Hoffman
Kristian Hoffman is an American musician. His sister is writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman.-History:Singer/songwriter Kristian Hoffman first emerged during the late 1970s as songwriter and keyboardist for New York City cult favorite the Mumps, and was also an active figure in the No Wave, performing...

, with whom Ann has had a creative relationship since meeting him when she directed "The New Wave Vaudeville Show" in 1976.

In 2007 and 2008, Magnuson performed in a cabaret act, "Dueling Harps", with Adam Dugas, Mia Theodoratus
Mia Theodoratus
Mia Theodoratus is an American harpist and arranger based in Brooklyn, New York. She plays Rock, Jazz, and Celtic harp.-Biography:Theodoratus graduated from the California Institute of the Arts with a masters degree in harp performance....

, and Alexander Rannie.

In 2009, Magnuson created a one-woman performance piece, "Back Home Again (Dreaming Of Charleston)", that was commissioned by Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston, West Virginia
Charleston is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of West Virginia. It is located at the confluence of the Elk and Kanawha Rivers in Kanawha County. As of the 2010 census, it has a population of 51,400, and its metropolitan area 304,214. It is the county seat of Kanawha County.Early...

's FestiVall.

Personal life

Magnuson married architect John Bertram in 2002. She has described the Eastside
East Los Angeles (region)
East Los Angeles is the portion of the City of Los Angeles that lies east of Downtown Los Angeles, the Los Angeles River and the unincorporated areas of Lincoln Heights, west of the San Gabriel Valley, East Los Angeles and City Terrace, south of Cypress Park, and north of Vernon, California and...

 Los Angeles neighborhood of Silver Lake
Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California
Silver Lake is a hilly neighborhood in the city of Los Angeles, California east of Hollywood and northwest of Downtown Los Angeles. Silver Lake is inhabited by a wide variety of ethnic and socioeconomic groups, but it is best known as an eclectic gathering of hipsters and the creative class.The...

, where she lives in her Richard Neutra
Richard Neutra
Richard Joseph Neutra is considered one of modernism's most important architects.- Biography :Neutra was born in Leopoldstadt, the 2nd district of Vienna, Austria Hungary, on April 8, 1892. He was born into both-Jewish wealthy family...

-designed house, as "a rainbow-coalition Mayberry ... You don't get a sense of anybody really flaunting how rich they are."

Quotes

Magnuson on nihilistically violent films such as Se7en
Se7en
Seven is a 1995 American thriller film, which also contains horror and neo-noir elements, directed by David Fincher and written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It was distributed by New Line Cinema and stars Brad Pitt, Morgan Freeman, Gwyneth Paltrow, R...

and music videos such as Smashing Pumpkins' "Bullet with Butterfly Wings
Bullet with Butterfly Wings
"Bullet with Butterfly Wings" is a song by American alternative rock band The Smashing Pumpkins. It was the lead single from the band's 1995 double album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. The song won the 1997 Grammy Award for Best Hard Rock Performance. This song was the band's first Top 40...

": "I hate these whiny, middle-class kids co-opting people's real suffering. Videos ripping off news photography of people in the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...

! I mean, we live like czars. ... When I see my friends lying in caskets and put in the ground, when you're really confronted with it, it's not cool, it's not Trent Reznor
Trent Reznor
Michael Trent Reznor is an American multi-instrumentalist, composer, record producer, and leader of industrial rock band Nine Inch Nails. Reznor is also a member of How to Destroy Angels alongside his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and Atticus Ross. He was previously associated with bands Option 30,...

. I'd just like to make something beautiful. It's something to aspire to."

Filmography

  • Vortex (1982)
  • The Hunger (1983)
  • Perfect Strangers
    Perfect Strangers (1984 film)
    Perfect Strangers is a 1984 film directed by Larry Cohen. It stars Anne Carlisle and Brad Rijn.-Cast:*Anne Carlisle as Sally*Brad Rijn as Johnny*John Woehrle as Fred*Matthew Stockley as Matthew*Stephen Lack as Lieutenant Burns...

    (1984)
  • Desperately Seeking Susan
    Desperately Seeking Susan
    Desperately Seeking Susan is a 1985 American comedy-drama film directed by Susan Seidelman and starring Rosanna Arquette and Madonna.-Plot:...

     (1985)
  • Sleepwalk (1986)
  • The Critical Years (1987)
  • Making Mr. Right
    Making Mr. Right
    Making Mr. Right is a science fiction/comedy film, directed by Susan Seidelman and starring John Malkovich as Jeff Peters/Ulysses and Ann Magnuson as Frankie Stone.This film is primarily about an android and a woman's misadventures.-Plot:...

    (1987)
  • Macaroni & Me (1988 short)
  • A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon
    A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon
    A Night in the Life of Jimmy Reardon is a 1988 film about a high school graduate who must find out if he wants to go to business school at the request of his father or go his own way and get a full time job. He shows he's rebellious throughout the film but eventually comes to understand what his...

