Richard Shepard, The Matador

Few directors are as interesting as their interesting films but The Matador writer-director href="http://www.richardshepard.com/">Richard Shepard certainly is. His story of how this darkly comic script came to the screen is a beaut: The Matador was done simply as a personal exercise and then sent to Pierce Brosnan's Irish Dream Time company solely as a writing sample so Shepard might be hired to pen the Thomas Crown Affair sequel. Instead, Brosnan was so taken with this end-of-his-rope bisexual hitman, he optioned the script and Shepard's career entered a whole new phase. It's not the first time, however, that he's tangled with success, as he explains on Beyond the Subtitles. A hotshot N.Y.U. Film School grad, he made his first movie soon out of college - and saw it flop. For the next decade he had to confront the reality that his dreams, his huge expectations, might never happen. Luckily, Shepard's kept a sense of humor - and his focus on his talent.

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Richard Shepard, The Matador

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