    (1988)
  • Mondo New York
    Mondo New York
    Mondo New York is a 1988 Mondo film directed by Harvey Nikolai Keith.-Overview:Mondo New York examines the lives and activities of Manhattan performance artists, and features Joey Arias and Rick Aviles. A number of New York City denizens appear in various sketches, each linked by a young woman's...

    (1988 documentary)
  • Tequila Sunrise
    Tequila Sunrise (film)
    Tequila Sunrise is an American crime thriller film written and directed by Robert Towne, and starring Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer and Kurt Russell, with support from Raúl Juliá, J. T...

    (1988)
  • Checking Out
    Checking Out (1989 film)
    Checking Out is an American comedy film, made in 1989, directed by David Leland and starring Jeff Daniels.-Plot summary:Ray Macklin is obsessed with his own mortality. When a close friend suddenly dies of a heart attack at a barbecue, Ray becomes convinced that every ache, pain and twinge he...

    (1989)
  • Love at Large
    Love at Large
    Love at Large is a 1990 romance and mystery film directed by Alan Rudolph and starring Tom Berenger.-Plot:Set in a present that feels more like the past, Harry Dobbs is a private detective surrounded by mysterious and dangerous dames...

    (1990)
  • Cabin Boy
    Cabin Boy
    Cabin Boy is a 1994 fantasy comedy film directed by Adam Resnick and produced by Tim Burton, which starred comedian Chris Elliott. Elliott co-wrote the film with Adam Resnick...

    (1994)
  • Clear and Present Danger
    Clear and Present Danger (film)
    Clear and Present Danger is a 1994 film directed by Phillip Noyce, based on the book of the same name by Tom Clancy. It is a subsequent release to the 1992 film Patriot Games, which in itself is a subsequent release to the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October.It is the last film to feature Harrison...

    (1994)
  • Tank Girl (1995)
  • The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas
    The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas
    The Munsters' Scary Little Christmas is a television movie featuring characters from the 1960s American television sitcom The Munsters. It featured an entirely different cast from the series and the previous movie Here Come The Munsters. The movie is set around Christmas time and was met with mixed...

    (1996)
  • Before and After (1996)
  • Levitation
    Levitation (film)
    Levitation is Scott D. Goldstein film. The motion picture starred the Golden Globe-nominated American actress Sarah Paulson, Ernie Hudson and Benjamin Heflin.-Plot:...

    (1997)
  • Still Breathing
    Still Breathing
    Still Breathing is 1997 drama feature film starring Brendan Fraser and Joanna Going. Con artist Rosalyn Willoughby in Hollywood and puppeteer Fletcher McBracken in San Antonio have the same dream, which links them to each other. He travels to L.A. to find her, but at first she resists him...

     (1997)
  • Hugo Pool
    Hugo Pool
    Hugo Pool is a 1997 American comedy-drama film starring Alyssa Milano and Patrick Dempsey and directed by Robert Downey, Sr.-Plot:...

    (1997)
  • From the Earth to the Moon (TV miniseries) (1998)
  • Small Soldiers
    Small Soldiers
    Small Soldiers is a 1998 American action/science fiction film directed by Joe Dante starring Gregory Smith and Kirsten Dunst. The film revolves around two teenagers , who get caught in the middle of a war between two factions of sentient action figures, the Gorgonites and the Commando...

    (1998)
  • I Woke Up Early the Day I Died
    I Woke Up Early The Day I Died
    I Woke Up Early The Day I Died is a camp comedy film written by Edward D. Wood, Jr.. The film, directed by Aris Iliopulos, stars Billy Zane, Tippi Hedren, Ron Perlman, and Christina Ricci, among many others.-Production:...

    (1998)
  • Friends and Lovers
    Friends and Lovers
    Friends & Lovers is a 1999 American romantic-drama film directed and co-written by George Haas about a group of twentysomethings on a ski trip. It stars Stephen Baldwin, Claudia Schiffer and Robert Downey, Jr..-Plot:...

     (1999)
  • Love & Sex
    Love & Sex
    Love & Sex is a 2000 film written and directed by Valerie Breiman. A comedy-drama, it stars Famke Janssen and Jon Favreau.-Cast:*Kate Welles - Famke Janssen*Adam Levy - Jon Favreau*Eric - Noah Emmerich*Monique Steinbacher - Ann Magnuson...

     (2000)
  • Housebound (2000)
  • The Caveman's Valentine
    The Caveman's Valentine
    The Caveman's Valentine is a 2001 American mystery-drama film directed by Kasi Lemmons and starring Samuel L. Jackson based on George Dawes Green's novel of the same name. The film was released by Universal Focus, a subsidiary of Universal Studios and Focus Features.-Plot:A former family man and...

    (2001)
  • Glitter
    Glitter (film)
    Glitter is a 2001 film starring R&B singer, songwriter Mariah Carey. It was produced by 20th Century Fox and Columbia Pictures and directed by Vondie Curtis-Hall. It centers on the life and times of a struggling singer from the early club music scene in the 1980s.-Production:Carey has said about...

    (2001)
  • Panic Room
    Panic Room
    Panic Room is a 2002 American thriller film directed by David Fincher and written by David Koepp. The film stars Jodie Foster, Forest Whitaker, Jared Leto, Dwight Yoakam, Kristen Stewart, and Patrick Bauchau...

    (2002)
  • Night at the Golden Eagle (2002)
  • The United States of Leland
    The United States of Leland
    The United States of Leland is a 2003 American drama film by director Matthew Ryan Hoge and producer Kevin Spacey about a meek teenaged boy named Leland P. Fitzgerald who has inexplicably committed a shocking murder...

    (2003)
  • All Grown Up!
    All Grown Up!
    All Grown Up! is an American animated television series created by Arlene Klasky and Gábor Csupó. After the success of All Growed Up, the Rugrats 10th anniversary special, Nickelodeon commissioned All Grown Up! as a spin-off series based on the episode.The series ran from April 12, 2003 to August...

     (2003)
  • Ghostlight
    Ghostlight
    Ghostlight is a multiplatform video game publisher based in the UK, it was established as a subsidiary of Midas Interactive during 2004.-Published games:*The Plan*Shin Megami Tensei: Lucifer's Call*Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga...

    (2003)
  • Open House
    Open House (film)
    Open House is a 2004 real estate musical film starring Hedy Burress, Ann Magnuson, Anthony Rapp, Sally Kellerman, Jenna Leigh Green and Kellie Martin, and directed by Dan Mirvish, a co-founder of the Slamdance Film Festival. It played on the film festival circuit in 2004-2005 and was released on...

    (2004)
  • Chasing Tchaikovsky (2007)
  • Woman's Picture (2010)
  • Small Pond (2011)

Television

  • Anything But Love
    Anything but Love
    Anything But Love was an American television sitcom, which aired on ABC from March 7, 1989 to June 3, 1992, spanning four seasons and 56 episodes. The show starred Richard Lewis as Marty Gold and Jamie Lee Curtis as Hannah Miller, coworkers at a Chicago magazine with a mutual romantic attraction to...

    (50 episodes, 1989–1992)
  • The Hidden Room (1 episode, 1993)
  • The Adventures of Pete & Pete
    The Adventures of Pete & Pete
    The Adventures of Pete & Pete is an American children's television series produced by Wellsville Pictures and broadcast by Nickelodeon. The show featured humorous and surreal elements in its narrative, and many recurring themes centered on two brothers both named Pete Wrigley, and their various...

    (1 episode, 1994)
  • The John Larroquette Show
    The John Larroquette Show
    The John Larroquette Show is a situation comedy that ran on the NBC network from 1993 to 1996. The show, created by Don Reo, was a vehicle for John Larroquette following his run as Dan Fielding on Night Court. The series took place in a seedy bus terminal in St. Louis, Missouri and focused on the...

    (1 episode, 1996)
  • Caroline in the City
    Caroline in the City
    Caroline in the City is an American situation comedy that ran from September 21, 1995 to April 26, 1999 on the NBC television network. It starred Lea Thompson as cartoonist Caroline Duffy. The series premiered in the two-hour Thursday night block led by Friends.-Premise:Caroline Duffy is a...

    (1 episode, 1997)
  • The Drew Carey Show
    The Drew Carey Show
    The Drew Carey Show is an American sitcom that aired on ABC from 1995 to 2004. The show was set in Cleveland, Ohio, and revolved around the retail office and home life of "everyman" Drew Carey, a fictionalized version of the actor....

    (1 episode, 1997)
  • From the Earth to the Moon
    From the Earth to the Moon
    From the Earth to the Moon is a humorous science fantasy novel by Jules Verne and is one of the earliest entries in that genre. It tells the story of the president of a post-American Civil War gun club in Baltimore, his rival, a Philadelphia maker of armor, and a Frenchman, who build an enormous...

    (1 episode, 1998)
  • Wanda at Large
    Wanda at Large
    Wanda at Large is an American sitcom that ran for two seasons on the Fox network in 2003. The series was created by and stars comedian Wanda Sykes.-Synopsis:...

    (1 episode, 2003)
  • Frasier
    Frasier
    Frasier is an American sitcom that was broadcast on NBC for eleven seasons, from September 16, 1993, to May 13, 2004. The program was created and produced by David Angell, Peter Casey, and David Lee in association with Grammnet and Paramount Network Television.A spin-off of Cheers, Frasier stars...

    (1 episode, 2004)
  • Quintuplets (1 episode, 2004)
  • CSI: Miami
    CSI: Miami
    CSI: Miami is an American police procedural television series, which premiered on September 23, 2002 on CBS. The series is a spin-off of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation....

    (1 episode, 2004)
  • Unscripted (1 episode, 2005)
  • American Dad! (1 episode, 2007)
  • All Grown Up (6 episodes, 2003–2007)
  • Valentine (1 episode, 2009)
  • Head Case (1 episode, 2009)

Audio


Further reading


External links

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